Increases image contrast by optimizing the tone levels for light and dark areas of an image and utilizing gamma correction for medium range tones. This tool is helpful for images that are over or under exposed as well as counteracting diffuse light problems caused by a large number of lenses.

Use the sliders “Highlights and “Shadows” to manually determine a reference point for the lightest and darkest areas of the image. Checking off “Auto-Contrast” analyzes the image to automatically determine the optimum setting.

Use the slider “Midtones” to manually determine a reference point for the midtone range of the image. Checking off “Auto-Tone” analyzes the image to automatically determine the optimum setting.

The sliders can also be used to further refine the automatically determined settings after both Auto-Contrast and Auto-Tone have been checked off.

The three sliders for “Brightness”, “Contrast”, and “Saturation”, act like those found on color television sets. The entire color spectrum is affected.

Note: This filter changes colors linearly, which may lead to losses in the upper and lower color ranges. Instead you may want to try the Exposure Correction tool which utilizes a more advanced algorithm preventing this undesired effect.

This tool offers three sliders. The “Brightness” slider targets changes of brightness in the middle spectrum. The darkest and lightest colors receive the smallest change, which prevents the loss of black or white areas in the image.

The “Contrast” slider allows fine-tuning of contrasts in the bright and dark areas of the image.

The “Saturation” slider utilizes a highly advanced algorithm that achieves much more balanced results than the linear adjustments caused by the “Hue, Saturation, and Brightness” tool.

The “Hue” slider of this tool window changes entire colors. If this tool is applied to only one target color, it becomes possible to limit changes to specific color areas only. The effect of the color-specific saturation slider is identical with that of the saturation settings of the color setting.

The “Brightness” slider keeps the hue and saturation constant, setting it apart from other brightness tools.

Note: A small checkmark next to a color indicates that a setting is no longer in the neutral position.

This tool is a color equalizer effective on the saturation of a specific color that appears in the image. It is especially useful to counteract discolorations due to original poor image quality or scanning flaws.

Note: This tool is a sub-category of the “Hue, Saturation, and Brightness” tool.

Selecting a specific color from the drop-down list and using the “Cyan-Red”, “Magenta-Green”, and “Yellow-Blue” sliders you can correctly balance a specific color channel individually.

By selecting “All Colors” use the slider “Shadows-Highlights” for fine-tuning your color selection.

The three color sliders and the brightness slider limit the effect to the color of your choice.

The “Color” tool is used for tinting or adding overall color to an image. It can be used to colorize grey images for example. However, the correction of color problems in images is best done with the tools “Color Tuning” or “Hue, Saturation, Brightness”.

Small specks caused by dust on your scanner or on slides scanned can be removed easily with this tool.

This simple, one-slider tool increases sharpness of the entire image. It should be applied to an image of final size; resizing undoes the effect.

Like the sharpness tool, a simple, one-slider tool to blur the contours of your image creating an out-of-focus look. Works well on backgrounds to create depth and to put the foreground subject into greater clarity. It should be applied to an image of final size; resizing undoes the effect.

This tool can be used to substitute specific colors of an image with other colors. The slider “Intensity” defines the degree of colorization used in the image. If necessary, contrast will automatically be reduced to retain the selected color.

This tool applies a different color each to all dark and all light areas of an image. It is ideal to retain the effect of an original duo-tone image. Sepia images are an example where this tool could create a different bicolor effect, blue-green for example.

This tool enables specific color corrections, creative color effects, and makes possible the creation of high-quality black and white images.

This tool removes, on a sliding scale from 0-100%, the saturation of all colors. It differs from other saturation tools because it corrects apparent differences in brightness; yellows become lighter than blues.

Giving an image the popular sepia tint is easy with this tool. On a sliding scale it turns your image from very light sepia to monochrome.

This tool provides your image with a color background. By adjusting the background size to be larger than the image the look of a frame is created. Adding rounded corners is also possible.

This tool softens the edges of a rectangular image by blurring them.

The Text Tool has a special ability. It can place text into the image from direct input as well as from descriptor text. One classic usage would be a copyright notice – taken directly from the data base.

The upper section of the panel defines the text to be displayed. The default insert text is the system descriptor “Copyright”. The descriptor name is always bracketed with paired percentage (%) signs to look like this: %%descriptor%%. Descriptor values can be typed manually and bracketed so. You can also click the “Insert” button and open the Insert Descriptor window which lets you conveniently choose from a list of available descriptors. Of course, you will have to make certain that the “Copyright” field or any other descriptor field actually contains text. Alternatively, you can simply type over the default descriptor with regular text input. For multi-line text, type “\n” to force a line break. Right-clicking in the Text field opens a contact menu via which you could alternatively access the Insert Descriptor window as well as the option to insert special characters.

The middle section of the Text panel defines the font, style, shading, and shadow color. Using the shadow effect is recommended for better readability when text is superimposed on an area with light and dark background. The shadow color should be a strong contrast to the font color, for example use a black shadow for a white text color or vice versa.

Font size remains constant for all picture sizes (thumbnail, zoomed, image viewer). The text will only be scaled if it otherwise would not fit into the picture. To turn this feature off, uncheck the box “Scale Text to Image Size”.

Further down you’ll find a slider. With it you can seamlessly adjust the transparency of your text in the image. Making copyright text somewhat transparent on, let’s say an art photograph, causes less visual disturbance, yet still remains readable. Large text or a logo sprawled across the entire image in a watermark fashion discourages unauthorized “nabbing” of images from your web site, yet still permits a view of the image itself.

The bottom section of the Text panel defines position and orientation. Clicking on one of the positioning arrows correspondingly aligns your text in the image. Adjusting the direction of text to be rotated up and down the left edge, for example, and setting edge distance can be done via the two remaining controls.

Using this tool’s slider converts your image into its negative opposite by exchanging the colors to their RGB-complementary opposite and inverting brightness.

Note: This tool can only be effectively used on black and white negatives. Inverting color negatives results in an orange cast.

This tool finds the edges and outlines in your image and makes them increasingly more prominent on a sliding scale of 0-100.

The Transparency tool adjusts the degree of opaqueness from fully see-through (the image is not visible at all) to fully visible (no transparency).

Note: A fully transparent image can be marked by dragging the marker frame on top of the estimated position of the image in your workspace.

This tool inverts the transparency of an image. Opaque areas become transparent and previously transparent areas become colored. This tool produces many interesting effects and is fun to experiment with.

The Smoked Glass tool is useful where a lot of text is to be superimposed on an image making it easier to read. The tool gives a defined area in the image a colorization as well as reduced transparency and added blurring, reminiscent of smoked glass.

A transparent or semi-transparent image can be given a colored background with this tool.

The Emboss tool adds a three-dimensional feel to your image that gives the illusion as if it had been embossed.