Bonus Appendix - Links to Product Sites

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LINKS TO PRODUCT SITES
This appendix includes links to the publishers’ Web sites for the software products mentioned in
this book. These sites are excellent sources for finding far more information about these products
than I could ever hope to present in a book such as this one.
Following the name of and link to the publisher are the names of all of the products from that
publisher that are mentioned in this book. I’ve also listed the names of some other products that
might interest you, even though we didn’t specifically use them to create any of these images.
Alien Skin Software
http://www.alienskin.com
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✦
Eye Candy 5 Nature. The second of three upgrades to Eye Candy 4000. This one is a collection of ten Photoshop filters, which create fire, smoke, rust, snow, ice, and more.
✦
Eye Candy 5 Textures. An upgrade to Eye Candy 4000 that features ten seamless texture
generators. Effects include snake and lizard skin, fur, brick, stone, and wood.
✦
Xenofex 2. Simulates spectacular natural phenomena, such as lightning and clouds. Includes
distortions such as Flag, Television, and Rip Open. Photos can be turned into jigsaw puzzles,
constellations, and intricate mosaics with a single click.
✦
Image Doctor. Offers the option of selection-based image repair to remove blemishes and
defects, repair over-compressed JPEGs, and seamlessly replace unwanted details and objects.
✦
Splat! Combines frames, textures, edges, borders, and mosaics into your images.
✦
Eye Candy 4000. Combines practical effects like shadows, bevels, and glows with special
effects like Chrome, Fire, Smoke, and Wood. The effects are not as realistic-looking or as
controllable as in the three updates, but this still makes a useful introductory collection.
✦
Knoll Light Factory 2. These are lighting filters invented by one of the original creators of
Photoshop that are now being sold through Alien Skin. Twenty-five individual lens filters
deliver unprecedented control over lighting effects by combining elements like glows, stars,
fans, and spike shapes. Each filter has global controls for the brightness, size, color, and
angle of the overall effect.
✦
Optipix 3.0. Filters for sharpening and extending range in order to give digital images the
appearance of having been made at higher resolution and with better optics than was actually
the case. There is also a variety of intriguing range-extension effects.
✦
Focus Magic. Focus Magic differs from most sharpening filters in that it purports to reverse
the process by which images become blurred. The latest version even claims to correct
motion blur, though I haven’t personally experimented with it as of this writing.
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LINKS TO PRODUCT SITES
Andromeda
http://www.andromeda.com
Andromeda makes Photoshop-compatible plug-ins that create a wide variety of photographic
effects and corrections. Most of these products are hard-to-beat for performing their specific
functions.
✦
Three-D. Allows you to wrap your photos around a variety of 3D shapes in a variety of ways.
✦
Three-D Luxe. An advanced version of Three-D…very advanced, in fact. The shapes and
surfaces can be varied in transparency and include stressed, riveted, aged, mesh, and alien
sculpted surfaces
✦
Screens. Converts photos into all manner of line art screens, such as mezzotints, sharpcontrast mezzograms, mezzoblends, ellipses, lines, circles, spokes, waves, or any blended
combination.
✦
Techtures. Infinitely variable texturing effects. You can even invent textures never before
seen by man.
✦
Shadow. Casts a shadow of your input image onto a Casting Plane that can then be manipulated in 3D space behind or in front of the Input Image. You can specify cameras and light
source. You can operate in expert and novice modes for complete creative control over any
image shadow. Shadows become more feathered as they are cast further from the subject.
✦
Velociraptor. Arguably the most advanced and versatile motion blur filter. You can even do
motion trails, give direction to them, and make them taper off as they move away from the
subject. Stroboscopic motion blur is included, too.
✦
VariFocus. Create focus blurs that are even more controllable than Photoshop’s new Lens
Blur filter.
✦
Measurement. Lets you draw straight or curved paths that will then automatically measure
line profile, histograms, distance, angle, and more—along, under, or within the path.
✦
Cutline. Creates hand-engraved and woodcut effects. Specific tools allow for positioning
and adjustment of directional screen lines.
