Corel Particleshop plugin on Windows: works

[timlt]

I've been using Corel's Particleshop brushes plugin (https://www.painterartist.com/en/product/particleshop/).  This is powered by the software in their standalone Painter app, and is an officially supported plugin within Photoshop and Paintshop Pro for dynamic painting effects (see their site for a description, this is a bit different from a static brush).  This works great within my copy of Paintshop Pro 2019 Ultimate, plus Corel offers many interesting add-on brush sets for sale.  So I was curious to find out if the Particleshop plugin (v 1.5) works in Affinity Photo v1.6 on Windows 10 x64. 

Verdict:  Success.  After you install the plugin, in the Affinity Photoshop plugins settings, you can point to the install directory.  Then Affinity recognizes it in the Filters | Plugins submenu and will successfully launch photos into the plugin, let you use all the artistic brushes, and round-trip the result to AP without weird behavior, crashing, or side effects that I've yet noticed.  Items worth noting:  the plugin lets you save the brush strokes only AS brush strokes if working with layers, or you can save it merged with the original photo.  Also note:  the plugin requires you to convert any image you are working on to 8-bit color depth before adding brush strokes.  So this is a limitation, though not a show-stopper for me. I tried a workaround which seemed to work.  Open the 16-bit photo (mine was PNG), convert to 8-bit, launch the plugin and add brush strokes, then save as "brush strokes only."  Then you can use various approaches to combine the new 8-bit brush stroke layer back with the original 16-bit image.  

[catlover]

Thanks, tinlt.

Has anyone tried to run this plugin on AffPhoto (latest Beta) for Mac ?

Thanks,

C.L.

[jeffers]

Not on the Beta but can confirm it works for me also as timlt detailed. Off topic I wish  APhoto would open PSP files or am I missing something

[catlover]

@jeffers :Thanks for the info.

Can't help you with the PSO files, I'm afraid, sorry.

Just to make sure : did you use Particle shop Aff Photo on a Mac ?

 

BTW : I DO wish. a developer would pick up this question !!

 

 

[jeffers]

sorry late reply.....no this is windows 7

[Cacophonix]

I have version 1.8.5.703 and can confirm that Particleshop works with AP on Windows.

[firstdefence]

Affinity Photo 1.8.6 on High Sierra 10.13.6
Even though the ParticleShop folder that contains the particleshop.plugin file is targeted in Affinity Photo, ParticleShop shows as Painter > Particleshop in the filters list but launching crashes Affinity Photo