© 2003-2006 Mike Russell, All Rights Reserved

The Pin Palette
 
Figure 1. The pin palette is shown on the left,.  Individual pins are  dragged from the palette
onto the image, pinning the color on the image to the proper color.




Figure 1a.  This being Curvemeister, the curve is always the end result of a pinning operation.  Curve points will be automatically generated for whatever color mode you select in the curve window.






Any color may be saved as a pin by first creating a sample, by alt-clicking on the appropriate location in the image.  Then click on the menu button on the sample to save the pin (see figure 2).

Note: normally one or two pins is plenty.  RGB and wgCMYK generally provide more breathing room for pins, since colors of varying brightness can be spaced apart better than in Lab.  HSB is usually a poor pinning color space because it is easy for flesh tones to cross the 12:00 divide. In HSB there is quite a bit of cross talk between colors of similar saturation.
Figure 2. A sample being saved as a pin

Figure 3. The Pin Edit Dialog

Clicking on Save Sample as Pin brings up the Pin Edit dialog (see figure 3.).  You may now designate the type of pin, edit the final color of the pin as a text item, and determine whether the pin constrains any of hue, saturation, or brightness.

Note: this example shows an Lab color value.  It is generally better to save a pin while in Lab mode, since the resulting pin color will be independent of the current working profile.

Once created, your pin may be used as a color reference similar to a neutral point. The applications for pins include any color that is you expect to use more than once: skin tones, sky, plant tones, catalog color matching, and logo matching, to name a few.
Figure 3a.  Your newly created pin, at home in the Pin Palette

Figure 4.  Edit Pins opens the text file containing your pins for direct editing in a text editor.

Note: your pins are saved in a text file that you may edit directly via the "Edit Pins" menu item, accessed via a right click on the palette window. This is discussed in more detail in the section on Sharing Pins.

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