Have a look at the PiCo help files and tutorials by clicking Help in the Help menu.
Visit http://thepluginsite.com for the latest plugins and effects.
PiCo has special support for Photoshop plugins (8bf), Premiere plugins (prm) and After Effects plugins (aex). But you can also define your own plugins types in Preferences.
Select a folder with plugins or other add-on files (e.g. your Photoshop 'Plug-Ins' folder or your PSP folder) and press the 'Plugin View' tab to see their names and categories displayed.
You can enable and disable plugins and other add-ons with the En/Disable command to let only the effects you really need display in your host application.
Plugin Commander simulates Photoshop's Filter menu when you activate the 'Photoshop Mode' checkbox in Plugin View. (Pro Edition only)
You can quickly change the category of plugins in the Plugin View by drag'n'droping the plugins over a existing category.
You can run Photoshop-compatible plugins by double clicking them. (Pro Edition only)
You can preview the effect of plugins and PSP add-ons by choosing Preview from the View menu and selecting a file from the file list. (Pro Edition only)
Clicking on the preview window will use random slider values to display the effect of Filter Factory plugins.
By activating the Overlay icon right to the Preview icon in the button bar, the effect of the previous plugin will be used as a source for the next plugin. (Pro Edition only)
Double clicking on a 8bf plugin created with Filter Factory will display the filter settings in the FF Editor.
In the FF Editor you can edit the filter settings by clicking on the highlighted text fields.
You can edit the Filter Factory code by clicking on the A=, R=, G= or B= fields in the FF Editor.
Clicking on one of the 1 - 10 buttons in the FF Editor will temporarily save the current slider settings or restore them.
You can change the GUI of the FF Editor in Preferences.
Double clicking an image file will open it in Plugin Commander's Picture Editor.
In the Picture Editor you can e.g. apply basic filters, external plugins and change the color depth of images.
To apply Photoshop-compatible plugins to an image in the Picture Editor, select 'External Plugins' from the Filters menu.
In the External Plugins dialog double click plugins or select them and press the Run button to execute them.
You can apply several plugins one after the other to the image without the need to leave the External Plugins dialog.
After you've applied several plugins in the External Plugins dialog, press Ok to accept the changes or Cancel to undo them.
Press the Browse button to display the current files in the Browser dialog as thumbnails. (Pro Edition only)
You can cancel the scanning in the Browser with teh ESC key and continue it by choosing 'Continue Scanning' from the menu.
Right click on a thumnail in the Browser dialog to display a context menu with a lot of choices. (Pro Edition only)
To create thumbnails of plugins effects or images, select them and press the Batch button. (Pro Edition only)
The Batch dialog lets you automatically process a large number of images and apply filters automatically. (Pro Edition only)
PiCo has many context menus. Try pressing the right mouse button over the folder box, file box, picture preview and FF Editor.
It is possible to use Drag 'n' Drop to move files, add filters to a FFL file and extract FFL entries.
You can enter or select file types in the combo boxes below the file boxes.
Double clicking on a file not supported by PiCo will load it with the associated application.
You can use the arrow button to display the folder of one pane in other pane, too.
Pressing "Refresh" will update the File, Plugin or FFL View.
Pressing Alt + Return will display the porperty dialog of the selected file or folder.
You can change the font of the main window in the Interface tab of the Preferences dialog.
When archiving Filter Factory 8bf and prm plugins in a FFL File, you can save a lot of hard disc space. The "compression rate" of a FFL file is up to 1:200.
Open a FFL file in the FFL View by double clicking on the it. (Pro Edition only)
In FFL View press the Preview icon and move through the FFL list with the cursor keys. (Pro Edition only)
The Filter Download dialog (View > Filter Download...) let's you connect to web sites for downloading many free 8bf plugins.
Plugin.dll has to be placed in your Windows System folder to make the 48K Filter Factory plugins work in non-Adobe applications.
You can convert 48K Filter Factory plugins to 56K plugins to make them work without plugin.dll.
If you want to get some informations on a plugin, select it and choose 'Plugin Information' in the Command menu.
'Plugin List' from the Command menu will create a text file with the names of the selected plugins or copy the text to the clipboard.
