Managing all the plug-ins, actions and software

[pamelabd]

Hi,

My name is Pamela and I am a plug-in/action/program junkie! LOL

I have a TON of plug-ins, actions and programs that my brain, computer & programs are in overload!

To name a few:

LucisArt
OnOne suite
Nik Software
AlienSkin (all of them)
Photomatix
Portrait Professional
Noise Ninja
Noiseware
ReDynamix
Lilyblue actions
MCP actions
Florabella actions

and thousands of free ones!

1. How do I manage these so that they do not bog down Photoshop (CS5)?

2. Is Plugin Commander any good?

3. How do you determine what to use when?

I also have LR3 and a ton of presets and love being able to scroll thru them and see what my photo will look like with the preset applied. Is there a program that will do this in Photoshop so that I don't have to apply the action or plug-in first?

--

 

[NOVCJ]

Not sure about the plugins but for actions there are a few organizers, I like Action Station from http://1clickactions.com/actionstation2.htm as I can add keywords to actions and search on them, add previews and descriptions etc.

 

[calson]

Not possible as plugins are daughter programs that run independently of Photoshop and receive the image data and process it and send it back to Photoshop. This is also why they need to be re-written with each new iteration of Photoshop as Adobe's engineers keep changing the API.

I have CS3, CS4, and CS5 versions of Photoshop on my Mac, and CS2 on a PC, and I run CS5 mostly in 32-bit mode as my NIK plugins are unstable in 64-bit mode. When I need to use a particular plugin I load the most stable version of Photoshop. PITA to be sure but that is the price I pay for Photoshop plugins.

In retrospect I would have been wiser to put together actions sets instead.