✦
LensDoc. Very accurately corrects barrel and pincushion lens distortion, making this tool an
invaluable asset for owners of wide-angle lenses. Incidentally, you can also do corrective
rotation and perspective without having to leave the filter’s interface.
✦
Perspective. Corrects perspective distortion—though I find it easier to simply use the
Transform command in Photoshop.
✦
EtchTone. Allows you to create etched textures on both color and monochrome photos. You
get a much better idea of how this works from the illustration on the site.
✦
ScatterLight Lenses. My very favorite filter for a huge variety of glamour-diffusion effects.
There are four major categories of diffusion types and each of these offers a wide variety of
settings. There’s even a star highlight effect.
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RedEye Pro. Removes red-eye by allowing you to drag a rectangle around the spot and make
the correction automatically while preserving glint highlights and eye color.
✦
Photography Filters. This is a whole group of plug-ins designed to recreate the special
effects produced by analog special effects filters. You can get the idea of what each does from
its name, but you’ll learn a lot more by visiting the site. The individual filters are cMulti,
sMulti, Design Filter, Mezzo Line-Screen Filter, Diffract, Prism and Rainbow, Halo,
Reflection, Star, and Velocity.
Auto-FX
http://www.autofx.com
This company claims to be the world’s largest developer of Photoshop-compatible plug-ins. That is
their specialty. Furthermore, their plug-ins are also compatible with most competing image-editing
software as well.
✦
AutoEye 2.0. Automatically improves digital images by rebuilding color detail, sharpness,
and image vibrancy. Similar to Photoshop’s one-click auto-correction, but it seems to do a
more dynamic interpretation of the image.
✦
DreamSuite Series One. A wide variety of visual and edge effects.
✦
DreamSuite Series Two. More of the above.
✦
DreamSuite Gel Series. Adds a variety of translucent depth effects to images and selections.
Makes it easy to make Mac-type buttons.
✦
Mystical Lighting. Goes way beyond the effects of Photoshop’s Lighting Effects filters. You
can cast patterns, diffuse the lighting, and create a wide variety of atmospheric effects.
✦
Mystical Tint Tone and Color. Thirty-eight tinting and coloring effects that can totally
transform an image into a dream world.
✦
Photo/Graphic Edges 6.0. Creates very quick, easy, and useful border edges.
Corel
http://www.corel.com
Corel publishes a huge variety of powerful office and graphics software.
✦
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Corel KPT Collection. One of the world’s favorite and most powerful collections of specialeffects plug-ins for Photoshop. This is a mixture of the best of Kai’s Power Tools plug-in filters 5, 6, and Effects. We could never cover the power and variety of these filters in the space
allocated here. Check them out on the Web site.
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✦
Corel Painter 9. The most widely known, best established, and most versatile of all natural
media painting programs. Fully compatible with Photoshop files and layers. The user interface has been re-designed to make it feel more familiar to Photoshop users.
✦
Corel PaintShop Pro. A powerful entry-level image-editing program with a few unique features of its own.
✦
Corel Knockout2. A knockout program originally created by Ultimatte Corporation. A
professional program for removing images from both blue/green screen and natural backgrounds.
Casio (Digital Cameras)
http://www.casio.com
Fo2Pix
http://www.fo2pix.com
✦
Buzz Pro. A very sophisticated watercolor filter that can really make your digital photos
look like hand-painted watercolors in a variety of styles…including outlined edges. You can
get a very good instant start by simply experimenting with the pre-saved “stacks” of effects.
Flaming Pear
http://www.flamingpear.com
✦
SuperBlade Pro. One of the best packages for text and object edge effects.
✦
Creative Pack. A collection of filters that creates a variety of combinations of edge effects
on images.
✦
Polymerge. Merges image components into bizarre abstracts. You’d better look at the Web
site to get an idea of the strange possibilities.
✦
LunarCell. All sorts of texture-mapped globes that look like fictitious planets.
✦
Flexify. Simulates all sorts of wide-angle lenses.
