Vote ‘Permanent Press’ in 2008 - A Review

I’ve been having fun with an extraordinary new Photoshop filter from “Mister Retro” called ‘Permanent Press.’ With the 2008 Presidential election just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to create a series vintage-looking campaign posters. Take a look at what Mister Retro and I created using the concert poster preset. If you want to see all the wonderful detail check out the art at the actual size I created it in: Obama poster, Biden poster, McCain poster, Palin poster. It’s really amazing!

So what is ‘Permanent Press?’ Here’s the description from the “Mister Retro” web site: “Take any design, photograph, type treatment or image and transport to another time and aesthetic with our powerful and easy-to-use plug-in ...” They say they spent thousands of hours developing the plug-in. I’m not sure about that, but I can say that you could spend thousands of hours playing with and tweaking the various options.

The approach of this filter is from the perspective of what happens when a printing press lays ink onto paper. But it’s not quite that simple. Since we are talking about “Mister Retro,” we’re talking about printing from a vintage retro perspective. So basically it’s a creative time machine for Photoshop. You don’t need to know anything about retro printing to use this filter, but if you’ve been around a printing press a few times you will grasps the concepts here quickly.

The plug-in interface gives you five top level options to adjust. These adjustments are all printing press oriented (as stated above, you don’t need to understand these if you are willing to experiment). You can adjust ink color modes, ink effects, plate effects, halftone effects and press effects. Each of these top level adjustments has several presents you can adjust; and in some cases you can add your own flair. Once you have your custom settings, you have the option to save them as well. One thing I kept looking for was a way to force the filter to use a set palette, or let me save or upload my own. The default palette is either based on a four-color process (CMYK) or an analysis of the colors in the image itself. Maybe we’ll see that option in Version 2.

I’m a big fan of “Mister Retro” and own the entire ‘Machine Wash’ series. I get a big kick out of using these filters. ‘Permanent Press’ stands out as a powerful, but easy to use, filter for creating retro print and grunge effects. For $99, I think it will be easy for me to get more than my investment back using it for client projects – or just having fun creating vintage looking posters.

Let me know if you have had any experience with ‘Permanent Press’ and cool ways to use it.

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Keywords: Grunge, Permanent Press, vote, Machine Wash, Mister Retro, printing press, ink, retro

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