Tags: Alien Skin, product reviews
Impact is the latest of the three new Eye Candy 5 Photoshop
filters by Alien Skin Software. I reviewed the other two sets at
the end of 2004 -
Nature and
Textures. These sets are upgrades of Eye Candy 4000 with the
addition of new filters. The new filters contained in Impact are:
Backlight, Brushed Metal, and Extrude. The other 7 upgraded filters
are: Bevel, Chrome, Glass, Gradient Glow, Motion Trail, Perspective
Shadow, and Super Star. Some of the improvements are brand new
looks, greater realism, and improved ease of use. For example, some
of the filters allow the effects to be output on a separate layer,
which can go under or over the image. There are over 200 presets
for frequently used effects; creating and saving new presets is
very easy. Impact works with CMYK as well as 16-bit. In addition,
filters that use reflection maps, such as Chrome, can use
customized ones created by the user. Below are two screen captures
from Eye Candy 4000 as well as from Impact. While Impact has added
more features, it has also streamlined the interface.
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Article Comments

It does look sweet Paula. One thing though; I cannot see it being worth $100.00 in no way. even the upgrade, is way too expensive for just 7 new filters, IMO anyways. Great article though and I would definitely click my PayPal, if it was more like $29.95 U.S. maybe.

Thanks for this review. I bought it, because I adore all All Candy filters and use them constantly. I love seeing what it could do, since I've not explored it fully. The nice thing, is that once you have EC4000, the rest are half price. It's well worth it to me, since I use it in my art and in my texturing for commercial packages.


Eye Candies have some nice filters (some very nice actually), but some not-really-useful ones too, and as a whole, are overpriced in my personal opinion. If they sold them individually, I might buy some of them. But having to get the whole pack for a $100, it's a no way for me. My budget doesn't allow that much for plugin filters. Specifically, for metal effects, I think that SuperBlade Pro is much better (and costs less than 1/3rd).