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Fred Miranda
http://www.fredmiranda.com
Fred Miranda is an accomplished Los Angeles pro photographer with a Web site that has lots of
valuable information on it. Fred is also a real scientist when it comes to creating actions and plugins that work to solve problems often faced by photographers. I’ve listed some of my favorites
below.
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✦
Velvia Vision (PC/Mac plug-in). Makes your digital image look like it was shot on
Fujichrome Velvia film—at least where contrast and color saturation are concerned. The
intensity of the effect, color contrast, and warmth of the colors (among other things) are all
user-controlled.
✦
Intellisharpen II (PC/Mac plug-in). Provides halo-less sharpening, edge sharpening, luminance sharpening, mode sharpening, and more with just the press of a button. With this
plug-in, you can choose from low or high ISO settings. Other options allow you to sharpen
fine detail. Photographers can choose from 100 Intellisharpen intensity levels and 100
sharpen fine detail levels. You can even reduce color noise from high ISO files. You can save
and load your own Intellisharpen settings. In addition, you have the ability to preview settings and tweak intensity results for maximum control over your work.
✦
BW Workflow Pro (PC/Mac plug-in). Moves you along through your own choice of workflow in a very versatile way. You get eight preset filter selections, 32 duotone presets, 18 tritone presets, six quadtone presets, three film grain presets, and four dynamic range presets.
Everything you do can be easily previewed as you work on your image.
✦
ISOx Pro v1.1 (PC/Mac plug-in). The main objective of the new ISOx Pro Plugin is to
reduce noise while keeping most of the detail intact. It provides options to reduce the color
noise (chroma noise) only, as well as other options that reduce the luma and chroma noise
simultaneously based on ten intensity levels. The interface makes it easy to apply the settings
that are most appropriate to particular cameras and ISO settings.
✦
SR Professional v1.1 (PC/Mac plug-in). SR stands for Shadow Recovery. The purpose of
this plug-in is to recover shadow detail without increasing shadow noise after you intentionally underexpose in order to capture detail in the highlights. The program can automatically
remember previous settings so that you can correct an entire series of photos automatically.
✦
Stair Interpolation Pro v1.1 (PC/Mac plug-in). This is a 16-bit version of the highly
regarded plug-in that allows you to make enlarged versions of images that still have sharp
and smooth edges, thus creating the impression that they were shot at much higher resolution. Can be applied to a series of images using Batch mode.
✦
Web Presenter Pro v1.1 (PC/Mac plug-in). Allows automatic downsizing of 16-bit files
according to any number of presets that you choose.
✦
DRI Pro v1.1 (PC/Mac plug-in). Perhaps the most famous Miranda plug-in, this one allows
you to combine two different images of the same subject that have been shot at two different
exposures. Either the camera must be on a tripod and the subject must remain still for both
exposures or you can use two different interpretations of the same RAW file.
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✦
FM Frames (action). Automatically makes custom frames for Web images. It works with any
image orientation (Portrait or Landscape), including severely cropped images and panoramas.
You simply have to choose your custom colors for matte and frame and then sit back and let
the action do the rest. Within five seconds, you’ll have a custom frame that is worthy of
enhancing your artwork. This action makes the most professional-looking frames and mattes
of any program I’ve yet seen. It’s also a great way to preview matte and frame choices before
you go to the time and expense of actually creating and matting the images.
✦
Digital Warm-Cool (action). Actually, a whole series of actions that you can choose for
warming and cooling filters that correspond to those frequently used in analog photography.
You can get the feeling of sunset earlier in the afternoon or that of dawn at ten in the morning.
✦
FM EdgeSharpen Pro v3.0 (action). Edge-sharpening specifically designed for images that
are extra noisy due to high ISO settings or extra long exposures.
✦
Moire Reducer (action). Meant to take moiré patterns out of scanned images.
✦
Digital Soft Focus (action). Creates an effect similar to that of a soft-focus portrait filter. It
can be used on any digital image after the fact and costs much less than a good portrait filter.
You can also batch-process an entire portrait shoot.
