Adobe Photoshop Plug-Ins Page
The ColorNeg/ColorPerfect family of Photoshop plug-ins is available for both PC and Mac.
ColorPerfect - the new ColorNeg - has finally been released! ColorPerfect is based on our new color theory (Complete Color Integrity) and gives results we and our testers think are amazing. The original ColorNeg, ColorPos, and GamSat also remain available and the keys that we have been issuing for these plug-ins since mid-2007 will also work with ColorPerfect. If you have a valid older PC key and send it to us along with sufficient identification for us to be certain you are the valid owner we will issue you a new PC key. Older PC keys are shorter, 18 characters. All Mac keys are the new version.
The PC-based plug-ins work with Photoshop 6 and 7, Photoshop CS through CS4, Photoshop Elements 3, 4, 5, and 6. The Mac versions of the plug-ins work natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs, with Photoshop version 7 and versions CS through CS4 on PowerPC and versions CS3 and CS4 on Intel. For those of us who think Photoshop is too expensive and Elements is too hobbled, the plug-ins also work well with 32-bit Photoline, both the PC and the Mac versions. Our German colleague has an English-language page giving the complete story.
ColorPerfect Version 1.03 (See ColorPerfect dialog and how it works) can work on either color negative or color positive image sources and has inherited the over 230 built-in color negative film type calibrations from ColorNeg, including new films from Kodak and Fuji. The version 1.02c releases of ColorNeg and ColorPos and the version 1.02a release of GamSat will remain available on our web site. ColorPerfect is intended to replace most of the functions of these earlier plug-ins and we believe it is clearly superior to them in most regards. However, we have necessarily left out a few features and ColorPerfect's user interface is necessarily more complicated, so we are sure that some users will miss some features of the older plug-ins or will find the older plug-ins easier to use. We encourage users to tell us about this. User response will play an important part in our decisions regarding the future development of all the plug-ins.
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We have worked with a colleague in Germany to produce German language versions of our plug-ins and manuals: Wir sind eine Kooperation mit einem deutschen Kollegen eingegangen, um eine deutsche Version unserer Plug-ins und Handbücher zu veröffentlichen. Diese sind von nun an auf der Webseite http://www.colorneg.de verfügbar. Dort finden Sie außerdem einige der Materialen dieser Webseite auf deutsch sowie interessante neue Artikel.
ColorPerfect is the result of a surprising new discovery for handling an old problem: Several years ago in these web pages I began to explore the matter of color integrity in digital imaging. This came about because like most people, when I started into digital photography I was hypnotized by the marvelous things that are possible – even easy. Then the marvel began to wear off when I started to realize that something was wrong with the color in many digital images. Not all digital images, but in so many of them; not only in snapshots, but in professional photographs, even in the highest quality magazines. Worst of all, I found this disturbing color effect in some of my own photos.
I did have success in finding the main cause of this lack of color integrity but there was a serious problem in that my early work was mathematical and difficult for most people to appreciate. Very recently I have had a real breakthrough that has so greatly expanded my understanding of color integrity that now I can explain it in simple terms and without using mathematics. In fact, after seeing this explanation you may find it difficult to believe that it is not already a core element of digital imaging. Yet, clearly it is not. The tools for maintaining color integrity prove to be very basic and very simple indeed, yet you will not readily find them in Photoshop. As this is being written popular tutorials and common practice both emphasize tools that actually destroy color integrity instead. That is why the problem is so pervasive even in professional work.
I feel very fortunate to have made this breakthrough. It is a real rarity to have several lines of study of a complex topic converge so beautifully into such a simple explanation. Join us on our Complete Color Integrity page to learn the full story − also available as a PDF document (1.25 MB PDF).
