# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Software Discussion >  Eye-Candy and the Gimp

## RobA

I just discovered that there is a free "special edition" eye-candy version 3.1 that was released by Alien Skin a while back.  I found it here:  http://www.geocities.com/why2kspace/

It runs fine with gimp using the PSPI (photoshop plugin extension)!

On top of that, I also found PSPI compiled against Wine: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/pspi.html

And have tested it on my Ubuntu system.  I installed wine from the package manager, installed the PSPI plugin from that link, and installed eye-candy 3 from the first link.

And have it working (mostly) fine.  There are still a few oddities when dealing with some transparent features, but if you are religious about things being open source and choose linux for other reasons, this give another tool in the arsenal!

-Rob A>

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## Korash

There is a plugin for Gimp that emulates photoshop? On windows? does it add layer effects to Gimp? where does one get it? where is info on it? ect. ect. ect.......

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## RobA

> There is a plugin for Gimp that emulates photoshop? On windows? does it add layer effects to Gimp? where does one get it? where is info on it? ect. ect. ect.......


No, there is a plugin for gimp that lets you use many third party (8bf) photoshop plugins within gimp.  It is at the link provided.

-Rob A>

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## Korash

K, thanks will look into that

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## Karro

Wait wait, hold the phone.  There's a plugin that lets me use Photoshop 3rd party filters?

Yeah, maybe we still don't get those layer effects, but this remains quite cooly awesome!

 (I suspect that if GIMP is to ever really have layer effects, it's going to have to build this in from the ground up in a later major release, which I suspect will not be easy, and developers working for free can't be expected to do something that daunting very quickly.)

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## Steel General

There is a GIMP plug-in somewhere that approximates some (but not all) of the Photoshop layer effects. I messed around with it last year.

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## Karro

> There is a GIMP plug-in somewhere that approximates some (but not all) of the Photoshop layer effects. I messed around with it last year.



Yeah, I have it, but it is a little buggy, and doesn't work at all like the screenshots I've seen of layer effects going on in Photoshop.  I'm not complaining, mind; I've never used Photoshop (never had that kind of cash), so I don't really know what I'm missing, but some of the interface elements, from the screenshots, look very nice.

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## RobA

> I suspect that if GIMP is to ever really have layer effects, it's going to have to build this in from the ground up in a later major release, which I suspect will not be easy, and developers working for free can't be expected to do something that daunting very quickly.


The devel team's focus has been to port the gimp core over to GEGL. This will completely change the power of gimp. It will act like audio filters where they can be chained...in other words you could go "back" and change the amount of blur you applied back in the first step. So every single GEGL implemented filter would act much like layer effects do in PS. 

-Rob A>

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## Karro

> The devel team's focus has been to port the gimp core over to GEGL. This will completely change the power of gimp. It will act like audio filters where they can be chained...in other words you could go "back" and change the amount of blur you applied back in the first step. So every single GEGL implemented filter would act much like layer effects do in PS. 
> 
> -Rob A>


I read about the dev effort on GEGL, but didn't understand from what I read what the benefit was supposed to be.  I thought "I already have the ability to undo everything".  It wasn't made clear to me, in that regard, that I could undo them _out of order_ (if I read that right).  So... if I did something ten steps ago, and want to change that, but keep the following 9 things I did, this GEGL implementation will allow that?  That is pretty cool.  Thanks!

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## RobA

Exactly. 

Also, my understanding is that the GEGL filter stacks operate at high precision. So you would only get 8 bit quantization at the end of the stack, not at the intermediate steps. 

-Rob A>

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## Ascension

The Eye Candy filters for PS are great indeed.  I intentionally leave them out of my tuts cuz not everyone has them but they can do some very cool things; mostly for stuff other than maps.

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## ravells

All I can say is get it. Get it, if only for the 'jiggle' filter which I use all the time for making mountains.....

Get it.....download it....now.

In fact there's a few there I don't have the eyecandy bundle I already have....downloading them now!

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## Feralspirit

Ok, I'm sold. I want it, but I'm just a little confused about your instructions. What is Wine? Where do I find that? Ubuntu System? Please, can you give me specific instructions? I have not yet installed GURM, if that's an issue. I want it. Please help.

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## RobA

> Ok, I'm sold. I want it, but I'm just a little confused about your instructions. What is Wine? Where do I find that? Ubuntu System? Please, can you give me specific instructions? I have not yet installed GURM, if that's an issue. I want it. Please help.


Sorry, I sometimes get geek-happy. First tell me your operating system. 

-Rob A>

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## Feralspirit

Well, I took that as excitement. It got me excited too. I've heard Ravells rave about Alien Skin and Eye Candy before. 
I'm Using Windows XP. I've downlaoded the pspi already, and dropped it into scripts. I also have two .RPM files and three .gz files (from your second link) and the folder "eye-candy" (your first link). Guessing I need 1 empty folder (I have this in "my documents"), to drop all files and folder into , to designate path for pspi. That's as far as I've gotten. How (or where in GIMP) do I access these new effects? OR have I messed up somewhere?

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## RobA

You've messed up  :Wink: 

The pspi.exe file should go in the gimp plugin folder. 

On xp use:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourlogin\.gimp26\plugins\

You don't need anything else from there. 

Create a new directory wherever you want. Say C:\plugins\

Restart gimp. Under Filters you should see a new entry called photoshop settings (if I recall correctly). In there you need to add a new directory entry and point it to C:\plugins\ (or whatever you used above). the next time gimp starts, pspi will iterate all subdirectories of that one looking for photoshop '8bf' plugins. 

Run the eyecandy installer and pick (for example) C:\plugins\ec3\ as the install directory. 

Restart gimp and you should have a new eyecandy entry under Filters. 
You can use most ps plugins (like the flaming pear plugins or kai's power tools) by installing then into subdirectories of C:\plugins\

Hope that helps. 

-Rob A>

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## Feralspirit

Yep, that did the trick. Under filters I now have Eye Candy 3.1 and Eye Candy 4000 demo. I did get this though on starting-
pspi: EnumResourceNames(PIPL) failed for C:\Documents and Settings\K & R\PSPI\EyeCand3.8bf: The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file.
Not sure if it will hurt me in the end (I read something on your second link, I think, about an error message on start up), but would rather not have it, if you know what it is and how to fix. 
Either way, thanks a ton for your help!
_____________________________________

lol, I guess I spoke too soon. 
I have the directory, but it doesn't do anything. Doesnt even show up on my undo history that I've tried to do anything. (Under filters, I do have the option to repeat last though.)
Do you know what I've done wrong, or am I SOL?

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## RobA

If you get the EnumResourceNames(PIPL) message it won't work.

just restart gimp.  It only seems to happen on the first start after installing new plugins.   Not sure why.

-Rob A>

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## Korash

Thanks RobA. I had to run through the Eye Candy installer a couple of times before I got the error message, but the next time I started the Gimp, both versions of Eye Candy were in the filters. Before the message they weren't on the list no matter how many times I restarted Gimp.

Thanks again oh Gimpmaster  :Very Happy:

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## ravells

And now....feel the lurve of the 'Jiggle' filter!!!!

p.s. the 'fur' filter makes some pretty excellent ocean textures too.

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