✦
Digital Infrared (action). Capable of making most any digital color (or scanned color) image
look as though it were shot with an infrared filter on conventional film. There is a huge
advantage in that you can combine both effects in a huge variety of ways—something you
could not do with conventional images.
✦
Camera-specific correction tools. Miranda has created tools for correcting problems with
several pro DSLRs. So far, the list includes the Nikon D70 and all of the Canon models
from the 20D on up.
Fujifilm, Ltd. (Digital Cameras)
http://www.fujifilm.com
nik Multimedia, Inc.
http://www.nikmultimedia.com
✦
Dfine. A noise reduction filter specifically aimed at correcting the noise characteristics of
your particular camera, ISO setting, and exposure. You can save your settings or use pre-built
profiles for individual cameras that are available online at additional cost. Also works with
Wacom tablets so that you can “brush out” noise in specific areas of the image, such as in
shadows or skies.
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✦
Sharpener Pro. The easiest and most no-nonsense tool I’ve found for final (output) sharpening. Gives you settings that relate directly to each type of printer. This version lists specs
for virtually all possible output options. There are lower-cost versions dedicated specifically
to the most commonly used output options.
✦
Color Efex Pro 2.0. Hundreds of pre-defined color effects, ranging from standard camera
filters to very bizarre or surreal effects that can be especially suitable for abstracts. You can
accomplish most of these effects using Photoshop alone, but these tools make it very easy to
quickly experiment with a variety of effects before settling on one. If you own a Wacom
tablet, you can also paint color effects into specific areas of the image.
Neat Image
http://www.neatimage.com
Perhaps the most powerful noise reduction plug-in. It seems to be able to remove any amount of
any kind of noise. However, it can also remove too much noise, thereby creating strange artifacts
or eliminating textures that are natural to the subject, such as the texture of concrete or of sand on
the beach.
Olympus (Digital Cameras)
http://www.olympusamerica.com
PhotoWiz
http://www.thepluginsite.com
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✦
Focal Blade Sharpener. Lets you sharpen your photos for screen display and print, as well as
produce great-looking blur, soft focus, and glow effects.
✦
Color Washer. A plug-in for correcting the colors, contrast, exposure, and saturation of
photos.
✦
Light Machine. Performs shadow/highlight, lighting, and color-based corrections without
forcing you to stop to make selections and layer stacks.
✦
Photo Freebies. Free plug-ins for Black and White conversion, gradient de-saturation in
any of four directions (top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, right-to-left), a fix for
“combed” histograms to interpolate existing information to fill in the gaps, a sepia toner (five
effects and contrast control), the ability to work in HSL without leaving RGB mode, the
ability to work in YCC without leaving RGB mode, and converting the image into a negative
without changing the colors.
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PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com
✦
Noise Ninja. Yet another highly regarded tool for noise removal. I have run a beta test on
this software, but cannot yet comment on the final version. Best to check out the Web site.
Pixel Genius
http://www.pixelgenius.com/
A consortium of leading Photoshop and digital imaging gurus (Martin Evening, Bruce Fraser,
Seth Resnick, Andrew Rodney, Jeff Schewe, and Mike Skurski) who came together in order to provide useful and practical workflow enhancement tools for digital photographers.
✦
PhotoKit Sharpener. Provides a complete sharpening workflow. The site also has tutorials
and articles by Bruce Fraser and Seth Resnick.
✦
PhotoKit Color. Works with the Automate sub-menu in Photoshop so that you can apply a
variety of powerful analog-type color corrections to a series of images. All effects are created
on layers, leaving the original image untouched. A few of the effects are black and white split
toning, cross processing, making skin tones less red or lighter, darkening blue skies and
enhancing cloud contrast, and automatically removing color casts. Very cool, if you don’t
mind a wee bit of editorializing on my part.
✦
PhotoKit-EL. For Photoshop Elements. An Automate plug-in that creates digital replications of traditional darkroom effects, such as tone adjustment, color balance adjustment, and
conversion to grayscale. But it also offers effects that are difficult or even impossible to
achieve in a traditional darkroom, such as sharpening to improve detail and graduated tone
adjustments to improve specific areas in an image.