Our ColorNeg and ColorPerfect plug-ins for dealing with color negatives in Photoshop have over 230 manufacturer's film type calibrations representing 7 film manufacturers: Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, Konica, Ferrania, Rollei, and China Lucky. Fuji recently introduced new color negative films and Kodak has released new films including a new Ektar. Our colleague in Germany located and assembled all this new film data - doubling our number of built-in films - and as he searched for data on these new films he also turned up a lot of data on older films as well. Two notations are frequently used in the film list: codes in square brackets [ ] are expected to be found on the film edge, while codes in curly brackets { } relate to processing, the date the film was introduced, or other special knowledge about the film. For example, in 2008 Kodak introduced new films (with new characteristics) that retained old names and these can be distinguished by the appended {2008}.
For serious users ColorNeg and ColorPerfect have advanced features for dealing with color balance, dealing with problem negatives, dealing with rolls of similar negatives and there are several ways to calibrate your system for the ultimate results. See our Color Negative FAQ for more information about digitizing color negative images.
ColorPos and the ColorPos Mode of ColorPerfect have extended these same techniques for use in dealing with positive scans and RAW-based images from digital cameras. ColorPos is intended to maintain color integrity while making the initial, largest corrections to a positive image. The concept of FilmType as a means of estimating calibration data for unknown films was introduced in the 1.02 versions of ColorNeg and ColorPos. ColorPerfect has substantially refined the FilmType mechanism. This breakthough makes dealing with old films and problem images very much easier. Our colleague in Germany has prepared a nice illustration of this, available in English. ColorPerfect deals with color balance in several different ways directly involving CC (Color Compensation) filter values, including the CC "ring around" that has been a mainstay of color photograph printers for decades. The CC concept is central to understanding and working with three-primary color photography systems, which, after all, is what you are working with whether you use film or a digital camera. Your images may contain "millions of colors" but every single one of those millions of colors is a mixture of just red, green, and blue.
The road to ColorPerfect started with our tips Color Balancing Color Negatives (now obsolete) and Color Integrity in Digital Images, and the more recent Complete Color Integrity page, using the physics and mathematics discussed in our CFS-243 Color Integrity, CFS-244 Negative to Positive, and CFS-276 Complete Color Integrity PDF documents. The ColorNeg plug-in and the ColorNeg Mode in ColorPerfect invert color negatives correctly (Photoshop and many scanner software packages do this completely incorrectly) and the ColorPos plug-in and the ColorPos Mode of ColorPerfect operate on photographic images from positive sources including scanned slides and digital camera images, providing for calibration and making the initial, often large image adjustments while preserving color integrity, which can be very difficult to do using standard Photoshop approaches.
The downloadable ColorPerfect, ColorNeg and ColorPos demo versions impose a fine gridwork pattern on the images they produce, unobtrusive enough to allow evaluation and in fact we expect there will be some people for whom the trial version is sufficient, gridwork and all. A thirty-day trial version of the GamSat plug-in is available for download. When you get a paid registration key, the same key is valid for ColorPerfect, ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat, removing the time limit or the gridwork of the trial versions. Different paid registration keys are required for the Mac and PC packages, however.
Download the ColorPerfect for PC zip file -- View ColorPerfect for PC ReadMe -- See ColorPerfect and how it works.
ColorPerfect is the new ColorNeg, and ColorPos and GamSat as well. ColorPerfect has an extensive built-in Help system.
Download the ColorPerfect for Mac zip archive file -- View ColorPerfect for Mac ReadMe -- See ColorPerfect and how it works.
ColorPerfect is the new ColorNeg, and ColorPos and GamSat as well. ColorPerfect has an extensive built-in Help system .
Download the ColorNeg for PC zip file -- View ColorNeg for PC ReadMe
The ColorNeg for PC Manual (1.7 MB PDF) has a Descriptive Table of Contents, merely descriptive here but within the PDF manual it is linked to give a guided tour.
Download the ColorNeg for Mac zip archive file -- View ColorNeg for Mac ReadMe
The ColorNeg Manual for Mac (700 KB PDF). This manual has a Descriptive Table of Contents similar to the one above for the PC version.
Download the ColorPos zip file for PC -- View ColorPos ReadMe
The ColorPos Manual (1.6 MB PDF) has a Descriptive Table of Contents, merely descriptive here but within the PDF manual it is linked to give a guided tour.
