I’m pleased to announce that the Pixel Bender Gallery plug-in for Photoshop CS5 is now available for download from Adobe Labs. Key points:
- It runs filters really, really fast on your graphics card (GPU)
- The plug-in is not one filter, but rather a harness into which you can drop Pixel Bender files (.PBK and .PBG)
- Pixel Bender also runs cross-platform in After Effects & Flash Player 10
- The filters people write for Flash will also work in Photoshop
In addition, the plug-in now includes a very cool Oil Paint filter that produces some painterly results (see this pair of screenshots), nicely complementing all the painting enhancements in Photoshop CS5.
The plug-in is essentially the same as the version that was available for CS4, but it has been revised for CS5 & 64-bit Mac compatibility. Here’s a one-minute demo movie that shows the plug-in in action. You can download additional filters from the Pixel Bender Exchange, discuss PB authoring in the user forum, and use the Pixel Bender Toolkit to create your own filters.
The only cool thing about PB is speed. It`s disappointing to see that the new version is the same as the old one.
Due to the pixel limit of 4096 you cannot even process the files of an entry level DSLR. Still no really useful filters, no tools, no flickpanning or birdseye view, no colormanagement, no presets, in fact nothing that makes it worth installing. Where`s the progress after nearly 2 years?
[Sorry you feel that way. Cocoa conversion sucked up an inordinate amount of effort. –J.]
Re “4096 pixel limit”
I have just upgraded my machine ASUS GTX 450 card 1gb Video RAM, 16gb system ram, Quad core i7 CPU, Win 7 64-bit)and can now run an image that is above 5000 px but below 5200 px in the long dimension (D3X image resampled). I’d really like to be able to run full size images. (CS5, latest patches, CS5 version of PB plug-in etc.)
I can’t find any documentation on “image size limits” with a web search.
Is this a “hard coded in software: limit or is it hardware (ie need a card with more video RAM or whatever)?
Thanks
Richard
The pixel limits are due to implementation limits of the GPUs and video card drivers. The Pixel Bender team is still attempting to work around those hardware/driver limits – it’s just a lot of work and takes time.
Chris, are these card/GPU specific, or does it apply to all cards?
Thanks
Richard James
The actual limitations are card/GPU specific. But I think they hard coded a 4K upper limit into PixelBender, because that was as high as GPUs went when it shipped.
Chris, thanks for your comment.
You refer to “4k”, based on my testing the limit seems to be 16megs, ie a 5000 x 3333 px file (16 bit) runs, a 5200×3466 (18 meg) does not. Also , I can run larger files if I convert to 8 bit… so it appears bit-depth is also involved in the “size” limit.
The key issue for me is that I just bought a new system that is supposed to be capable of processing D3x (24mp) images. The Graphics card lists that I can find end at the Gxx 3xx series, my card is a GTX 450. I need to determine if the
card is the problem rather than the software. You say both are limits. So, if the card exceeds the “by design” hardware limit I’m OK, it’s the software limit that is getting me. OTOH, if the card really is the problem, then I need to address that.
Do you know where I can find the hardware spec for the software?
Thanks.
Richard
Unfortunately, I don’t. PixelBender was done by a different group, and I don’t have all the details.
OK, but can you point me to someone who does?
Thanks.
Richard
The new PB Oil Filter is the best one button art / science I have ever seen. What does drive the 4096 pixel limitation? Is it planned or possible to overcome that limit in the future?
Great work / progress with PB for CS5.
As per john’s comment about cocoa conversion, thanks for the efforts to bring that to us, I am totally astonished and excited about the performance CS5 is churning out with my set up (Mac OS 10.6.3). I am also very satisfied with the updates and continued development being delivered since the initial CS5 release.(Config2, Pixel Bender, CameraRaw, Panels, Extensions, html5 kit for dreamweaver, etc). Full Steam Ahead Adobe – Thanks
That oil filter is interesting, but it crashes very,very often.
Stefan sorry to hear you are crashing so often. We have identified some issues with the Pixel Bender Plugin and hope to have an update out next week or the week following that. Stay tuned.
Unable to install PB do to “not having the appropriate permissions.”
