OperationOperationThe Camouflage plug-in is rather easy to use so operation should be pretty much self-explanatory. This section will therefore only serve as an overview to get you going.
The screenshot shown on the right is the window you'll see when starting the plug-in, it contains a few sections, labeled with the red digits, which will be described in sequence.
If you're familiar with our other plug-ins, you'll know how to use the preview window.
On top is the big preview window, if the image doesn't fit into the space reserved for it
you can pan it around by clicking the left mouse button anywhere on the image and dragging
whilst keeping the button pressed.
Beneath the preview is the progress indicator and the zoom buttons which will let you
either zoom in or out of the image. Please note that if you set the scale (see 2. Effect
controls) too low and/or the zoom scale too small; the preview cannot be correctly
calculated, the Camouflage plug-in will warn you if this is the case.
These three controls determine the shape and size of the effect. From top to bottom
they are;
Scale, used to set the size (and consequently, the amount) of the spots, setting this
value too low may produce faulty results on small images (either width or height less then
105 pixels) or small zoom levels.
Blur, controls how "rough" the spots appear to be, setting this value too low
will show a lot of speckle whereas too high a setting will make the effect look like
blobs.
Falloff, The falloff will determine how the size of the spots relative to each other
should be. Please note that the falloff is relative to the first color, not the
background. You could set both the background color as the first color to the same color
and use three colors if you require falloff control over a bi-color pattern.
These eight boxes show the colors used in the pattern. Colors are applied from the back
to the front starting with the leftmost color defined.
Clicking on any of the color boxes will allow you to change it's color by using a standard
color dialog.
Clicking the checkboxes will tell Camouflage to use that color for a layer. Logically you
are not able to select only one layer, two is the minimum. The background layer is always
selected and it's checkbox cannot be switched off.
The Camouflage plug-in contains a range of well-known and lesser-known camouflage
pattern ranging from WW2 to modern palettes. These colors are based on actual camouflage
patterns used in real life and will prove useful if you want realism. Due to the sheer
amount of camouflage patterns used in real-life we've had to make a selection which we
believe is both varied and accurate enough.
There's also a few animal camouflage patterns included.
As a small note; if you're looking for the well-known "Arctic Snow" pattern,
we've left it out because it's simply plain white.
Changing the random seed will change the pattern itself in a random way. As with all controls, the random setting can be saved and will produce identical results each and every time.
The Open and Save buttons allow you to save and restore any settings you have made. Clicking either button will show a corresponding window allowing you to open or save settings. The default extension for these settings files is .cfs, it will be added automatically if you do not specify it manually. The format used for saving the files is extensible so future updates of Camouflage will be able to use them.
These two buttons hardly require explanation; the OK button will render the effect to the source image, the Cancel button will return to the host application without any changes to the image.
Left are the Help button, which you have already discovered seeing as you're reading the help system now and a link to our site hidden under the copyright-notice, just click it and you're favorite browser will be launched automatically.