Curvemeister is constantly adding new features. If you have not upgraded, it's free to owners of Curvemeister, so now is the time! The information here will be interesting if you are already familiar with Curvemeister. If you are just starting out, you may want to skip ahead to the Getting Started section.
v2.1.5
This is a fix release that affects all owners of the product. This version contains bug fixes, additional pins, improvements to the appearance of the threshold image, and more.
v2.1
We've added quite a number of new features to version 2.1. As always, these features are free if you own Curvemeister 2!
Note: If you are using version 2.0.21 or earlier, be sure to upgrade and see all the new stuff we've added. If you are using the demo, you may upgrade via the web, otherwise use the Start button to access the Curvemeister update command.
Here at the Curvemeister Institute, our designers and technicians have been busy adding new features to Curvemeister. These features are centered on adding functionality to pinning, and to the Hue Clock and the accompanying numeric displays.
If you're already up to speed on Curvemeister 2.0, here's a brief description of what has changed in the last release. Look for the links within each description. These will take you to the relevant manual page for more detail on a particular feature.
Figure
1. The pin palette with tabs.
Commands for changing pins are accessed by right clicking on this window
Figure
2 - Hue Clock options
Figure
3. The stand-alone Hue Clock
measuring a Photoshop swatch.
If you are just upgrading from Curvemeister 1, the big features for version 2.0 are Color Pinning, and the Hue Clock. Add to these major features a wide array of supporting features and enhancements and you have more leverage than ever to make good looking images, and to do so in absolutely the coolest way possible.
Let's get started with the introductions.
The Pin Palette
Pins provide a new and powerful technique to retain and apply knowledge about specific colors to your images. Getting a good flesh tone can be as simple as dragging a flesh colored pin onto your image, admiring the resulting curves, picking the color space that looks best, and clicking OK.
What do you do when the most important color in the image is a flesh tone, you've jumped through all the hoops you can find, and it somehow just doesn't look right? Enter color Pinning, a method for selecting a color from a library of target colors and applying it to your image.
Curvemeister provides you with an expandable and easy to use library of target colors. Just grab a pin from the Pin Palette, drag and drop it onto your image, and use the resulting curves for the remainder of your curving. Pins are organized as text files that you may edit in the usual way and easily share with others.
The Pin Palette also supports a number of advanced features for the professional, including configurable CMYK shadow and highlight values.
The Hue Clock
See
how what your colors are doing as never before!
Until now, Photoshop folks have had two ways to determine the relationships between colors: looking at the image and looking at the numbers. Now there's a third:: the Hue Clock, which displays hue and saturation as a quick, easy to read clock dial. Using the Hue Clock, it's easy to determine, effortlessly, whether a flesh tone is reasonably accurate (12:30 on the Hue Clock), sweep the cursor over and image and get a good sense of color variation. The length of the hand indicates saturation.
Floating Neutrals, Copy and Paste, and More
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Imagine
in your minds eye, that you are moving the green point
up and down and the red and blue points are following right along. |
Let's start with
A similar operation works, with some additional care, for pinned colors as well, so you can pin a flesh tone, and move one curve vertically while keeping your pinned color where it belongs.
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Is copied as:
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Copy and paste. Most of us would scream if copy and paste were removed from our favorite text editor. Likewise, we will breath a sigh of relief when copy and paste makes its arrival in the world of curves and colors. This feature saves you a lot of time if, for example, you've spent several minutes tuning up the perfect Lightness curve, and want to take it out for a spin on the RGB curve. This is easier than ever because there is no need to recreate all that effort - just copy and paste, and you're on the air with your curve in RGB instead of Lightness. Use this feature to quickly copy the same curve in multiple channels, or to use on multiple images.
Ever want to email someone a description of a color or a curve? Now you can copy and paste a curve in text form, suitable for pasting into a reference document, or emailing to a friend.