✦
PhotoKit. Similar to Photoshop EL, but for Photoshop and with 16-bit per channel capabilities.
Power Retouche
http://www.powerretouche.com
This company makes one of the largest selections of plug-ins aimed directly at correcting the
problems most commonly found in digital photos. Most, if not all, of these filters work in 8- and
16-bit RGB or CMYK.
✦
Black and White Studio. Lets you convert to black and white using the parameters used in
analog photography. You can specify film type, zone range, colored filters, and have
shadow/highlight control.
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✦
Dynamic Range Compression. Gives the user full control over all aspects of dynamic range
correction—black point, offset, shadow depth with adjustable threshold, saturation, and so
on. Also claims to perform shadow reduction without creating noise artifacts.
✦
Sharpness. This is one of my favorite tools for sharpening, especially extreme effects sharpening. It doesn’t create edgelines or artifacts like Unsharp Mask does. Restrict sharpening to
edges only or blur selected colors, hues, or shades in order to manipulate focus and make
areas unfocussed. Optional anti-aliasing to avoid edge roughness.
✦
Lens. Removes pincushion and barrel lens distortion.
✦
Toned Photos. Does traditional darkroom print toning effects (B/W, Sepia, Van Dyck,
Kallitype, Silver Gelatin, Palladium, Platinum, Cyanotype, Light Cyanotype, Silver). You can
adjust the preset tones or create your own. The plug-in copies the pigmentation distribution
of the traditional toned photo-printing techniques.
✦
Noise Filter. Features five different noise removal methods.
✦
Golden Section. A great compositional aid. Instantly adds a transparent layer and draws the
golden sections, golden spiral, golden triangles, spiral sections, rule of thirds, and harmonic
triangles. Handles any proportions.
✦
Exposure. Automatically corrects for over or under exposure. It is also meant to compliment
the Dynamic Range Compression plug-in mentioned previously.
✦
Radial Density. Corrects for lens vignetting or lets you create vignettes.
✦
Anti-Aliasing. Looks for over-sharpened or stairstepped edges and smoothes them by aliasing them.
✦
White Balance. Allows you to correct color balance automatically or use sliders to set the
color balance according to your own emotional preferences. Claim is made that auto can
even correct for mixed color balance lighting.
✦
Black Definition. Allows you to intensify or reduce the amount of black in the photo’s color
mix. The plastic 3D sense in a photo is greatly enhanced when the black definition is raised.
Reducing black definition makes colors more vivid without raising their saturation. You can
also use this tool to brighten sullied photos without actually altering brightness.
✦
Contras. Allows you to control black-white contrast independent of color-contrast and
without changing color, hue, or saturation. Control the midtones by setting how much they
should be preserved or lost.
✦
Saturation. Preserves all colors, hues, tonal variations, and shades when manipulating saturation and doesn’t alter brightness when you’re increasing saturation.
✦
Color Correction. Lets you shift the color spectrum of the entire image or a selected hue or
brightness-range by rotating the color wheel.
✦
Posterize. Lets you posterize color hues and values independently and freely select any number of levels for either.
✦
Edgeline. Much more versatile than Photoshop Edge Detection. Lets you increase width,
eliminate noise (small details), automatically create background transparency, and operate in
either color or black and white.
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✦
Transparency. Lets you make the colors within a given range transparent. Must be used on
an unlocked image layer. The controls are fairly versatile.
✦
Soft Filter. Separate sliders control blur and glow, so this tool works well as a portrait filter.
✦
Brightness. Allows you to preserve or reduce color as you change brightness intensity.
There’s also a glow slider.
The Imaging Factory
http://www.theimagingfactory.com
Another plug-in company that has (so far, at least) dedicated itself to plug-ins for the digital photographer. The selection of these plug-ins is almost as large as those of Photo Retouche, and these
filters also work in 16-bit mode. You can download fully-functional demos that work for 30 days.
