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Skyock's Egret has taken off and is flying fast,
the big bird is aloft!
PD Pro Howler v8.2 was released on February 16,
2013. It is a free update for current users of PD
Howler 8.0 / 8.1. This release enables the use of
the GPU for some of its plugins, when the system requirements
are met. This release also works well on Windows 8,
but still supports Windows XP and Vista as well,
albeit without GPU acceleration. It's still very
fast though, able to leverage the CPU's special
features, going beyond MMX with GDI+, SSE2,
multi-threading and more.
Scroll down to read the list of changes made in 8.2.
Here's what's new in PD Pro 8.2:
- There is now a button to swap images next
to the interactive undo button on the
context strip. (same as keyboard shortcut
'j' to jump between Main image buffer and
Swap image buffer.)
- You can now set a default frame rate when
creating an animation.
- 3d Designer is now optimized by using a
lower tessellation level for previews. It
returns to full resolution when you release
the mouse.
- The soft contrast filter now has a level
slider and is animatable.
- Overhauled custom blur tool.The custom
blur tool has been around since version 1,
but at the time we didn't have the processor
power needed to really accomplish what we
wanted. Custom blur now uses the GPU
for a tremendous amount of number
crunching.
- The custom blur tool can now use the alpha
channel to determine the size of the blur
radius. This is a very useful effect
for creating very realistic blurs. There is
also a bloom option that can be used to
create a "Bokeh" effect.
- Updated 3d designer now supports more
realistic lighting, anti-aliasing, improved
speed, fog, output of zbuffer to the alpha
channel, etc.
- A greatly wrangled plugin folder and
browser, also adding support for tooltips
for plugins.
GPU support.
- The enhanced 3D Designer is the
first to make use of new GPU support. The
Mandelbrot filter and the Bokeh blur filter
also use it.
- GUI improvements and cosmetic changes for
Windows 8.
Updated plugins.
- In 8.2, we're adopting an "everything down
to the raw loader" philosophy, meaning we're
dusting off a lot of old plugins,
internalizing some, refreshing the GUI of
ones that haven't been updated to the newer
look, and just generally making a lot of
little updates and polishes.
- There are some notable changes on the
settings panel. Previously there was a
lengthy and involved refresh of all the
controls and panels in the program when
hitting use or save. This has been
eliminated since GUI themes are handled
elsewhere (window/layout) now. So you
don't have to be afraid of the setting panel
anymore.
- Some GPU information is added to the
threading area on the setting panel.
Right now, it is mostly true or false if
there is a supported GPU. The panel is
also redone.
- Setting the ruler or window or background
color on the setting panel now updates
immediately instead of waiting until you
click save or use.
- There is now a GPU benchmark under the
threading and GPU area on the setting panel.
- There's also now the ability to save a
default media in the settings panel.
- There's a new force-field type that can be
used to create gravity/explosion fields.
- Non-photo blue removal plugin now has a
menu item under filters.
- Plugin panel is back out in the open on
the window menu.
- Remembers ruler state. Remembers
ruler metric/US status.
- 3d designer filter on the timeline can now
bring up the 3d designer panel whenever
needed and not just at the time the filter
is selected.
- Significant speed improvements to 3d
designer on the timeline.
- The 'fullscreen' state is now remembered,
as well as the sidebar telescope state.
- There's a more informative message now
warning of multiple instances.
- The unit calculator, aka "Other units" has
been updated to support non integer numbers,
and extended as a general purpose dialog box
that can be used elsewhere.
- Other Units is now available on the image
size panel, and the render/grid filter.
- The foliage tool now supports
force-fields(!)
- Cosmetic changes to better support the
flat look of Windows 8
- Interface tweaks for more usability.
- Fixed an error in saving pigment profiles.
- Fill settings panel has button
misformatted (fixed)
- Saving Avi's now remembers the last
filename during a session, and there's an
updated panel.
- Grid and Artist guide settings are now
saved and restored.
- The ruler is now positioned relative to
the upper corner of the image and not the
screen space.
- A couple of fixes on the animated brush
timeline.
- Fixed a problem where memory wasn't
correctly displayed after saving memory
settings.
- The plugin panel now supports tooltips for
each plugin.
- Changes to the plugin panel now also allow
date and size of plugin creation, author and
information about the plugin, plus pattern
matching and opening the Explorer.
