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Programs by AutoFXDreamSuite (v. 1.1.8, Effects Series I & II)
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The DreamSuite Group (Series I, Series II, and Gel) are plugins for Photoshop which show up in the Filter Menu, or can also be used as a separate, stand-a-lone program. There is little in DreamSuite that you can't do directly with Photoshop, but DreamSuite lets you do it much easier. In fact, many of the abilities you wouldn't want to do in Photoshop even if you could as it wouldn't be worth the time required to perform the variation. In DreamSuite it's mostly a piece of cake.
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While many features of DreamSuite have improved over the past year, the modules of DreamSuite Series One have remained the same. Series Two has only increased the variations available to the user.
Series One has more variation in type than Series Two. For example, Series One has modules like Metal which, like Gel (see below), is intended for use on objects and/or text, not photographic images. All the modules in Series Two are for photographic images.
Either way, most of the modules have many Presets variations. As can be seen in the image of the Preset above (two images up), the provided premade Presets can exhibit an extensive range. Once having selected any given Preset, one has an enourmous number of possible things to fiddle with. For example, for the Tile module (presets are shown above) has almost 60 different things you can tweak, push, pull, and vary to your hearts content. Regretably, the manual doesn't do much of anything to describe what any given items will do and/or how to use/tweak for any given effect.
One of the other frustrations I had with the tweaking was the lack of any "undo" (Command-z). Thus, if you perform a tweak and don't care for the result (and don't remember the specific setting prior to your tweak), you have essentially no option but to close the image and start from the beginning.
When I reviewed DreamSuite Series One (about a year ago), despite the capabilities of the program, I was very frustrated. I was impressed with what the program could do, but I felt that getting there was very painful. At that time I laid out the following wishlist for DreamSuite:
| My complaint in previous version | The status in this version |
| 1) Return to a standard Mac interface. | I talked to some of the people at AutoFX, and they like the interface. What can I say, some people like liver and onions. |
| 2) Work on speeding up the program. Again, I'm not necessarily expecting a faster rendering of the results of any given selection, but the program seems to lumber in areas where it shouldn't. | The program is faster--much faster. But it still isn't a speed demon. If you have a high resolution image, be prepared to have a magazine on your lap if the effect you have chosen is complex. One of the ways AutoFX has speeded up the program is to provide a Proxy Preview (accessible via the Preferences) that acts sort of like an alias of the image and when the program is acting upon the Proxy, speeds up the process. The problem is that the result of the Proxy may differ from the result of the real image. The only way around this is to turn off the Proxy and let the program run much slower. |
| 3) Add an undo. I shouldn't have to quit a program if I don't like what it just did. | They do provide a "Revert," but all that does is bring back the item to the point when you first opened that preset. If you made several tweaks and then overdid a tweak, (and you didn't use a memory dot), all your tweaks are gone. If you click on the "Cancel" option, the program quits you back to Photoshop. |
| 4) 2 does not follow 19 | The problem here was that the program used to refer to the presets by numbers, and the numbering was dumb (...19, 2, 20 21, ...). Now the program displays the Presets the proper way--via an image of the preset. (See Presets above.) |
| 5) Give me a clue as to what (for example) "Crease 21" will do within the program--I shouldn't have to be following along with a PDF to see simple things like preset settings. | This was resolved by #4 above. |
| 6) Be friendlier to other running programs. | Nope, AutoFX only makes alpha programs. AutoFX programs require lots and lots of RAM, and they do not play nice. Sadly, the programs are not set to recognize if your program has lots and lots and lots of RAM and play a bit more friendly. |
| 7) Batch processing. | Nope. AutoFX isn't even Applescript friendly. |
DreamSuite Gel is not meant to be used with Photographs. Rather, it should be used with objects and/or text created within Photoshop. Anything you make must be rasterized prior to a Gel action (Gel reminds you of this when you try to invoke an action and does the rasterization for you if you click OK), so that means you should spell check prior to doing anything. But Gel is so fast and efficient, even if you have to go back and correct things, it just takes a moment to recreate the effect. I performed actions on the shape and the text in less than a minute for both.
Gel is slick, fast, and efficient and does a good job with very little effort.
I do have a strong love/hate relationship with the DreamSuite series. I have tremendous admiration for what it can do, but I have an equal amount of frustration for how it is implemented. Hopefully some of my wishes will be dealt with in future versions of the program (as some of them already have been by this version). If AutoFX does not wish to change the interface, I can live with liver and onions, but undo and batch mode are absolute musts at this point.
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DreamSuite (v. 1.1.8, Effects Series I & II)
DreamSuite Gel
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