We've been big fans of Alien Skin products for some time, now they drop a little eye candy in to blow us away... "Eye Candy" gives a new name, a new look, and some hearty new features to BlackBox the four-star filter set from Alien Skin Software, Macintosh and Windows users have been loving for some time! This new incarnation of an already fantastic product sets new records. Eye Candy replaces and improves upon The Black Box with a total of 10 new filters added to the existing 10 filters, plus add more parameters and speed improvements, to boot! Some of the 10 new filters are Fire, Chrome, Antimatter, Vibrate and Warpo . (At left we see Fur, Water Drops, Smoke, and Polygons, four of the new filters in Eye Candy.) Eye Candy has the most advanced previewing capabilities of any Photoshop filter set. The previews in Eye Candy 3.0 are resizable and zoomable, with a thumbnail tool to instantaneously move the preview to any part of the original image. No other filter set provides all three capabilities of resizable previews, zooming, and a thumbnail. Users are able to save and restore settings for each filter for superb controll of consistency. If you don't want to mess around, the presets give more than enough good options to create some rather stunning effects. The Water Drops knocked us out -- easily handling an operation that before took dozens of painstaking steps -- in a single click... and did it effortlessly. "The enhanced previewing makes Eye Candy 3.0 easier to use than ever," said Jeff Butterworth, President of Alien Skin Software. "Making our filters simpler to experiment with is just part of our overall goal of making advanced special effects easy for anyone to make quickly." Now you ask: "Why the name change?" It seems there is a trademark confusion with another company, so being nice guys, Alien Skin simply changed the name. The suggested retail price on this product is $199, and if you charge the way some of these photoshoppers do, you'll make that back in the first half hour! For us po folk, upgrades are nicely priced at $49 -- only directly from Alien Skin Software. The only real problem is that you'll have to wait for another month (January 7th) when the product rolls out in time for Macworld San Francisco! Don't miss: * Even more cool stuff with Eye Candy Eye Candy -- DT&G FIVE STAR RATING Price: $199 (list). Alien Skin Software, Raleigh, NC -- 919-832-4124 -- www.alienskin.com/ or just contact our good friend Michael Pilmer at michaelp@alienskin.com A chat with Michael Pilmer previously published in DT&G. Photoshop Tips & Tricks . . | . . The Design & Publishing Center Thank you for visiting the Photoshop Wing in The Design & Publishing Center , at http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/ Contact The Design Center design team for web page critique, makeover clinics, or website design, production and hosting. Copyright 1996, The Design & Publishing Center, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Photoshop is a registered trademark for Adobe Systems, Inc. Mountain View, CA. BlackBox is a registered trademark for AlienSkin Software