Īlien Skin Software, founded a year earlier, creates the first drop shadow filter for Photoshop. However, the fact that it requires considerable programming skills is viewed by many as a serious drawback. It uses programmable formulas to process the red, green and blue channels of each pixel of the image. Joe Ternasky releases Filter Factory, a plugin allowing users to create their own filters using an internal programming language resembling C and compile them as separate plugins. It features several advanced warp and deformation effects, as well as support for bump maps and 3D graphics formats (in KPT SceneBuilder). Many artists of the time consider it a must-have plugin set for Photoshop. Kai Krause releases one of the most renowned plugins of the 1990s - Kai's Power Tools (a.k.a. When Aldus and Adobe merge in 1996, Gallery Effects will be embedded into Photoshop. The same year, Aldus presents Aldus Gallery Effects - a set of filters including Emboss, Mosaic, Charcoal and other effects. History YearĪdobe first introduces filters and support for third-party Photoshop-compatible plugins in Photoshop 2.0. "Import/export plugins" acquire or write image data from or to certain devices, "file format plugins" open and save less common image formats (not inherently supported by Photoshop), and "automation plugins" automate certain tasks in the manner of Photoshop "actions" ( macros). Also, there are selection plugins 8bs and parser plugins 8by, but no one other than Adobe has ever created plugins of these types. 8bf, import plugins (also called 'acquisition'). Photoshop-compatible plugins fall into several main types: filter plugins.