Using plug-ins

All the features of XPE are provided as plug-ins. Many of the basic operations such as brightness, sharpening, crop and auto-enhance controls are built-in XPE plug-ins. Each of the XPE tools is a plug-in.

All the Photoshop compatible plug-ins are managed by the single PSplug-in tool (pictured right).

The key points about all plug-ins:

You can apply multiple plug-in effects, one on top of another.
You can adjust the settings of any plug-ins after you've applied them to a picture.
You can delete or remove a plug-in effect at any time. You can remove all effects to restore the original un-enhanced picture.
If you adjust any XPE effects, such as the size, rotation, brightness etc., these are applied to the original picture and all subsequent effects are re-applied to the newly modified original. This is an important point.

Old Style or New Style plug-ins

The only difference between old and new style plug-ins is that when you've saved a picture with an old style plug-in effect applied you can't change or edit the effect on that picture in future. In other words you can't load a picture that has an old-style plug-ins applied and now adjust or remove that effect. You can, of course, always revert to the original, if you've kept it, and start again.

With new style Photoshop plug-ins and all XPE plug-ins you can load any picture with these effects applied, and adjust or even remove those effects. In other words the settings are saved with the picture.

Applying an effect

Simply click the plug-in icon (above right) then select the required effect. The plug-in's dialog will appear where you can preview your effect. Clicking OK applies that effect to the whole image (this may take some time as many plug-in effects are quite slow, especially on larger images).

To edit or adjust an effect

Click the edits button to bring up a list of modifications to your image. When you click OK the new values are applied to the original image. This does not apply the same effect twice. Note: clicking cancel will remove the effect.

To remove an effect

Click the edits button to bring up a list of modifications to your image. Select the effect you wish to remove, and then click remove. Note: new style plug-ins or XPE plug-ins will allow you to edit or remove an effect on pictures even after you've saved and re-loaded the picture. It does this by keeping track of the original, and all the effects applied and re-creating the image.

Technical note: New style plug-ins are those written to Adobe Photoshop version 4 plug-in standard or later. These are sometimes described as 'scriptable', 'actionable' plug-ins, or sometimes referred to as being compatible with 'live effects'. XPE plug-ins are those developed to the Xara Picture Editor plug-in standard that can be found here: XPE developers' website.