Problems with Panopticum's LensPro 3 for Mac

[Welles]

One of my favorite plugins has been Panopticum's LensPro. Version 3 was recently released for OS X. I purchased the new version and spent several hours investigating the enhanced possibilities, only to discover several problems. The Mirror function didn't work as anticipated with the screen blend feature being absent all together, nor did negative curvature settings on lenses work, although when LP3 was first launched a negatative curvature setting was always default.

Iya, the Mac developer for Panopticum has been hard at work to try and solve the problems and sent me a replacement LensPro3 Lib X this morning to try out prior to releasing it publicly. Supposedly it was to solve all my earlier reported shortcomings. Unfortunately it repeatedly crashed Photoshop as if it were force quit upon attempting to launch LensPro 3.

However, I have no doubt that the issues will be solved soon and at that time suggest that LensPro is worthy of a close look.

[theKeeper]

Hi Welles! [excited]

Well(es), hehe... it sounds like you're having an adventure with the plugin. As a sidenote... i've been noticing a lot more plugin comppanies doing this -- releasing the wares a bit too soon to stay up with the competition. It's really not the right thing to do, but something tells me we'll all just have to get used to it.

I've checked out that plugin though and i agree with your views on it. It's worth checking into.

[Welles]

Mark,

Actually I have a bit of history with Panopticum. In LensPro 2 I found "limitations" in the software and reported them to the engineers who constantly kept scratching their heads and basically saying that they never imagined someone would try to use their product in the manner I did. Artists!!! Actually they were quite happy to have me continually stress their design to the breaking point and I learned quite a bit about the architecture of plugins and Photoshop from our interaction. I make a point of reporting back to software developers when I discover repeatable issues and have discovered real bugs about a dozen times.

In this particular case, the Windows XP version of the software has been released for nearly half a year already so I rather doubt the problems in the Mac OS X version are present in the Windows' version.

I do like the Panopticum plug-ins but I was accustomed, in pre-OS X versions, to saving every file for sure before I ever launched one as they tended to be crash prone. The first release of the new LensPro 3 didn't crash, it just had some featues which weren't implemented and yet were discussed in the PDF manual and I reported them as they were quite important. They should use me for beta testing their plugins for Macs, or maybe they are!



Here is a desktop I made a couple of years ago using all third party plugins and uploaded for friends. I still use it on occasion. The sky was KPT 6's SkyEffects, fruit KPT 6's SceneBuilder plugin, bubbles and glass frame Panopticum's LensPro 2 and the outer bevel was Extensis PhotoBevel I believe. Now it's not great art but an example of fun with plugins.
http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodri...fe1024X768.jpg

[theKeeper]

Ya sounds like they SHOULD use you for beta testing. Have you asked 'em about that? I'm sure they'd at least think it over. A lot of these plugin companies have beta testers. Only makes sense really.

That desktop image DOES look "fun".
Has a very 'digital' look to it. Quite appropriate for a desktop. I like those kind.

[Welles]

I received a new set of Libraries and a plugin from Ilya Kolesov, the chief Mac software engineer at Panopticum, and everything works just fine. There is one feature which has yet to be implemented but shows up on the "Object type" drop down menu. Triangles Surface is a feature which will crystallize an entire image or layer. Although it is not implemented at this time it will be in a future update.

Furthermore, while I had the attention of the engineer I put in a request for a small added feature to the Mirror Mode. Presently only BMP (Windows) or PICT (Mac) files can be used for the mirrored reflections and I asked if it were possible to use TIFF files so an alpha channel could mask an image from the background. He's going to try and implement that suggestion.

These artists are never satisfied!

As a final note, the new version of Panopticum's LensPro 3 for Mac OS X will be available from their web site in the next day or two and should be announced on VersionTracker at that time.