New Version Has Improved UI, Real-Time Preview, and Support for Intel Mac and 64-bit OS

Digital Anarchy, a leading provider of cost-effective special effects software for Adobe and Apple products, has released version 3.0 of the acclaimed Knoll Light Factory. The new features in this Photoshop package give increased control over the look of hundreds of lighting effects, and further the creative abilities of photographers and designers to enhance existing images or create original works.
Knoll Light Factory is designed to create lens flares and other lighting effects, including lasers, explosions and suns. The most common use in photography is to enhance lights such as lamps, streetlights, sky elements, or candle flames. However, many designers also use Light Factory to create sparkling or glowing lights from scratch. Light Factory was originally written by John Knoll, the co-creator of Photoshop, to create the Photon Torpedoes in Star Trek First Contact.

"Customers are always looking for new creative opportunities," said Jim Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy. "Knoll Light Factory offers a great way of painting with light, when you need to add some flare and sparkle to an image. Improving and speeding up the workflow was a major emphasis for this release, as photographers don’t want to spend lots of time at the computer.”

Inside Light Factory, a user can choose from 19 different flare elements, then layer those elements to create the desired light effect. Almost any real life camera lens can be matched, or the Photoshop filter can generate completely original settings, and save out a preset for later use. Powerful functions include the ability to obscure the light with a grayscale mask; a real-time interactive preview; and 16-bit support for smoother glows and gradients.

Version 3.0 introduces a complete redesign of the user interface, with a simplified layout, new functions, a quick Preview Window, and preview thumbnails for light presets. The Light Editor has been integrated into a single interface that can be moved and resized to the user’s workspace. An additional 50 light presets give users additional pre-made effects that range from naturalistic to dramatic.

Some of the exciting features in Knoll Spark Pack 3.0 include:
  • New User Interface: The UI has been redesigned for ease of use, including previews of light presets and access to editing functions in one window.
  • Real-Time Preview: The main Preview Window now supports real-time manipulation, as well as the ability to resize and zoom in/out.
  • 100+ Light Presets: There are now well over 100 great places to start when looking for that special flare.
  • 16-bit Color Support: Light effects now render out to higher bit depths, which reduces banding and outputs better looking glows and gradients.
  • Mac Intel and 64-bit Windows compatible: Full support of all of the new operating systems and religious preferences.
  • Obscuration Layer: Use a grayscale mask to partially obscure the lights, and make more realistic effects when lights are being partially blocked by an object.
  • Tint Layer: Use a separate layer to change the flare color for easier compositing on complex images.
  • Randomize Feature: A Randomize button and slider let users organically discover fun new effects.
  • Undo Functionality: Multi-level undo allows for an improved workflow when designing lights.
Pricing and Availability

Knoll Light Factory 3.0 is priced at $149 USD. An upgrade path from version 2.0 to 3.0 is $89.00. Until October 31st, it will be available for $129 and the upgrade will be $79. The product is available for Photoshop 7.0 and higher, including CS3, and Photoshop Elements 3.0 and higher. The product also works in other drawing applications that fully support the Photoshop API.

For Macintosh, Light Factory runs on OS 10.3 and higher, and is native to both PPC or Intel systems. For Windows, the product runs on Windows 2000, XP Pro, XP Home, Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit systems. Demo filters and samples are available at www.digitalanarchy.com.