Flaming Pear Organic Edges Guide

What it does

How to install

Controls

Things to try

Versions

Questions

Organic Edges

What it does

Organic Edges enhances the edges in a picture.

How to install

Illustrated installation instructions are online.

To use this software, you need a paint program which accepts standard Photoshop 3.02 plugins.

Just put the plug-in filter into the folder where your paint program expects to find it. If you have Photoshop, the folder is Photoshop:Plugins:Filters or Photoshop:Plug-Ins. You must restart Photoshop before it will notice the new plug-in. It will appear in the menus as Filters->Flaming Pear->Organic Edges.

Most other paint programs follow a similar scheme.

If you have Paint Shop Pro: you have to create a new folder, put the plug-in filter into it, and then tell PSP to look there.

PSP 7:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... and choose the Plug-in Filters tab. Use one of the "Browse" buttons to choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plug-in Filters->Flaming Pear->Organic Edges.

PSP 8, 9, X and XI:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... In the dialog box that appears, choose Plug-ins from the list. Click "Add." If you are using PSP 8 or 9, click "Browse". Now choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plugins->Flaming Pear->Organic Edges.

Controls

When you invoke Organic Edges, a dialog box will appear:

Quick start |  |  |
If you just want to see some effects quickly, click the dice button until you see something you like; then click OK. Using the dice is the easiest way to use Organic Edges. If you want to hand-tune your own effects, it helps to learn the controls, which are explained below. |  | dice |

Edges |  |  |

Edge style: You can make eight kinds of edges. The normal result is a grayscale image, but it's more interesting to use the 'overlay' glue mode, which combines the gray tones with the original image.

For every edge style, the Smoothing slider blurs the image before finding edges. The result is less busy.

For most edge styles, the Tweaker slider changes the brightness of the edges. It works differently for chrome edges.

original image

blurry edges

Blurry edges resemble Photoshop's "Find Edges" effect. |  | blurry + overlay glue |
Thin/hard edges are the skeleton of the blurry edges. |  | rhin/hard |
Thin/soft edges are like thin/hard, but anti-aliased. |  | rhin/soft |
Chrome Edges show which way the edges lean. The Chrome style popup lets choose different appearances. The Tweaker slider changes the busyness of the pattern, and the angle control changes its orientation. |  | chrome |
Halo edges are like blurry edges with an outline. |  | halo |
Scribble edges are thin lines that wander around the shapes in the picture. The angle control changes their orientation. |  | scribble |
Tangled edges make a web. |  | tangled |
Splotchy edges make a mess. |  | splotchy |
Racetrack edges are doubled. |  | racetrack |
Zero edges have wandering bubbles. |  | zero |
Antitangled edges are a dark web. |  | antitangled |
Checker edges form a warped grid. |  | checker |

More controls |  |  |

Edge extent chooses whether to find all edges, only horizontal edges, or only vertical edges.

Source chooses whether to use derive edges from the grey version of the picture, or only from its red, green, or blue color channels. Mostly you will want to use grey.

Colorize creates colored edges instead of gray ones. The colors will be a ramp between your paint programs' current foreground and background colors.

Flip makes the edges negative, exchanging black and white.

Remove noise cancels out some kinds of noise by averaging pixels. Often the effect is negligible.

blurry, colorized edges

thin, flipped edges

Other controls |  |  |

Dice The dice choose a random effect. Click as much as you want to see different effects.

Reset Gives you the "factory settings."

Export to PSD Renders the result to a a .psd image file, which can have custom dimensions.

Glue mode popup menu Lets you combine the result with the underlying image in various ways. Modes other than "normal" produce special effects. The next-glue button advances to the next glue mode.

Info Briefly explains of the controls.

Make Gallery Builds a web page showing all the presets in a folder that you choose.

Send to photo manager Sends the result to iPhoto (on Macintosh).

Plus, % and minus buttons: These zoom the preview in and out. Drag the preview to move it.

Load preset Boss Emboss comes with some presets, which are files containing settings. To load one, click this button and browse for a preset file.

Save preset When you make an effect you like, click this button to save the settings in a file.

Undo backs up one step.

OK Applies the effect to your image.

Cancel Dismisses the filter, and leaves the image unchanged.

dice

reset

export to PSD

next glue
info
make gallery
send to photo manager

load preset

save preset

undo

Memory dots |  |  |

Although you can save your settings permanently to files, you can also stash settings in memory dots.

Click an empty dot to stash the current settings in it.

Click a full dot to retrieve its settings.

Hover the mouse over a dot to see what it contains.

Option-click to erase a dot on Macintosh.

Right-click to erase a dot on Windows.

If a dot is orange, your are currently using that dot's settings.

Dots remember their contents until you erase them. If you'd rather make a temporary dot that forgets when you exit the plug-in, control-click it. Temporary dots are square.

When you start the plug-in, it puts the starting settings in a temporary dot. That way it's easy to start over without exiting.

On Mac, you can drag-and-drop settings files from the central memory well.

memory dots

empty
full
current
temporary

Things to try

• Render some black and white clouds. Add noise (setting of about 100 is good). Start up Organic Edges and set the Blurry Edges mode. Play with the smoothing and tweaker controls.

• Open a file with a photograph. Use blurry edges and the overlay glue mode. Adjust the Tweaker control the amount of edge added. Adjust Smoothing to get a looser or tighter feel.

• Try the Top to Bottom and Left to Right edge extents.

• Draw some thin black lines with the pen. Draw some fat black lines with the brush. Do Chrome Edges where they intersect. Play with the Smoothing control. Play with the Degrees and Tweaker controls.

• There are some good 3D effects with Chrome Edges. Set the glue mode to to either multiply or screen. Tweak and smooth.

Version History

Version 1.4 May 2008

Adds convenience features to the interface. The Mac version is resizable.

Version 1.35 June 2007

Fixes a Macintosh problem where the plug-in could have bad settings or crash when installed on a machine for the first time.

Version 1.3 February 2007

Universal binary for Macintosh. Works as a Smart Filter in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh. Fixes a Windows problem where the plug-in wouldn't remember its registration when it was installed in one user account but activated in another.

Version 1.2 June 2005

Four new edge types and more glue modes. Faster. Larger previews in the file chooser.

Version 1.1 May 2004

More glue modes. Works with 16-bit-per-component color.

Version 1.04 December 2003

Recordable as a Photoshop action.

Version 1.02 September 2003

Adds more glue modes and the next-glue button.

Version 1.0 March 2003

The first release in this form.

The Furbo Filters were originally developed by Craig Hockenberry.

Questions

Answers to common technical questions appear on the support page.

For bug reports and technical questions about the software, please write to support@flamingpear.com .