Suggestion for the Marketing Department

Here was my first reply to him:

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You can download a 30 day evaluation copy of Filter Forge and then download this filter to generate riveted metal with lots of controllable variations.

His reply to me:

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Fred thank you for that as well but I am working in corel.

Me to him:

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Filter Forge is a self contained program and can also be used as a plugin with either Photoshop or Corel Photopaint. Use it to generate the texture you want, then tile it or make a fill pattern out of it in Corel and you have what you need. The particular filter I linked to is very versatile and will allow control over the color of the metal and the size and position of the rivets. You have nothing to lose but a few minutes by downloading it and trying it out for the 30 day free trial.

He has now posted a second version he made following my suggestion and another he put together with a texture fill from a free site. The consensus is that Filter Forge did by far the best job.

My point is that even at my suggestion he thought I had steered him wrong because he is not a Photoshop user. I had to make a fuller explanation to him just to get him to try my suggestion. Maybe someone should take another look at the home page copy and make it clear that Photoshop is not required to use Filter Forge.

Here's the sample he made with Filter Forge.

hi fred,

great point you make there. FF inc. is loaded with some exceptional technical people, but i think they're lacking in administrative help. vlad is most likely overloaded as a result. i've seen this in other aspects of their web pages, as in, things arent always that easy to find on the web pages.

Good point there. I thought Filter forge was just for Photoshop until I read what other programs it supported. Would be better if they just had a link to that page or something, then people can check to see if the software they use is listed. Not everyone goes looking for that information, specially if it states on the home page that it is for a particular software.

Was this page the host compatibilities I got the list from http://www.filterforge.com/download/hosts.html

The Home page says:

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Filter Forge A plugin for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to build your own filters.

Building your own filters is tech talk. What if i don't know what a filter is?

It then continues on to say:

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On the surface, Filter Forge is just a Photoshop plugin, a pack of filters that generate textures, create visual effects, enhance photos, process images. However, there are 3 things that make Filter Forge unique:

You have to go all the way to near the bottom of the Features page to find out that:

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Standalone Version Filter Forge can work as a Photoshop plugin or a standalone application. Actually, the plugin part of Filter Forge is tiny – all it does is sending and retrieving the images. All processing is done within the main application.

From "Actually" on, the copy has no sales value to a prospective licensee. I don't have any reason to care that it is tiny. I just want to be able to do those cool images you show on the home page.

If I were writing the copy to describe FF, I would describe it as:

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A standalone application that is also a plugin for Photoshop, Corel Photopaint and other image editing applications that support plugins.

I would then expand and point out that FF can be used to create textures or to add special effects to existing images.

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There were periods during the FF development when the phrase above felt like an understatement

i can only imagine. and throw in a bunch of screaming beta testers on top just for good measure