Red Giant Software has agreed to acquire the video plug-in portfolio of Digital Anarchy, a San Francisco-based plug-in developer. Digital Anarchy has sold the following video products: 3D Assistants, Data Animator, Anarchy Toolbox, Geomancy, Psunami Water, Text Anarchy, ToonIt!, Microcosm, Color Theory, PlasmaFX, Chaos Stock and Knoll Spark Pack. The acquisition will add several products to Red Giant Software's roster, which will be repackaged under Red Giant Software's own product names.

These new products make Red Giant Software a one-stop shop for plug-ins, with more than 30 plug-in packages for Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion and Avid. Users can now turn to Red Giant for products to create a wide variety of effects, including particles, keying, color correction, lighting, cartoon effects, look creation, animated titles and ultra-realistic water.

Several of Digital Anarchy's former products will distributed free of charge, including PlasmaFX, Color Theory and Microcosm Codec. These free products will be introduced later in 2008.

Red Giant's new tools include:
- Red Giant PlaneSpace (formerly 3D Assistant Lite/Pro), a 3D layer animation tool. PlaneSpace is available for $199.
- Red Giant Datamator (formerly Data Animator), which creates and animates charts and graphs in 3D space. Datamator is available for $99.
- Red Giant Psunami (formerly Psunami Water), a photorealistic water and wave generator. Psunami is available for $199.
- Red Giant Text Anarchy (formerly Text Anarchy, now includes Geomancy and Anarchy Toolbox) is available for $199.
- Red Giant ToonIt (formerly Toon It!), which creates cartoon-style art from video footage. ToonIt is available for $399.
- Knoll Light Factory Spark, a version of the lens flare generation tool especially for advanced Autodesk platforms, is available for $1,299.

Jim Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy, said, "As I looked to exit the video plug-in business to fully concentrate on our photography/Photoshop products, I approached Red Giant Software to help ease the transition for our users. Red Giant Software is recognized in the industry for taking care of its customers with a solid record for support and marketing. It was important to find Digital Anarchy's film/video users a good new home. Red Giant Software fits that bill."

Sean Safreed, owner of Red Giant Software, said, "This is an exciting milestone for our company. We entered the plug-in market nearly six years ago, and we are now are one of the largest providers of tools to production professionals. We are dedicated to providing innovative tools for broadcasters, film designers and independent filmmakers, and Digital Anarchy's video toolset expands our palette. We look forward to providing Digital Anarchy film/video users and future customers with the best support and ongoing updates to these new tools, and we're already working on updates and compatibility enhancements."

This asset sale will allow Digital Anarchy to focus on their other core market: Photoshop plug-ins for photographers and digital artists. Since 2004, the company has released tools that help professional and hobbyist photographers to uniquely create a fully digital portrait studio. The company has recently focused on software that provides custom graphic effects, and plans to release new innovative products by the beginning of Q4 2008. Digital Anarchy is also considering development for related host applications like Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture.

Jim Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy, said, "We have been a leader in the After Effects and related markets since 2001 but have decided to focus on the Photoshop and digital photography markets. We're excited about some of the opportunities there and are looking closer at current customer needs. Developing more creative and productive technology to service the wide variety of Photoshop artists and digital photographers is an important part of our strategy moving forward."