Colormancer Manual

• Installation
• System Requirements
• Quick Start
• Controls In-depth
• Black & White Conversions

Installation Instructions

To install, simply unzip and copy the plugin file into your Photoshop plugins directory. It's as simple as that! If you run into problems, try the step-by-step instructions below:

Quick Start

• The three most useful controls are Contrast, Brightness, and Saturation.
  
  Most images will benefit from a boost in Contrast, usually in the range of around 6 to 14. As with all the controls, you can drag the slider around to adjust the setting to taste.
  
  Some (but not all) images will benefit from an adjustment to Brightness. Decreasing brightness can make an image darker and moodier while increasing brightness can help flatten out shadows. Be aware that adjusting Brightness will have an effect on perceived contrast. To compensate, increase the Contrast setting when increasing Brightness and vice versa.
  
  The Saturation control does what its name suggests. Adjust it to taste.
  

• The Reset button will reset all controls to their default neutral positions. This can be helpful when starting with a new image.
  

• Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the proxy (preview area). Click and drag the proxy area to move around in it.
  

• The other controls (Brightness/Contrast Adjust, Luminance Compensation, and the Luminance coefficients for red, green, and blue) change the effect of brightness, contrast, and saturation. In many cases, their effect is quite subtle so these controls can be ignored.
  

• Note that Colormancer can be used as a Smart Filter (*Photoshop CS3+ required). It can also be combined with other filters such as Shadow/Highlight to recover any shadow detail that may be crushed when enhancing contrast.

• Use layer masks if you wish to isolate the effect based on selections.

• The filter window can be resized for a larger preview.

That's all you need to know to get started!

Controls In-depth

Brightness: This changes overall brightness of the image similar to the effect of the Midtones slider in Photoshop's Levels adjustment.

Contrast: This increases contrast in the image by applying a s-shaped curve to the image. This is equivalent to using a s-shaped curve in Photoshop's Curves adjustment.

Brightness/Contrast Adjust: This control changes the Brightness and Contrast algorithms and alters their effect. Higher values tend to make the image appear more pastel. Lower values will make saturated colors darker. This value does nothing if both brightness and contrast are at neutral positions.

Saturation: Higher values increase saturation. Saturation is never increased in a way that would cause clipping. Each pixel is evaluated individually. Negative numbers can be used to create negative saturation.

Luminance compensation: This control changes the saturation algorithm. If set to 0, luminance compensation will be disabled. Without this, increasing saturation will increase the luminance of saturated colors, making them brighter than they should be. The default setting (1.0) will maintain constant luminance so that saturation adjustments do not affect luminance at all.

Luminance coefficients: These are the co-efficients, or weightings, used to calculate luminance. Changing these settings will adjust the weight given to each color in the saturation algorithm. In most cases the effect is subtle and you do not need to adjust these parameters.

Show original: Toggle this button to see the image without any effect applied.

Black & White Conversions

Set Saturation to 0 to convert an image to black and white.

The luminance coefficients settings for red, green, and blue can be used to simulate color filters used in black and white photography. You can think of the luminance coefficients as weights being given to each color. Reducing the blue slider will reduce the weight given to blues and vice versa. This can be used to make skies darker or brighter when converted to black & white.

The images below show a black and white conversion with the default settings and with only blue contributing to the

The comparison below shows the effect of changing the luminance coefficients from the default to weight blue as much as possible. In this case, this was done to create contrast between the sky and the church to enhance the composition of the picture.

Normal B&W Brightness: 0.6 Contrast: 13.9 Saturation: 0 Red: 0.2126 Green: 0.7152 Blue: 0.0722	Blue only Brightness: 0.6 Contrast: 13.9 Saturation: 0 Red: 0.01 Green: 0.01 Blue: 1.0

System requirements

(For selective color only) Monitor resolution at least 1024x900.

Mac:

• Adobe Photoshop CS3, CS4 or higher
• CS5: CS5 must be opened in 32-bit mode for the filters to work. A future update will provide 64-bit support.
• OS X 10.4.0 or higher
• PowerPC or Intel processor (the plug-in is a Universal binary that works on both platforms)

Windows:

• A 64-bit version for Photoshop CS4 is included.
• Adobe Photoshop CS or higher (e.g. CS4), Photoshop Elements 2 or higher, Irfanview, or Paint Shop Pro X2
• Windows XP/Vista
• Intel or AMD processor that supports SSE2 instructions (Pentium 4 or higher, AMD64 or higher)

Changes

v1.3.3: Double-clicking on a setting name will reset it. Improved stability.

v1.3.1: (Mac only) Save + load settings default directory now sticks, added Mac Photoline compatibility

v1.3.0: Multi-threaded for faster performance, x64 PC support, clicking on proxy shows original image

v1.2.2: Fixed bug where last settings will not stick when applying filter through Filters -> Colormancer.

v1.2.1: Faster preview. Plugin compatible with Irfanview and Paint Shop Pro.