I know that there are
two ways to download filters from the Filter Forge (FF) Filters Library:
1 - Using the
OL (Online Library) which is in the FF website.
2 - Using the
OLIFF (Obsolete Library Inside Filter Forge)
I just want to list the Advantages and Disadvantages I have found using the OL and OLIFF Filters Library and which one is better and gives the best experience.
ACTIVATING AND USING OLIFF
By default is NOT activated, and you have to go to inside FF to:
Tools --> Options ---> Online and choose "Library browser obsolete" and click OK
Then to be able to enter to this FF Browser you go to the main window of FF and look in the top right corner wh ere is put "Download more filters" and when cliking on this it will appear.
Then if what you need to download is very new filter, you have to configure it to see "new filters first" so it appears in the first positions.
Here you have to choose all the filters you want and then click on "download" button on the bottom right corner.
ADVANTAGES OF OLIFF vs DISADVANTAGES OF OL
1 - If you use the 'OLIFF' method of downloading , you can see all the filters you have downloaded already as they will have a small 'v' in bottom right corner of the thumbnail preview. In the OL there is no way to see which ones you have downloaded already and this is a bad thing.
2 - IN OLIFF you can have filters thumbnails preview shown in a big screen with rows of thumbnails of the filters, that contains much more previews than in the OL and fills all your available screen space, which is very good. The size of the thumbnails are the same in both.
3 - You have the option to HIDE all the filters that you have already downloaded so you are shown ONLY those filter that you still do not have downloaded to FF and be able to discover new filter gems. In OL you can´t do it.
4 - The preset thumbnails preview are much bigger in OLIFF than in OL.
5 - The best and probably most useful is the ability to Mass or Batch download a group of choosen filters instead of downloading one by one as in the OL, which saves a lot of time and is much easier to download and select the filters you want. In OL you must search and open the filter page for each one and download one by one going to each one of the filters pages.
ADVANTAGES OF OL vs DISADVANTAGES OF OLIFF
1 - In the OL you have preview image thumbnails for all the presets available of that filter and in OLIFF you have only one preview window wh ere is shown all, and the presets are only shown as numbers without any kind of preview image and have to click on each one to see them (or hit the space bar on keyboard)
2 - The preset thumbnails in the OL are already rendered and instantly available, in the OLIFF all the presets previews MUST be rendered in the moment you want to see them and takes some time to do it, so is much slower to preview that in OL.
3 - The preview image of the filter is MUCH BIGGER and MORE DETAILED in the OL and you can see much better what does the filter look like and the effect it makes, because in the OMIF the preview image of the filter is MUCH SMALLER.
4 - The large preview of filter in OL is instant and already rendered and in the OLIFF the much smaller preview must be rendered each time is choosen and is much slower compared to the instant website preview, even in FF 3.0.
5 - In the online FF Filters Library you can search by keywors, filter by theme and topics and select how to view the filters, and in the included "obsolete" library inside FF you can´t do it in the same way, and when going to search it does not work so well, and most of the times, at least for me it does not work search in OLIFF.
6 - In the OL you can see the Filters list of FEATURED, RECENT, POPULAR and so you chose how to see the filters, and in OMIF there is NONE of these choices. Well is supossed to be available a kind of "popular" or "recent" built in OLIFF but it does not work, at least for me. Both OL and OMIF have ALL FILTERS BY CATEGORY menu to choose.
7 - The OL Browser can use the Zoom feature to enlarge the previews and preset thumbnails and in OLIFF has fixed size always.
8 - In the website filter page OL you can see the filter controls list, in OLIFF you can´t because what is included is only the "about" information included inside the filter.
9 - OL is loaded instantly, just the time it takes to load the page of the file, the OLIFF takes much more time to load, and I agree that is because it has much more information to load.
| Quote |
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| ONE BIG AND IMPORTANT QUESTION |
Wouldn´t be MUCH better that the OLIFF could have all the preset and filter previews already rendered and instant available as in OL?
Perhaps you could say that this would make Filter Forge software bigger, as they should be included inside FF, but this is not all true, because after installing FF in your computer the OLIFF could connect to the FF website and download all the preset and preview of all the filters and keep them inside the FF folder to use them and it would not take much as I think that they are very small files.
IF OLIFF could have instant previews and preset as it happens in OL, without having to render them, it woud be much better and much faster
Also if the preview window of OLIFF could be resizable or fixed bigger and could fit the big filter main preview of each filter as seen in OL
