Xaos Tools Paint Alchemy

I'm always surprised to see this plugin still for sale in various places... it's a turkey. At least on the Windows platform. Who knows, perhaps it was optimized for Mac and Windows was an afterthought. It creates interesting and colorful effects... when it works. I've moved to progressively faster and more RAM-potent machines and taken it with me just to see if anything changes... from a 233 MHZ Pentium II with 256mb to a 933 with 512mb to a 1.8 Pentium 4 with 512mb. Results are always the same... load an image, run the filter and the progress indicator bar pops up and LEAPS across the first 90-95% of its length... and then stops. And waits. And waits. And waits.... SOMEtimes, if you wait long enough it closes that last little gap and something bright and colorful pops up on the screen. More often, Photoshop just slips into a coma and doesn't return until you do a forced exit. I keep installing it on my current machine for use with photoshop, thinking maybe THIS time I have enough CPU speed and RAM to make the difference... nope. It's never been updated for windows and I'm sure it never will be. Not a stellar performer.

None noticed.

Doesn't work most of the time, takes an interminably long time when it does and gives no hint of when it will finish running. (Progress bar lies horribly).

Deep Paint, KPT 3 & 5, Andromeda Scatterlight, Others.

Well, they still have a website.