Other Sites

FILTERiT is a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that expands the capabilities of twisting, turning, altering, or (artistically) messing up an object or text beyond what is already available in the program.

There are not a slew of new features in FILTERiT4 from its predecessor FILTERiT3 (see last Applelinks review), but of what new there is, they do offer a new round of opportunities. What is (temporarily) missing is a better manual, but more on that later.

FILTERiT4, has the same set of tools as version 3.

New from within Illustrators menus with FILTERiT4 include both Filter (menu) -> FILTERiT4 ->3D Transform, and Filter (menu) -> FILTERiT4 ->Fractalize. And, what makes no sense whatsoever, a repeat of the Fractalize selection via Effects (menu) -> FILTERiT4 ->Fractalize.

One of the new additions within the tool selections of FILTERiT4 is the Trace function. Below are two examples, one using the Wave Tool as seen below right and below left is a sample of the Trace function using the Warp tool.

What is not visible in the above drop-down Wave tool menu above (center) is that the Trace feature was set to 5 repeats. I colored the inside of each of the five versions so that it can be more easily seen. What the Trace option provides is like a "Tween" from the original shape to the final result with options as to how close the lines are in relation to the beginning and/or end. In that regard, the Trace feature is similar to the Live Trail option, but provides the trails for the various shapes from the Tools Palette. What you do with them is up to your knowledge and abilities with Illustrator. For example, by controlling the transparency and the stroke, one can focus the viewer to a specific layer (such as above left). Using Illustrator's ability to break the various trances into layers, one can import the layers into ImageReady and easily create animated gifs of shapes transmogrifying.

What the Trace function needs is an option for stacking order of layers. That is, when running the option, one should be able to choose whether the original ends up on the bottom or the top of the traced layers.

The Trace function also demonstrates a wishlist item for Illustrator: In Photoshop, if you have text or something highlighted, you can make the highlighted indication disappear by typing Command-h (for hide). The text/object will still be highlighted, but it will appear normal. That feature is not available in Illustrator and when using features such as the this demonstrates its usefulness. As can be seen to the right, when you perform a "tool" action on an item with the Trace feature, it is essentially impossible to see what you created until you click off to the side to remove the objects handles. Fortunately, Illustrator has many undo levels.

The two all new features are the 3D Transform and (the twice presented) Fractalize.

3D Transform is a rather sophisticated tool for taking flat images and turning them into 3-dimensional objects. The object can be altered by either Simple Rotation, Twist, Arc, Screw, Twirl, Wave (H/V), Wave (Z), Wave (Radial), Sphere, Torus (Donut), Spiral, and Cylinder/Cone. Below is an example of what took place by taking the checkerboard and running it through the 3D Transform Spiral tool. On the right is a 40% (size) sample of the results.

Fractalize takes the selected object and breaks it up into fractals. You control such aspects as sharp/rounded corners, number of iterations, angles, etc.

As its predecessor, FILTERiT4 provides a wealth of object manipulation tools for Illustrator. But, like its predecessor, the current help information is phenomenally inadequate. This time they do provide a pdf in addition to the online help file available from within each tool palette. Unfortunately, the information in the pdf is word-for-word what is in the online help and this is not adequate to begin with.

In truth, FILTERiT4 is a program you do need to play with to learn its idiosyncracies. However, many of selections are not something you can hack through without missing many of the plug-in's opportunities. CValley plans on releasing a Windows version sometime in June and with the Windows version they plan on releasing a better manual. The manual will be available to all owners of the program once it's released, but it should have been available to all Mac owners when version 4 was released not when the Windows version was released.

I do have one other withlist/frustration with FILTERiT4: on one hand, all the Palettes brought up by selecting a Live Effects remain on the window when going back and forth between the Illustrator page and the Palette. However, all the Tools palettes disappear anytime you click on the document and you must select them from the tool palette to bring them back up again (and again) as you make selection choices. This gets old fast. It would be nice if these palettes stay up on the screen just as all other Illustrator palettes.

I also found some inconsistent bugs in regard to using both the 3D and Fractalize tools. Once an object was transformed via the tool, Illustrator often didn't work correctly once one re-selected the tool originally used for an effect. That is, (for example) if you selected the rectangle tool and made a 3D effect on the rectangle, and then re-selected the rectangle tool, rather than being able to marquee a rectangle, I was limited to only typing in the dimensions of the desired rectangle.

I would like to give FILTERiT4 a stronger recommendation, but I place a strong value to good documentation. This is not a new issue as I had the same criticism for the last version. And, as I do not expect a 3rd party book to ever be written for a plug-in, it behoves a program's creators to provide adequate documentation to begin with.

All that notwithstanding, I do believe that FILTERiT4 does provide an excellent range of wonderful features for Adobe Illustrator. If you are willing to assume that documentation to come (currently sight unseen) will be good and/or are willing to play and/or hack your way through the various options within each tool, than by all means get FILTERiT4. I also expect the problems (bugs) I was having to be resolved sooner or later.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.