I’m a huge fan of several Alien Skin Photoshop plug-ins, including BlowUp, which I find myself using quite often.

Eye Candy 7, the new version of its graphic design effects plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Eye Candy 7 renders realistic effects that are difficult or impossible to achieve in Photoshop alone, such as Fire, Chrome, Perspective Shadows, and more.

Rather than write a standard review, I decided to make it simple and just show you eight reasons I love the latest version of Eye Candy.

Creating perspective shadows is a pain in the ass to do manually

Not only can you add regular shadows, floating shadows, and cast shadows; but creating perspective shadows with subtle fades is dead simple.

Sometimes, the sky just needs more clouds

Sometimes the sky in your photo is dreary and cloudless. Adding various types of clouds, from wispy to fluffy, is easy.

Lightning in a bottle… or your newly-clouded sky

It’s not often you need to add lightning to a beautiful night shot, but you can create the perfect storm with the lightning filter.

Where there is smoke, there is fire

I don’t often add smoke or fire, but Eye Candy 7 offers plenty of control for the inner-arsonist.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s… flying across your screen

Adding motion trails can be impossible to do manually. Eye Candy 7 makes it easy, including fading, perspective fade, and more.

Chrome, and fur, and marble. Oh-my!

Eye Candy 7 offers a plethora of textures you can apply with a single click, and customize till you’re chrome in the face.

Visual inspiration

Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you see it. Eye Candy makes exploring the filter set a visual affair.

Keeping it real. Simple.

Every filter in Eye Candy 7 is simple to customize, including a preview window so you know when you have your settings just right.

Eye Candy 7 is a plug-in and requires Adobe Photoshop CS5 or later, or Photoshop Elements 10 or later, running Mac OS X 10.7 or later. You can buy Eye Candy 7 through Alien Skin for $199 USD. Owners of any previous version of Eye Candy may upgrade for $99 USD. Free upgrades will be automatically sent to everyone who purchased Eye Candy 6 directly from Alien Skin Software in September 2012 or later.

If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser, it’s a bit more difficult. That’s because Google includes Flash as part of the browser itself. Thankfully, they’ve included it as a plug-in which can be turned off.

Type about:plugins in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter. A list of the plug-ins you have installed is displayed. Note that these are plug-ins, not extensions you install from the Chrome Store. Find the Adobe Flash Player plugin in the list and tick the Disable checkbox. After restarting Chrome, Flash will be off.

The downside is that Flash will be re-enabled the next time Google updates Chrome, which is quite often. You can download Flash blocker extensions, but I prefer to completely remove it and save myself the overhead of having yet another extension installed.

Blow Up 3's simple interface offers a very Mac-like simplicity

Blow Up 3 focuses on simplicity, as evidenced by a quick look at the interface of the Photoshop plug-in. A large preview window, and an input area with just a few controls are all that is necessary to enlarge your images with stunning results (see image later in this article).

The controls area is broken-up into three tabs, Crop & Resize, Crop, and Stretch. For designers, the Crop tab is probably all you’ll ever need, though being able to crop and stretch right inside the plug-in is a nice touch.

As you can see in the image above, the controls are simple. You enter in the size and resolution you want your image to be, and adjust the sharpen and grain amounts to your liking – a process made easy by the large preview window.

Blow Up 3 keeps photos amazingly clear during enlargement, leaving computer artifacts you normally get with a standard Photoshop enlargement behind. And Blow Up 3 is fast. Very fast!

Photoshop (left) vs. Blow Up 3 (right) on a 345% enlargement

I’ve been using Blow Up for years, and the results always seem to get better with each upgrade. In my test image above, my original image was approximately 3×4 inches. I used Blow Up 3 to enlarge it to approximately 10×12 inches. The printout on a high-end Epson was quite beautiful, even when viewed at an arm’s length.

As you can see in the image above, the normal Photoshop enlargement on the left introduces jagged edges around the eyes, hair, nose, mouth, and the edge of the face. Blow Up 3 on the right sharpens those areas easily, and produced stunning results.

Blow Up 3 offers full CMYK support, works with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and costs $199. While the price may seem high at first; designers and photographers who frequently work with large sized projects will find it a very small price to pay. A demo is available.

Snap Art 3 is definitely made for photographers, but designers can make use of it as well. It’s easy to use, highly flexible, and at $199 it’s affordable for what it does. Not only do the multitude of effects work on photos, but you can apply Snap Art filters to videos imported into Adobe Photoshop Extended as well.

Snap Art turns your images into works of art

I won’t bother to go into all the filters and features, you can check them out on the Snap Art examples page. But know that Snap Art now offers a Detail Mask feature that allows you to adjust the details in specific areas of your images. Very slick! All of Snap Art’s oil paint, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, comic art, and dozens of other filters, offer non-destructive editing. And experimenting is easy with the large preview window.

Snap Art 3 works with Photoshop CS4 or later, Lightroom 2 or later, and Photoshop Elements 8 or later, on a Mac running OS X 10.5 or newer, including in 64-bit mode. A downloadable demo of Snap Art 3 is available.

Exposure brings all of the creative tools of film photography to the world of digital, such as discontinued films, dark room tricks, and lo-fi camera quirks. New in version 3 are vintage looks like Technicolor movie film and old Kodachrome that are distressed with dust, scratches, and vignettes to complete the illusion of age. Lo-Fi cameras like Holga and Lomo are simulated with lens blur, warped vignettes, and funky colors from cross processing.

Exposure 3's infrared simulation provides an ethereal glow

The most significant new features in Exposure 3 are:

• 64-bit support for Photoshop CS5 on both Macintosh and Windows
• Tight Lightroom® integration that does not require Photoshop
• Aging effects and vintage films such as Technicolor and old Kodachrome
• Simulation of Lo-Fi toy camera photography
• Hundreds of new settings in all categories, including more films, color toning, and aging
• User interface improvements such as a much faster preview and hover help

Exposure 3's Lo-Fi toy camera effects have been greatly expanded

Exposure 3 sells for $249. Owners of any version of Exposure may upgrade for $99. Online or physical delivery is available through the Alien Skin website. Free upgrades will be automatically sent to purchasers of Exposure 2 who purchased in April 2010 or later. Exposure 3 works with Photoshop CS3 or later, Lightroom 2 or later, and Photoshop Elements 7 or later.