The Plugin Site has just announced Version 2 of ElementsXXL, which adds up to 230 features to Photoshop Elements for Windows that were previously only available in Photoshop. It lets you process 16-bit images with the help of smart filters and layers, use up to 29 additional tools with 16-bit images, supports 260 third party smart filters, offers five new tools (Pen, Puppet Warp, Mixer Brush, Ruler, Slice & Slice Select), includes a new Paths panel for creating and editing paths, allows slicing and saving an image as a web page, provides a improved Shadows/Highlights filter with seven new options, a new Colour Range feature for creating selections based on colours and tones, a Chromatic Aberration Removal filter, a Colour Match filter and a Save Recovery Information feature for restoring documents after a crash - among many other new features. ElementsXXL 2 requires Adobe Photoshop Elements for Windows and retails for $49.95. A version for MacOS X is under development.

The Plugin Site Press Release

ElementsXXL 2 Extends Photoshop Elements with 230 New Features

The Plugin Site (www.ThePluginSite.com) is pleased to announce Version 2 of ElementsXXL, which adds up to 230 powerful features to Photoshop Elements for Windows that were previously only available in Photoshop. These features are included as new menu items, icons, buttons, key shortcuts and dialogs, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface of Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL bridges a large part of the gap between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop and greatly enhances the image editing experience in Photoshop Elements.

New in Version 2

ElementsXXL 2 provides 100 new features for Photoshop Elements. It lets you process 16-bit images with the help of smart filters and layers, use up to 29 additional tools with 16-bit images, supports 260 third party smart filters, offers five new tools (Pen, Puppet Warp, Mixer Brush, Ruler, Slice & Slice Select), includes a new Paths panel for creating and editing paths, allows slicing and saving an image as a web page, provides a improved Shadows/Highlights filter with seven new options, a new Color Range feature for creating selections based on colors and tones, a Chromatic Aberration Removal filter, a Color Match filter and a Save Recovery Information feature for restoring documents after a crash - among many other new features.

Feature Overview

ElementsXXL adds many new and extremely useful features to Photoshop Elements. With ElementsXXL it is possible to work with actions, scripts, smart objects, smart filters, layer groups, image channels, quick masks, vector masks and layer masks in Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL provides up to 12 new filters and 7 new adjustment layers, e.g. Curves, Exposure, Vibrance, Color Balance, Channel Mixer, Black & White, Selective Color, Chromatic Aberration Removal and Color Match. It also offers five new tools called Pen, Puppet Warp, Mixer Brush, Ruler, Slice and Slice Select.

The new Auto-Align/Auto-Blend Layers features let you recompose portraits, create panoramas and increase the depth of macro shots. A new Soft Proof option shows how an image looks on a certain device or printer. The new Paths panel allows creating and editing vector paths and the new Slice features let you turn a Photoshop Elements document into a web page. ElementsXXL also extends the Shadows/Highlights filter with 7 new options and supplies a Color Range feature for creating selections based on colors and tones. Furthermore, there are new text layer features, a Fill Opacity option, Fade and Trim commands, custom pixel aspect ratio and many other possibilities.

Extending the Photoshop Elements UI

ElementsXXL supplies 210-230 new features to Photoshop Elements 6-12 and still 90-130 features to older versions of Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL extends the menus of Elements with a lot of menu items and sub menus that can be found in Photoshop.

It also adds various icons and drop-down buttons to the Layers panel, control bar and tool bar in Photoshop Elements 8-12. Moreover, it provides two dozen key shortcuts known from Photoshop. The ElementsXXL Preference dialog offers features that are only available in Photoshop, e.g. Save Recovery Information, Non-Linear History, Log History to Metadata and Auto-Update All Documents. There is also an option to highlight all ElementsXXL features with a light blue background, so that the user immediately sees which menu items and controls are supplied by ElementsXXL.

Enhanced 16-bit Image Editing

ElementsXXL's Render features provides a workaround for the missing layer support for 16-bit images in Photoshop Elements. They let you convert a 16-bit image to a special 8-bit document (with embedded 16-bit data), apply smart filters and add layers, and finally render everything to a new 16-bit image.

ElementsXXL also enhances 16-bit image processing with new features. It allows you to switch between 8-bit and 16-bit mode as well as use up to 29 more tools with 16-bit images. The Color Range feature and Quick Mask Mode of ElementsXXL enable sophisticated masking for 16-bit images. They allows create a selection based on certain colors and tones and modifying it with the help of all available filters and tools. Additionally the channels of an RGB image can be edited individually and used for masking. The Curves, Channel Mixer, Fade and Apply Image filters provide additional value for 16-bit image editing.

What Makes ElementsXXL So Special

ElementsXXL fully integrates into the user interface of Photoshop Elements, so it feels like an upgrade to Photoshop Elements and not like a plugin. Other products that extend Photoshop Elements consist of simple actions or are limited to a dialog that blocks the user interface. So they are far less efficient, easy to use and flexible than ElementsXXL.

There is no other product for Photoshop Elements that adds new Layers panels features, lets you run Photoshop actions and scripts directly, lets you apply smart filters from the Filter menu, offers support for so many smart filters, adds key shortcuts, offers Fade, Color Range and Puppet Warp features, converts 8-bit images to 16-bit, allows processing 16-bit images with smart filters and layers, offers 29 additional tools for retouching 16-bit images and lets you edit new types of adjustment layer.

Availability & System Requirements

ElementsXXL 2 requires Adobe Photoshop Elements for Windows. A version for MacOS X is under development. ElementsXXL supports all localized versions of Photoshop Elements, but a few dialog elements of ElementsXXL are only available in English and German language. ElementsXXL 2 costs USD 49.95 (Academic/educational license: USD 29.95). A 14-day-trial version can be downloaded athttp://thepluginsite.com/products/elementsxxl/

Company Info

The Plugin Site is located in Nuremberg, Germany, and mainly develops image processing software. We created the ColorWasher, FocalBlade, LightMachine, B/W Styler, ContrastMaster, NoiseControl, ColorStyler, PhotoFreebies, FilterHub, MetaRaw  Plugin Galaxy, Plugin Commander and HyperTyle products. In the past we co-produced Alpha Magic with Pinnacle Systems and co-developed FilterMeister with AFH Systems.

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