Download the ColorPos for Mac zip archive file -- View ColorPos for Mac ReadMe
The ColorNeg for Mac Manual is not ready yet.
Download the GamSat zip file for PC -- View GamSat ReadMe -- View GamSat for PC Manual (800 KB PDF).
Download the GamSat zip file for Mac -- View GamSat ReadMe -- View GamSat for Mac Manual (800 KB PDF).
Users confirm that ColorPerfect, ColorNeg and ColorPos work very well indeed when given a properly scanned negative or positive but that figuring out how to make a scanner deliver a good, clean 16-bit linear scan as required for best results with color negatives can be quite tricky to do. It appears that scanner software writers often feel it necessary to gild the lily, intentionally distorting color in hopes of impressing the user. Others misleadingly label settings or controls for reasons known only to themselves. Some users have volunteered helpful instructions on how to deal with this for various scanners and systems and we now have a web page devoted to Getting a Good Linear 16-bit Scan. Our German colleague has recently set up an even better page on linear scanning in an English language version! Anyone having difficulty getting ColorPerfect, ColorNeg and ColorPos to perform well should visit these pages.
Purchase ColorPerfect, ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat for PC from a secure website. When purchasing "ColorNeg family for PC" from our site which provides secure data entry, you will receive a Key via e-mail which will remove the time limit or gridwork from the demo versions downloaded from this site. This same registration Key is valid for the PC versions of ColorPerfect, ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat.
Purchase ColorPerfect, ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat for Mac from a secure website. When purchasing "ColorNeg family for Mac" from our site which provides secure data entry, you will receive a Key via e-mail which will remove the time limit or gridwork from the demo versions downloaded from this site. This same registration Key is valid for the Mac versions of ColorPerfect, ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat.
Version Notes:The current download version for ColorPerfect is 1.03. The current download version for both ColorNeg and ColorPos is 1.02c. This version of ColorNeg and ColorPos allows the user to immediately see the results of changing the initialization H% and S% values. Two bugs were fixed in the handling of selections, one dealing with a problem where the wrong blackpoint value was sometimes used and the other dealing with a problem where the "new feather" method sometimes allowed the image to oversaturate. Version 1.02c doubles the number of film types built into ColorNeg from 115 to over 230. In ColorPos 1.02c the initial guess at color balance was improved to deal with saturation that so often occurs in digital cameras and the limit placed on initial color correction was made user adjustable. In addition, top level pushbutton control was added for changing from linear to gamma-adjusted input image mode. Version 1.02b of ColorPos and ColorNeg altered the scrolling of shadows so that the selected color increases as the thumb button is moved upward and fixed some minor problems in scrolling to extreme values. Version 1.02b of ColorPos had a major change in the scrolling of lightness, greatly improving the response at both extreme ends of scrolling. Version 1.02a introduced the ability to adjust color balance by directly scrolling CC (Color Compensation) filter values or even by typing in CC filter values, and also introduces an improved processing of feathered areas between selections. The Auto Color feature in ColorPos has been changed to be more consistent with the default initial color balance. The Mac version of ColorNeg had a serious bug in the handling of film types and film files, where some code was left out in adapting the PC version to the Mac. The Mac version of ColorPos had a serious bug relating to the adjustment of Shadow, also a problem in adapting the PC version to the Mac, although the default shadow setting behaved properly. Version 1.02a also fixed a bug in both ColorPos and ColorNeg where the color letter was left off the CC display. In version 1.02 we made what we expected to be a minor improvement in the little-used FilmData scrollbar control. To our surprise, this proved to be a major improvement - a real breakthrough in dealing with old films and films with other color problems. We also added the ability to recognize 8-bits/channel images and issue instructions for dealing with them. For use with ColorNeg we have added a new plug-in, Scantique, intended to help users through some of the problems they encounter in dealing with scanners. Finally, in 1.02 we fixed a couple of bugs that were so obscure we doubt they bothered anyone and we think we more or less fixed the About boxes in the Mac versions. In the Mac ColorNeg version 1.01c the