BlackMagic Documentation

BlackMagic may be used to colorize Black & White, Sepia, or IR (infrared) photos, or to color-correct ones with faded or inappropriate colours. Being extremely simple to use, its a software that transcends age and professional boundaries, providing an immense sense of achievement, pride and satisfaction for kids and adults alike. The resulting colorized photos have optimally saturated and consistent, correct hues - giving the appearance as if the photo had originally been 'shot' in colour! BlackMagic delivers such professional grade results with the minimum of fuss, and just a few minutes worth of effort. BlackMagic incorporates "TimeBrush™ RLC [Real-Life-Colour]™" standard. The TimeBrush RLC technology was specifically created for colourizing black & white motion pictures of the Hollywood fame. This feature provides BlackMagic the ability to render superb, rich, vibrant looking colours, that are not under/ over saturated, yet look completely natural.

Colourizing Photos - the ISSUES Colourizing black & white photos can get quite involving, depending upon the quality and sophistication of the results desired. The process involved can be very tedious and challenging, taking a day [often several] to completely colourize a single black & white photograph to professional grade quality. The typical 'paint' computer programs usually require the operator to select individual hue [colour], opacity [transparency], etc., for colouring a specific portion of the photo. This is further compounded by the need to 'guess' the right hue/ saturation values to colour a certain object, which can take several hit-and-trial iterations, with no guarantee of a 'best' match. The whole process may need to be repeated hundreds of times over to finish a single photograph...even then, the results often leave much to be desired, and rarely resemble the 'real life colours' that we are used to seeing in colour photographs Even with all the professional care and sophistication, it is common to get results depicting improper colour matches, over saturated colours, dull/ faded colours, or over-emphasized/ blurred edges.

BlackMagic resolves all of the above problems associated with colourizing black & white photos, and more. The system uses state-of-the-art Neural Net algorithms to provide dynamic parameterization. This means that the user is not required to pick specific colour hues or the associated values/ parameters - she/ he works by simply identifying the 'type of object' to be coloured. BlackMagic then automatically performs the needed calculations to continuously vary all required parameters, based on the content of the photograph/ region being colourized - all done in the background transparent to the user. This process ensures consistent as well as optimal selection of hue, brightness, saturation, opacity, etc. for colourizing any object/ region of the image, without the guess work that would otherwise have been required. BlackMagic provides several tools, to most expeditiously apply RealLifeColour palettes to a monochromatic image. It is available in several versions, to suit any budget or need.

HE [Home Edition] is a low priced consumer version suited for home PC users, this edition of BlackMagic provides a fun way for Mums/ Dads, and the kids alike, to have fun colourizing Black & White photos from the family album, or to re-colour the ones that did not come out quite right. BlackMagic HE supports a maximum processing resolution of one million pixels, suited for printing at A4/ Letter sizes (similar in size to 8" X 10" photo prints) on most consumer-end colour printers (such as colour photo ink-jet printers).This edition makes a unique gift for any occasion, or an invaluable addition to your or your kids' personal software library. Photos colourized using BlackMagic HE are indeed masterpieces that you or your kids create; the results are sure to provide a tremendous sense of achievement, pride, and satisfaction, besides delivering professionally restored family heirlooms, that will be admired by generations to come.

BE [Business Edition] is primarily aimed at small, individually owned/ run photo restoration services, this edition of BlackMagic allows for processing at upto 4M-pixel image resolutions, for high quality and higher resolution prints. The Business Edition also offers additional functionality, tools, and palettes over the HE version.

PE [Professional Edition] is the ultimate photo-colourization tool, and offers a rich set of tools and palettes for an unprecedented level of productivity in colourization projects. The PE version supports processing at any resolution [virtually, limited only by the computer's resources]. It offers additional features and functionality over Home or Business Editions, and will suit large photo processing/ restoration studios, or photo artists.

All BlackMagic versions offer an extremely attractive ROI, considering that having a single Black & White photo colourized from a photo-studio may cost between US$ 50 - 500. All Editions come with full on-line help/ tutorial complete with sample images, and 180 days web/ e-mail support which includes bug fixes and free product updates. For more details and price/ feature comparison, please visit http://www.neuraltek.com/bmagic/ .