I am in Windows 7, I am the administrator, and I have added PS CS5 and many plug-ins without a problem. Any ideas?
Just out of curiosity have you right clicked on the extension manager and run it as administrator? See: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbenderplugin/
You then should be able to install the PB extension.
I am having the same problem, and “run as admin” does’nt seem to be available. Probably because I am already logged on as admin.
“Run as admin” was available and it worked fine.
Does this paint filter works with flash as well?
is there a way to export photoshop built in filters into flash?
Hi John,
I am having trouble getting the oil paint filter to work consistently. It may work for a day or two, or only for a couple of tries and then all I get is a light/dark grey noise effect. The programme is used in Photoshop CS5 on an Intel iMac. To get it to work again I have to use Adobe Extension Manger CS5 to uninstall/reinstall as many times as it takes to get it working again which is very frustrating.
What is slightly puzzling is that when you look in the Pixel Bender Files folder, every Pixel Bender ‘filter’ has a .pbk file but not for ‘oilpaint’. There is none there even when the filter is working. How does the effect work, sometimes, if it doesn’t have a .pbk file? Is there any way I can get hold of one?
I have no problems with any of the other filters.
Kind regards,
Brian
I would also like to work with the oilPaint.pbk but cannot find it in the PBK folder for Photoshop. I want to move it to After Effects.
Dear Photoshoppers
I have a problem with the pixel bender Oilpainting
When i resize my image and then go to the oil Painting filter the
gpu mode is on
It’s very very slow When i move a slider it’s take about 1 minute to see the result You can Imagen that isn’t a good workflow
Below my systeminformation
Modelnaam: Mac Pro
Modelaanduiding: MacPro2,1
Processornaam: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processorsnelheid: 3 GHz
Aantal processors: 2
Totaal aantal cores: 8
L2-cache (per processor): 8 MB
Geheugen: 12 GB
Bussnelheid: 1,33 GHz
Modelnaam: Mac Pro
Modelaanduiding: MacPro2,1
Processornaam: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processorsnelheid: 3 GHz
Aantal processors: 2
Totaal aantal cores: 8
L2-cache (per processor): 8 MB
Geheugen: 12 GB
Bussnelheid: 1,33 GHz
and two NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:
Naam: NVDA,Display-B
Type: display
Besturingsbestand geïnstalleerd: Ja
Bus: PCI
Sleuf: Slot-1
Fabrikantcode: 0x10de
Apparaatcode: 0x0393
Fabrikantcode subsysteem: 0x0000
Subsysteemcode: 0x0010
ROM-revisie: 3008
Revisiecode: 0x00a1
Breedte koppeling: x16
Verbindingssnelheid: 2.5 GT/s
Who can help me
With friendly greetings Frans Paalman
SOMEONE, ANYONE- PLEASE HELP!!!! I am trying to install PB on my imac, and I keep getting an error message “You do not have the appropriate permission to perform this operation. Contact your system administrator to obtain permission” I am logged in as the administrator and have tried everything. Anything would help at this point I am ready to be medicated.
Hello! We are working with a museum in Belgium who’d like to have this effect on a physical installation in the museum for visitors to “masterpiece” themselves; ie take a snapshot with a camera and apply the filter. Is there any way to purchase the Oil Effect filter for use with Pixelbender for Flash? We need a quick reply but I could not find your contact information.
Thank you!
I cannot install Adobe Pixel Bender in cs5. I use windows 7. I can’t find anywhere/one to help me on this, it seems to be a problem when searching the net, but no solutions. i get the error notice “The Adobe PSCS5 Pixel Blender Plugin extension conflicts with the existing “Adobe PSCS5 Pixel Blender Plugin extension.” The installation have the same name do you want to replace it? yes or no. If I click yes I get this comment”The file ‘C/program file(x86)/adobe/adobePSCS5/plugin/filters/pixel bender.8f is in use by “pscs532’. please close ps5 32′ and try again. try again same error. click cancel and it trys to install and can’t. i know this is long, sorry, I’m so frustrated. do I need pixel bender and the tool kit and if so what order should they be ran in. PS is not opened during installation.
can anyone help with the about error notice?