default initial value of "Gamma C" has been changed to 2.2 to better agree with typical Mac Photoshop usage - this change is so trivial the version is designated 1.01c2. The real changes are in the manual. Current users are advised to download the revised manual (PC users as well as Mac) and follow up on item 4 in the new notes file or read-me. We are aware that the "About" box in some Mac plug-in versions is odd. This will be fixed when we get an Intel Mac for our own testing. The primary changes in the PC 1.01c versions have been to maximize code compatibility between the PC and Mac versions and to provide for the possibility of languages other than English. There is one fix involving the fine control of the scrollbar which will be important to most users and ColorPos adds a button which allows starting with no CC correction. In Version 1.01b of both ColorNeg and ColorPos there were also some cosmetic changes, but the real reason for the release was to fix a bug in saving CC files that originated in version 1.01a. In Version 1.01a of both ColorNeg and ColorPos the Undo function was completely revised to work more as would be expected and the handling of B&W (grayscale) has been made easier to do. ColorNeg expanded the list of built-in film types from around 80 to around 115 including 4 films of Ferrania. The sheer number of choices has started to make selecting a film more annoying than it should be and to aid against this we included a "MyFilms" list, where the user can save the most frequently used films. ColorPos fixed a particularly embarrassing bug, whereby the CC value for one of the color channels (R, G, B) would be displayed as zero rather than its correct value. We do not know how or when that bug crept in or how it escaped our attention. Version 1.00d removed possible confusion over which user grayscale is in use in Known calibrations. Version 1.00c of ColorNeg corrected a problem with repeating (Control-F) and scripting and further improved handling of highlight and shadow in selections. ColorPos version 1.00c corrected a problem with highlighting, a problem with extreme cases, and problems with the scrollbar control present in the earlier releases. The 1.00c versions of ColorPos and ColorNeg also corrected a problem in dealing with selections that resulted from my tacitly assuming something very logical which turned out not to be true.
The current download version of GamSat is 1.02b. Version 1.02b introduces the ability to use L* in place of Gamma C, speeded up the proxy view in all three plug-ins, and also makes available larger dialogs for different displays. Version 1.02a introduced the concept of Ambiance, which gives even greater color accuracy in GamSat.
Dialog Size: The preview image for ColorPerfect, ColorPos and ColorNeg is designed to fit within the constraints of Photoshop running on a system with a 1024 x 768 display. Users running higher resolutions expressed a desire for a resizeable dialog box so the preview image could be larger, or an arrangement where the changes are shown in the original image window. Photoshop prohibits the latter for third-party plug-ins and makes the former either impossible or very difficult to achieve reliably. To meet this need we have a Plug-In Sizes page where users can download a set of the three plug-ins (ColorNeg, ColorPos, and GamSat) in eight different sizes of dialog or a zip archive of the ColorPerfect plug in in sixteen dialog sizes including wide screen versions. New users need to install and try the standard downloads above before trying to install one of larger dialog versions.
Photoshop Elements: These plug-ins will work with Photoshop Elements and have been used with PC versions 3, 4, 5, and 6. They may work with other versions and with Mac versions but we have not tried them. Since Photoshop Elements is often sold as part of a package with a scanner, a digital camera, or a digitizer, this can be an inexpensive alternative for persons who do not already own a copy of Photoshop. On the downside, users should be aware that setting up to work with selections is not as convenient in Photoshop Elements as in full Photoshop. On the upside, the plug-ins provide Photoshop Elements with a lot of 16-bit/channel functionality that it does not have otherwise.
L*: Some new standards have started using L* rather than a gamma value (Gamma C in our nomenclature) to "gamma correct" images for storage in image files. L* is a formula representing the human eye's response to light and has been used in standards for many years. While it is not hard to show that the claimed advantages of using L* in place of Gamma C are really vapor, it is also true that there is no harm in using L* in this way. So, we have provided this capability in the plug-ins. We note that the same new standards which use L* also use the D50 illuminant rather than D65 and this we believe to be a long overdue major improvement.
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