Halftone™ 2.2 released
VanDerLee™ released version 2.2 of Halftone which adds many exciting new features. Most notably are the new "source modes" and "grid layout" features. The addition of new source modes allow you to use a gradient, spotlight or solid source besides the familiar source image mode. These new source modes safe you the time by sparing you the trouble of creating these common source images yourself and also provides a means of quickly previewing the range of sizes set. Prior to this release, Halftone grids were always aligned to square grids. Version 2.2 provides two new grid layouts; triangle and hexagon. The triangle grid layout in particular is an invaluable addition to the toolset.
The latest version of Halftone also improves on support for custom shapes. Whereas in the past you were limited to only specific types of Windows™ bitmap (BMP) images for custom shapes, Halftone now supports many different file formats. All the mayor file formats such as BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, Photoshop™ PSD and Paint Shop Pro PSP, TIFF and Targa are supported. Halftone also improves on it's handling of custom shapes with improved performance and quality and a new feature that lets you mirror the custom shapes either all or individually in a number of ways. The previous release of Halftone introduced opacity for dot shapes (both built-in and custom). Version 2.2 improves upon this by adding an option to automatically adjust the size of dots to compensate for loss of brightness due to shape opacity.
Besides these big changes, Halftone also includes plenty of small improvements. Most visibly is the redesigned user interface, which now puts all placement controls on their own tab and a new settings section on the options tab. New shortcut keys let the user navigate these tabs with the keyboard and provide quick access to the most common features. The status bar now provides more detailed and precise information. A fit-to-zoom button helps with the preview and can be automatically enabled as an option. As always there are minor improvements to performance and stability and to top it all of Halftone includes over 40 new useful custom shapes that come installed with the plug-in.
If you want to learn more about Halftone, you can visit http://halftone.vanderlee.com or e-mail VanDerLee at contact@vanderlee.com. For further contact information, visit www.vanderlee.com.
VanDerLee has been in the computer graphics industry since 1997 and is a devoted to improving the workflow of graphic professional and artist with tools that allow them to work quickly and with the best quality every single time. For nearly a decade, VanDerLee has supported the Photoshop and computer graphics community at large, with a ever-improving library of both free and commercial plug-ins and is part of multiple groups dedicated to improving the tools of the trade for the computer graphics industry.