- The plugin panel and lua browser are now
more functionally and visually similar.
- Fixed 'numeric select' not activating from
the alpha panel.
- fixed "store brush as image" feature to
not crash if a brush is not defined.
- GUI_Server, hence lua scripts with a GUI,
now use the new visual style.
- The Brush/Transparency/Transparency tool
now uses the new visual style.
- The brush keyframer now uses the new
visual style.
- Frame Painter now uses the new visual
style.
- Fixed some layout problems with the print
panel.
- fixed crash if entering numbers above 255
in gradient panel.
- The tritone filter now supports rendering
to an animation. The "multicolor"
animated lua script version of it has thus
been removed from the filters/animated
category.
- The spherize tool now supports rendering
directly to an animation so the
multiframe_spherize' plugin has been
removed.
- There's a new 1 bit per channel filter
under Color/1 bit dither... Possible
uses, preparing a graphic for pixel for
pixel output to a printing device maybe.
- the Mod dog player plugin is updated to
run under 64 bit Windows.
- A number of plugins have been
updated. For example, the RYB mixer
plugin now operates more smoothly.
- The installer no longer auto-launches the
program after installation. This change was
done for technical reasons. It should be run
from the start menu or desktop shortcut, if
any.
- The "Undo buffer to animation" feature was
leaving out 1 undo step. Fixed.
- The tool panel is now adjusted on start-up
to always be on the right side of the
sidebar if both are located together on the
left side of the main panel.
- Eliminated all lua script usage from main
functions, replaced with internal code.
- Pointer info is no longer agressively
displayed when repeating a brush
stroke.
- This should speed up the stroke player a
bit. Also the same thing goes for the
post process on the foliage system.
- Addressed gradual darkening issue with the
foliage brush system.
Some things renamed...
- "Unit calculator" on the image re-sample
panel is renamed "Other units" to sound less
mathy.
- "Store image" is renamed "Store image
copy" to be clearer.
- The brush key menu is renamed
"Transparency" and reorganized. Most
of the items have been internalized.
- For Developers: added
Dogwaffle.Dog_ColorToRGB(c, r, g, b)
subroutine in the plugin interface. It is
not a function, but a subroutine. The
return results are in r,g,b which is
converted from the color value in c, such as
"&HFF4422" - This routine is added to
support .net framework plugins that often
have functions that accept colors in R,G,B
values instead of packed format.
- Added the bmp image sequence to avi
converter plugin to the misc utilities menu.
- The wallpaper plugin now asks before
applying a new wallpaper.
- Our brush sets had some duplicate bitmaps,
and needed organizing. The images have
probably changed order some. This may
affect some media.
- Among numerous improvements to the setting
panel, clearing registry keys now sets a
flag so that they are not saved again when
the program exits (which would negate the
effort). This is useful if you loose a
window off screen, or have some other
unexpected error related to an incorrect
registry setting. It is also possible
to do the same thing via a plugin on the
plugin panel. If you need to rescue a
window, there is also a menu item under the
Window menu to do so as well.
- Rescuing a window now warns that only
windows that are currently open will be
rescued. Rescuing a window that lived
in negative screen space may not have
worked.
- The Graphics pen filter is now animatable.
- Animatable Mandelbrot zoom.
- Some changes and fixes on the quick color
picker.
- speed improvement to the Crystallize and
cellular filters.
- Filters that previously supported an
animation button (3d designer, 3d
Perspective, sky filter, shift, sunset,
tritone...) now are rendered without
flashing.
- cosmetic updates to grayscale by lens,
tint, and color fx panels.
- Custom blur no longer gets dark borders.
More internalized plugins...
- Red eye removal
- Scale_Alpha_pm.exe
- ExploreTempDir_pm.exe
- 8 bush keying plugins internalized.
- a number of quantizing (color reduction)
plugins have been internalized.
- Load to stored
- LoadbrushSet
- loadpaper
- systemColor
- AverageFrames
Functions that have been threaded...
- Render/grid.
- Render/zrings.
- Wave displacement.
And probably a few more hidden gems. Such as:
In 3D Designer, Distant Fog as well as Height
Fog (Ground Fog) has been added, as well as
antialiasing and pre-filtering.
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