Following are the minimum system requirements to run BlackMagic software on a PC:

* Please note: Though any Edition of BlackMagic can be run on the minimal system specifications, more system resources may be required to handle larger graphics, especially with the Professional Edition. Our tests indicate that to process photos at around 14 MegaPixel resolution, a Pentium IV or equivalent system running Windows 2000 or higher at 1.5GHz+ with 500+ MB system memory, and a fast Graphics sub-system capable of minimum 1024 x 768 screen resolution at 32-bit colour-depth w/ 64MB+ video RAM, should be considered desirable for good response times.

Volume Discounts, Re-seller/ OEM agreements are available and TBQ/ negotiable - please contact sales@neuraltek.com .

Following table provides a comparison of features and limitations between available BlackMagic Editions. Please consult the Legend at the bottom for reading the Colour-coded information. For the latest pricing, please check the web site at http://www.neuraltek.com/bmagic/.

BlackMagic Version 2.x Price/ Feature Comparison	Home Edition	Business Edition	Professional Edition

On-line Help & Tutorial	Full + Pop-up	Full + Pop-up	Full + Pop-up
Common Image Operations	Load, Scan, SaveAs, Print, LoadAsGray, Invert (convert from neg) 1 MegaPixel Max Processing Resolution	Load, Scan, SaveAs, Print, LoadAsGray, Invert (convert from neg) 4 MegaPixel Max Processing Resolution	Load, Scan, SaveAs, Print, LoadAsGray, Invert (convert from neg) Un-limited Processing Resolution, Max Resolution Limit selectable
Supported Image Formats	Windows BMP (load & save), JPEG (load & save)	Windows BMP (load & save), JPEG (load & save)	Windows BMP (load & save), JPEG (load & save)
Rendering Tools	Selector, Eraser, Smart Paint-brush, Selection-paint, Magic Touch-paint	Selector, Eraser, Smart Paint-brush, Selection-paint, Magic Touch-paint	Selector, Eraser, Smart Paint-brush, Selection-paint, Magic Touch-paint, AutoFinish
Rendering Tools - Options	Overwrite/ Layered Mode, Brush Size & Shape selector, Brush Selectivity control, Quick Brush Size/ Shape selections	Overwrite/ Layered Mode, Brush Size & Shape selector, Brush Selectivity control, Quick Brush Size/ Shape selections, Magic Touch-paint Integration control	Overwrite/ Layered Mode, Brush Size & Shape selector, Brush Selectivity control, Quick Brush Size/ Shape selections, Magic Touch-paint Integration control
Current Selection Display	Tool & Hue	Tool & Hue	Tool & Hue
Image Window Information Displays	Image width & height, X & Y coordinates, RGB component values at cursor, Hue at cursor	Image width & height, X & Y coordinates, RGB component values at cursor, Hue at cursor	Image width & height, X & Y coordinates, RGB component values at cursor, Hue at cursor
Image Window Controls	Un-do, Pressure damper, Caption, Rendering in Zoom in/ out state with auto-sync	Un-do, Pressure damper, Caption, Rendering in Zoom in/ out state with auto-sync	Un-do, Pressure damper, Caption, Rendering in Zoom in/ out state with auto-sync
Colors & Palettes Selection	69 Neural Net pre-configured palettes w/ dynamic parameterization based on TimeBrush RLC standard	69 Neural Net pre-configured palettes w/ dynamic parameterization based on TimeBrush RLC standard, Free color Picker (RGB/ HSL)	69 Neural Net pre-configured palettes w/ dynamic parameterization based on TimeBrush RLC standard, Free color Picker (RGB/ HSL), 'Clear' palette mode for use with 'Tuning' controls [see below]
Custom Palettes & RGB Tuning		Load & Use existing BlackMagic Custom Derivative Palettes [.bcp files]	Create, Load & Use existing BlackMagic Custom Derivative Palettes [.bcp files] Direct modification of Neural Net palettes through Red, Green, & Blue channel variation and saving the results as ".bcp" [BlackMagic Custom Palette] files
Luminance			Modify gray-scale level for parts in the original image
Saturation			Modify Dominant hue level in the final computed color

NeuralTek, BlackMagic, TimeBrush, TimeBrush RLC/ Real Life Colour are registered/ unregistered trademarks/ names of NeuralTek and TimeBrush Pty. Ltd. [ACN 064 583 633].