There is no package price for a full kit and prices are somewhat higher than Photo Retouche, but
there’s little direct competition when it comes to the purpose of individual filters.
✦
Convert to B&W Pro or Standard Edition. Can imitate analog color filter effects, the
color response of different black and white emulsions, and interactively control color
response with the use of sliders. You can also select between two types of sepia tone. The
Standard edition is less powerful.
✦
Noise Reduction Pro or Standard Separate controls for luminance and color noise. Much
faster than most noise reduction tools, but may lack the control present in some. Excellent
quick tool for de-noising selected areas very quickly.
✦
Unsharp Mask Pro or Standard. Excellent control over the Unsharp Masking characteristics and instant previewing at 100%. Very fast operation. Certainly an excellent tool for initial sharpening or for corrective sharpening after noise removal.
✦
Gaussian Blur. Appears to do the same thing as Photoshop’s Gaussian Blur, but with less
blur for a given number of pixels.
✦
Debarrelizer. Corrects chromatic aberration as well as barrel distortion. Distortion is corrected with a slider, which doesn’t give precise control, but at least it’s fast.
✦
Perspective. Lets you rotate, and then tilt the image vertically or horizontally in 3D by using
sliders.
✦
Vignette. Allows you to add or remove vignetting effects caused by lighting or non-digital
lenses.
✦
Squeeze. Compresses the size of objects at the outer edges of the image.
✦
White Balance. You can visually correct the color balance of the image with sliders and can
lock the original white point.
✦
White Point. Lets you choose the white point by picking its color in the Photoshop Color
Picker.
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✦
Color Equalizer. Lets you change saturation and brightness at different color hue ranges by
moving audio equalizer-type sliders. The effect is very different from that in the KPT
Equalizer.
✦
Color Correction. Meant to give you more complex and exacting color correction controls
than the Color Balance command in Photoshop.
✦
Simulated DOF. Moves the point-of-focus as a horizontal line up or down the photo. Image
blur increases with distance from the point-of-focus line.
✦
Soft-Focus. Provides sliders for radiation, intensity, and mist. Can be useful for providing
an atmospheric softness, as well as for portrait softening.
✦
Graduated Color. Graduates any single color that you pick from the Color Picker and
allows you to control the center of gradation, intensity, and rotation with sliders.
✦
Graduated Fog. Graduates a glowing blur or mist. You can control the color and density of
the mist and the rotation of the graduation.
✦
Ultimatte AdvantEdge. The fastest and cleanest way to knock out the background from
around objects with very complex edges. However, you must use a blue or green screen for the
background. All you have to do to select the background (except in unusually complex subjects or where there is an excessive amount of background color contained in the foreground
subject), drag a brush across the background color, and click OK. Expensive, but a huge
time-saver if you have to do complex compositing or need to place portrait subjects against a
variety of backgrounds.
Visual Infinity
http://www.visinf.com
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✦
Grain Surgery. A powerful grain/noise control tool that lets you either remove or add grain
and noise. You can sample the grain that you want to remove so that you can target exactly
the kind of noise you want to remove. You can also match the grain in another image. Visual
Infinity has also announced a new product, not yet shipping at the time of this writing, that
is especially targeted for removing the noise in digital photographs.
✦
Genuine Fractals 3.5. Probably the best known and most widely-used tool for upsampling
(enlarging) images without increasing noise or losing edge sharpness. It’s now facing tough
competition from the Fred Miranda plug-in.
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Xaos Tools
http://www.xaostools.com
This company’s products are available as a single unit called Total Xaos (yes, it’s pronounced
chaos).
✦
Paint Alchemy. An amazingly capable tool for creating filter effects that automatically create the look of many styles of natural media painting.
✦
Terrazzo. Creates a huge variety of symmetrical patterns and backgrounds from selections
within a photo.
WACOM, Inc.
http://www.wacom.com
Wacom was the originator of digital tablets with pressure-sensitive pens that gave natural media
brush-strokes a truly natural look by making the strokes thicker and/or more opaque when pressure was increased on the pen tip.
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