Documentation - Modify menu
[ Colors | Palette | Image | Filters | Effects | Selection | Pre-Process | Plug-Ins ]
Colors
- Convert Colors - use this option to convert current image color depth into:
16M - True Color (24bit),
Gray - 256 shades of Gray (8bit),
256c - 256 colors with palette (8bit),
16c - 16 colors with palette (4bit),
2c - 2 colors with palette (1bit),
Mono - only black and white (1bit), RGBA - True Color with alpha (32bit).
- Brightness - The Brightness command lightens or darkens the entire image or selection.
- Contrast - The Contrast command changes the amount of shading between areas. You can use it to sharpen or blur an image, to make colors appear more saturated, and make specific areas stand out.
- Brightness/Contrast - A combined tool.
- Equalize histogram - The Equalize command distributes the lightness values of the pixels more evenly across the light spectrum from black to white. It makes the darkest pixel as close to black and the lightest pixel as close to white as possible. It then distributes the remaining pixels evenly between these two values. This produces an averaging, or tempering, of the brightness in the image.
- Stretch histogram - If the Histogram does not cover the entire lightness spectrum, the image does not contain very dark or very light areas; it lacks contrast. The Stretch command stretches the graph closer to both ends so that it covers more of the spectrum without loosing any colors.
- Stretch histogram by 0.5% cut - If the Histogram does not cover the entire lightness spectrum, the image does not contain very dark or very light areas; it lacks contrast. The Stretch command stretches the graph closer discarding colors below 0.5%, this gives better stretched image.
- Stretch histogram by custom cut - If the Histogram does not cover the entire lightness spectrum, the image does not contain very dark or very light areas; it lacks contrast. The Stretch command stretches the graph closer discarding colors below percentage set by the user, this gives custom stretching.
- Negative Image - Creating a Negative image replaces each pixel color with its opposite on the color wheel. The brightness value of the pixel changes to 255 minus the original value. Zero becomes 255, and 30 becomes 225. The new image is like a photographic negative. You can use this function to create a positive image from a scanned negative.
- Swap Channels - Swap channels for example from Red,Green,Blue to Blue,Green,Red, etc.
- Extract Channel - An image stores its color information in channels: Red, Green and Blue. When you separate these channels individual grayscale images are created. You can use these images to create interesting effects. This option extract any given channel or any combination.
- Convert Color Spaces - Convert between RGB - HSL - YUV - CMYK.
- Combine from RGB - If you have split an image into its color channels, you can combine the channels to recreate the original image or combine other channels to create various effects. Select three gray scale image to combine in one RGB.
- Threshold - Choose the Threshold command to create a black-and-white image from your picture or layer.
Palette
- View and Modify - Edit the active image's palette. » Using the Palette Dialog Box
- Order palette by luminance - Selects a method for sorting the palette colors. Sorting the palette merely changes the arrangement of the colors. Sorting by Luminance arranges the colors by their level of lightness. Lighter colors are at the top; darker colors are at the bottom.
- Use current palette to view all images - This option is interesting for previewing of same palette images using user selected palette. It could be interesting for meteorologists to view satellite image sequences improving visibility of some object, clouds for example.
- Use each image's original palette - Disables the previous option.
- Load palette - Loads palette from standard windows RIFF PAL file.
- Save palette - Saves palette into standard windows RIFF PAL file.
Image
- Resize - When you want to resize an image but not crop it or add new canvas around it, use the Resize command. Changing the size of the image is called resampling. If you are creating a web page and have an image that is too large to fit, you can resize it. You can also reduce the number of pixels in an image to make it download more quickly.
» Using the Resize Dialog Box
Note: To change the dimensions of the image by adding or removing pixels from the edges, use the Canvas Size command.
- Rotate - Rotating an image moves it around its center point. It is a convenient command for re-aligning scanned images that are crooked.
» Using the Rotate Dialog Box
- Rotate Left by 90 degrees - Simply rotates image by 90 degrees.
- Rotate Right by 90 degrees - Simply rotates image by 90 degrees.
- Vertical Flip - Simply flips the image.
- Horizontal Mirror - Simply mirrors the image.
- Crop into selection - Cropping eliminates areas of an image. It deletes everything except the selection and reduces the image size to the length and width of the selection. It has the same effect as using the Change Canvas Size dialog box to reduce the dimensions of an image.
- Canvas Size - Use this option to change the dimensions of the image. The white color is used as a background color. To change the image resolution, use the Resize dialog box, not the Canvas Size dialog box.
- Add Image - You may combine two images to produce a third one that is the product of the color data of the two source images.
» Using the Add Image Dialog Box
Filters
- Blur, Gaussian Blur, Smooth: The Blur effects are filters that smooth transitions and decrease contrast by averaging the pixels next to hard edges of defined lines and areas where there are significant color transitions (Low-Pass Filters). The Smooth filter has 3x3 kernel which applies a uniform blur to an image can be used for photo retouching. The Gaussian Blur has 5x5 Gaussian kernel and applies the effect with more intensity, it's faster but lower quality analog is Blur.
Note: You can apply effects to grayscale and 24-bit color images. If necessary, increase the color depth of your image to make the commands available.
Note: To apply an effect to a selection, create the selection before choosing the effect.
- Sharpen, Sharpen More: The Sharpen effects are filters that produce the opposite effect of the Blur commands by increasing the contrast between adjacent pixels where there are significant color contrasts, usually at the edges of objects. They lighten the light pixels and darken the dark pixels. Sharpen More applies the Sharpen effect with more intensity.
Note: You can apply effects to grayscale and 24-bit color images. If necessary, increase the color depth of your image to make the commands available.
Note: To apply an effect to a selection, create the selection before choosing the effect.
- Fast Find Edges - This is a filter that accentuate the areas of contrast and edges in an image. It enhances the contrasts between light and dark in the image by darkening the image and then highlighting the edges.
- De-Interlace - Use this filter to clean up the scan lines from frames of video images. When a television sends a video signal, the signal updates alternates scan lines in each video frame. When you capture a frame, every second set of lines can either be missing or be out of alignment with the rest of the scan lines. The filter removes the odd or even lines and then reconstructs the missing information.
Note: Because the filter is designed to work directly on a captured image, you should deinterlace an image before resizing it.
Effects
- Drop Shadow - This effects creates new image with slightly larger canvas casting a shadow from the original image.
Selection
- Print Scale Bar - Use this function to effectively print a bar and a value of how many units this bar represents. In order to do this use "Line Length Tool" to draw a line of desired size in desired position and then press "Print scale bar". If image doesn't have any meta-data then default scale of 72 dots per inch is used, for biological images normally scale in microns will be printed, for GeoTiff in meters.
- Draw Selection Contours - This functions draws selection contours on the image.
- Obtain Selected Area - This functions calculates area of the selected region. Highlights selected region modifying image so you can save which area was found. The size of the area in pixels and other units is shown in the status bar. If image doesn't have any meta-data then default scale of 72 dots per inch is used otherwise correct units are used.
- Create Mask - This function creates a new grayscale image with white pixels representing selected region and black the rest of the image. It's possible to use this option to export selection to other programs.
Pre-Process
This command executes pre-processing filters defined by the user trough general configuration window.
Plug-in Filters
You can use external image processing filters. If you use filters, they are added to the end of this menu.