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Beta Update 1.005 – Advanced Error Handling, New Features and More

November 17, 2006

Alexandria, VA, USA (November 17, 2006) – Filter Forge, Inc. today released the update 1.005 to the beta version of its flagship software, Filter Forge, a Photoshop plugin that allows users to create their own filters. This update focuses on eliminating the remaining bugs and adds several new features.

The focus of this update is a new error handling mechanism which provides extended information about errors, including their location in the code. This is particularly helpful for detecting the gravest type of bugs – the Access Violation errors which used to be very hard to track due to lack of information. The extended debug data is included into Filter Forge automatic bug reports.

Notable new features include the MultiBlend component which can blend up to 7 color or image layers, and an option to show elapsed rendering time. The website now has an option to let the users autosubscribe to comments on their own filters – this can be enabled in the Subscriptions area of the user profile.

How to update: To download and install the update 1.005, select Tools > Updates from the Filter Forge main menu. The update preserves all downloaded and user-created filters, as well as user settings and the license key. Users who do not want to use the built-in update feature can download and install the update manually from http://www.filterforge.com/download/

About Filter Forge: first publicly released in May 2006, Filter Forge is a high-end plugin for Adobe® Photoshop® allowing computer artists to build their own filters – seamless textures, visual effects, distortions, patterns, backgrounds, frames and more. The key features of Filter Forge include a visual filter editor and a free online library of user-created filters to which anyone can contribute. Filter Forge is currently in the public beta testing stage. Filter Forge is the flagship product of Filter Forge, Inc., a one-product company dedicated solely to making Filter Forge a premier product. For more information, visit http://www.filterforge.com

List of Updates, Additions and Fixes

New Features:

• Automatic bug reports now include extended debugging information.
• A MultiBlend component has been added to the Processing category.
• An option has been added to Tools > Options > Rendering to show elapsed rendering time.
• Download counts for the filters are now updated once a day.
• A Preview Size option has been added to the right-click menu in the main window.
• The user profile on the website now has an option to let the users automatically subscribe to comments on their own filters.

Bug Fixes:

• Preset thumbnails are now rendered correctly when the preset is updated.
• The .TIFF files are now saved with correct transparency.
• The Minimum Level and Maximum Level components now work correctly in the plugin version of Filter Forge.
• The Vivid Light mode of the Blend component now uses a correct algorithm.
• Fixed an Access Violation error that occurred during opening a filter from its web page.
• Fixed a bug in the built-in update feature that prevented the downloaded update from launching correctly.
• Fixed a hangup that occurred when Filter Forge rendering was cancelled (plugin version only).
• Fixed a bug in the Threshold component that caused it to ignore one of its color inputs in certain cases.
• Fixed a minor bug in the Levels component that caused it to 'black out' when the Black Point was set to 100.
• Fixed a minor precision loss in all components that use the contrast adjustment (Brightness/Contrast, all Noise components, High Pass, Noise Gradient, and Blend 1.003 with Vivid Light mode).
• Fixed a bug in the anti-aliasing code that caused it to skip edge pixels in certain cases.

Miscellaneous:

• The input 'Pavements' of the Pavements component has been renamed to 'Pavement'.
• The libpng library (.PNG file format support) has been upgraded to version 1.2.12.

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