Note: This is an overview. If you prefer your information presented as a list, go straight to the description of the Eyedropper Sample window and menu commands.

When a pin is dragged onto a particular color in an image, the resulting pinned sample acts as a "working copy" of the pin that was used to create it. The sample is pinned because it will modify the colors in your image by creating control points on the curves, in effect using a curve to pin a color to another value. Think of a pinned sample as an automated helper that that creates the curve to convert a given color in the image to the pinned color.

There are three main concepts behind this: source color, pin mode, and pin color.

The source color is the color that will be modified by the pinned sample. Ninety nine percent of the time this is the color under the sample point. You may modify the source color by dragging one of the curve points belonging to the pinned sample. This sounds complicated, but in practice this takes care of itself without any effort form you. It simply means that you may have the last word by manually tuning the curve.

When you drag a pin from the pin palette onto the image, Curvemeister creates a sample with a pin color and a pin mode that are derived from the pin.

You may also create a pinned sample manually, by alt-clicking on the image to create a sample, and then using that sample's right-click menu to set the mode and color manually.

Either way, however you create it, it is called a constrained or pinned sample.

Note: you may modify the source color of a pinned sample by dragging the corresponding curve control points in a horizontal direction. Dragging the sample point will restore the original source color.

The pin mode is an attribute of a pinned sample that specifies how Curvemeister should modify the source color. You may change this using the Pin Mode sub-menu of the sample pane.

A pinned sample with check marks next to Hue and Saturation will only change the hue and saturation of the color sample, and not its brightness. Shadow, highlight, and neutral are also special pin modes.

Figure 3. Pin Color: This menu item allows you to assign a pin color in several different ways. If no items are checked, as in this case, the pin color is from a pin that was dragged onto the image

The pin color specifes the desired color of the constrained sample. Pin color is sometimes called the destination color..

You may modify the pin color in several ways using the Pin Color sub-menu Curvemeister uses the pin color and mode to modify your curves so as to convert the source color to the pin color.

Note: double click on a sample pane to access the Color Picker.

If you create a pinned sample and decide that you may want to use it later on other images, click on the desired tab in the Pin Pallette (or create a new pin file) and use the Save Sample as Pin command to create a new pin.

As with most Curvemeister features, your work is automatically carried over when you select a different color space in the curve window. Curvemeister will use information from your pinned samples to recalculate a new curve for that color mode. This allows "color space shopping": after setting your pinned samples you may quickly "shop around" for the color space that looks the best.

Note: In some cases, Curvemeister is unable to honor all of the pinned samples. Just as multiple neutrals are not recognized in Lab mode, certain pinned samples may be ignored if they would cause the curve to take on a bad shape, triggering the Curve Guard feature. You may detect that this is happening by watching the curve window while you move your pinned sample around, but this could be a sign that you are using too many pins. In general, RGB and CMYK are more tolerant of multiple pins than Lab or HSB.

The Sample Palette's right-click menu (figure 1) has two sub-menus that are used to modify pinned samples: Pin Color, and Pin Mode. These menus have several commands that determine whether a particular pinned sample will control Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. 

Although it is unusual to do so, you may save one or more samples, constrained or not, to a file. This can be convenient for images such as color charts, where colors will stay in the same place from image to image, or where you wish to perform a curve extraction operation, as discussed in a tutorial on the Curvemeister site.

The majority of pinned samples are temporary, and will go away after you click the OK button. If you want to use a constrained sample again, right click on it and save it as a pin.

When creating a pin, you use the commands in the sample pane's right click menu to set the pin color and mode manually, as you make changes to the image. For example, you may have a picture whose flesh tones you like. Alt click on the color, and use the pin palette's right click menu Save Sample as Pin command to pin it. You may then use Save Sample as Pin to create a new pin from your pinned sample.

Note: changing a pinned sample does not change the original pin that may have been used to create the sample. (To change a pin, use the pin palette's Pin Edit command).

Because most objects will appear in a variety of lighting situations, a color such as a flesh tone will normally constrain only hue and saturation.  Other objects may require a complete color match. For example, logo colors and other colors associated with two dimensional art, would normally have hue, saturation, and brightness constrained. 

You may control which of hue, saturation, and brightness are controlled using the sample menu, accessed via the small menu button on each sample's pane. You may save your constrained sample as a pin by using the Save Sample as Pin command.

Disable Pin temporarily turns off the effects of a pin, allowing you to see what effect the pinned sample has on an image.

Shadow, highlight, and neutral are usually shown as icons that do not normally have a sample pane. They are actually pinned samples whose sample pane is hidden.

You can prove this by right clicking on the icon to access its menu (figure 2)., and then on Pin Mode and Pin color to examine or change the pin settings.

Show Info will cause the sample to have a sample pane, just like a sample you create by alt-clicking on the image.

Shadow and highlight, naturally, do not allow their curve control points to be modified at all.

Note: Curvemeister supports Floating Neutrals, allowing you to drag the curve points of a neutral vertically. This allows adjustment of overall brightness on several curves simultaneously, while still retaining the neutral adjustment.