PhotoCaster, AlphaMania and the Effector Sets

There are two ways to get Photoshop graphics into Director - the PhotoCaster way and the hard way. Before PhotoCaster, multimedia developers and artists had to spend untold hours tediously exporting, indexing, importing, repositioning, renaming, and cursing. Now that PhotoCaster has arrived those hours have just become free time.
PhotoCaster, AlphaMania and the Effector Sets is an Xtra for Macromedia Director
PhotoCaster
PhotoCaster is an Xtra for Macromedia Director that lets you bring your Photoshop files, layer by layer, into your Director cast with one click. Each layer appears as an individual cast member, indexed, anti-aliased, properly registered, transparency preserved and good to go!
PhotoCaster major features:
- Create individual cast members from Photoshop layers Import Photoshop files directly into your Director cast
- Import directly to the score
- Preview layers before importing
- Supports Director 5, 6, 7, 8, MX, MX 2004(and later)
- Works with all versions of Photoshop files from version 3 and later, including Photoshop CS2
- Supports Most Photoshop Layer FX (see FAQ for details)
- Supports alpha channels in those versions of Director that support them (7+)
- Control color mapping: 24-bit, current palette, or custom palette
- Generate a custom palette derived from the layers in your Photoshop file
- Text layers can be imported as text castmembers.
- Keeps layer registration Preserves anti-aliasing between layers
- Flatten linked layers into single cast members
- Optionally ignore hidden layers
- Improved color reduction and dithering
- Dithering to a specified number of colors
- Arbitrary selection of which layers to import
- Works seamlessly with Media Labs AlphaMania Xtra for creation of AlphaMania cast members directly from Photoshop layers (supports multiple layer import)
- No lingo required
- Photoshop Layer F/X are supported.
- Text layers can be imported as text castmembers.
- 8 bit castmembers can be mapped to any palette without having to make that palette active.
- 16 bit castmembers are now dithered.
- Dithering (8 bit or 16 bit) is now optional.
System requirements:
- Director version 5 or higher, including Director MX 2004
- Photoshop version 3 or higher, including Photoshop CS2
AlphaMania 2 and Effector Sets I & II
Media Labs AlphaMania and Effector Sets bundle of Xtras bring cross-platform and interactive special effects to Director. Swirling, colorization, magnification, blurring, embossing - all interactive and controllable.
These effects are programmed in straight to-the-metal C code and give outstanding performance. They are fast and reliable.
With Effector Sets you can apply multiple effects simlutaneously, and control their order. With our handy Set FX interface and a complete library of behaviors, no Lingo programming is required. For authors who do want absolute control they will find a whole library of new Lingo commands and properties available to them.
AlphaMania is the base engine - it creates a new custom cast type in Director that acts pretty much like a normal bitmap castmember. The other two Xtras, Effector Set I and Effector Set II, plug into AlphaMania and provide the special effects.
List of Effects:
RGB and HSB Colorize
Magnify
Rotate
Seurat
Swirl
Mosaic
Line Skip
Snow
Blur
Bevel
Drop Shadow
Roil
Ripple
Main features:
- Real time interactive special effects.
- Live anti-aliasing
- Live alpha channel compositing - fast!
- Batch importing of PICT/TGA files
- Batch importing of Photoshop layers (requires PhotoCaster)
- Scaling
- Flying masks ("cut-through" effect)
- Never before possible effects like dynamic embossing
- Automatic Download with Shockwave