Adobe Photoshop Plug-Ins Page

The ColorNeg family of Photoshop plug-ins is available for both PC and Mac.

Version 1.02 of ColorNeg and ColorPos introduced a real breakthrough in handling color in old films and problem photographic images. Version 1.02a introduces scrolling and direct entry of CC (Color Compensation) filters for fine-tuning color balance. Version 1.02a of GamSat introduces a new refinement in color accuracy which we call Ambiance and GamSat now also will work as a Photoshop CS3 Smart Filter.

The PC-based plug-ins work with Photoshop 6, Photoshop 7, Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS3, Photoshop Elements 3, and Photoshop Elements 4. The Mac versions of ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat work natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs, with Photoshop versions 7 through CS3. The ColorNeg Mac Manual (700 KB PDF) is available and there is a Notes file for the Mac release. The ColorPos Mac manual is still not ready, but there is a Notes file. The GamSat Mac Manual (800 KB PDF) is available and there is a Notes file for the Mac release.

If you downloaded ColorPos or ColorNeg between 4/1/8 and 4/3/8 there may have been a puzzling error in a table in the Addendum Manual. Please see Table Note.

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.

For an overview of the what and why of color integrity, color negative inversion and these plug-ins click here.

Our ColorNeg plug-in for dealing with color negatives in Photoshop is now in version 1.02a and has built-in data for around 115 types of film from Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, Konica and Ferrania as well as a new technique for making those few films that you use easily accessible. For serious users it has 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 is also in Version 1.02a and is intended to maintain color integrity while making the initial, largest corrections to a positive image, such as a scanned image of a color slide or a print, or an image from a digital camera. ColorPos is very similar to ColorNeg in its layout and functionality. The 1.01 versions of ColorNeg and ColorPos added an improved Undo and easier handling of B&W negatives. Version 1.02 introduced a breakthough method that 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. Version 1.02a introduces the ability to adjust color balance by directly scrolling CC (Color Compensation) filter values or even by typing in CC filter values. The CC concept is central to understanding 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. (See notes regarding current versions of ColorNeg and ColorPos.)

GamSat is now in Version 1.02a and is intended to adjust the saturation, gamma, hue, shadow, and highlight of an image while maintaining color integrity as much as is possible. Version 1.02 is a significant improvement over previous versions of GamSat. In addition to being about five times faster than previous versions for most adjustments, we have added the ability to independently adjust both sides of full feathered selections, a complete Undo facility, and several other new features. Recently our colleague in Germany has done some interesting work showing the difference between the way GamSat handles saturation and hue and the way those adjustments are normally made using Photoshop tools. This work led to our collaborating on the concept of Ambiance, which gives even greater color accuracy in GamSat. GamSat version 1.02a introduces Ambiance and also is our first plug-in to fully implement the Photoshop CS3 Smart Filters concept.

This is a further extension of a system of Photoshop plug-ins that compliment our tips Color Balancing Color Negatives and Color Integrity in Digital Images, using the physics and mathematics discussed in our CFS-243 Color Integrity and CFS-244 Negative to Positive PDF documents. The ColorNeg plug-in inverts color negatives correctly (Photoshop and many scanner software packages do this completely incorrectly) and the ColorPos plug-in operates on photographic images from positive sources including scanned slides and digital camera images, making the initial, often large image adjustments while preserving color integrity; those major changes where the errors introduced by standard Photoshop adjustments cause the most distortion of color. We have very enthusiastic users of our plug-ins.

The downloadable 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 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 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 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 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. Anyone having difficulty getting ColorNeg and ColorPos to perform well should visit this page.

Purchase 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 ColorNeg, ColorPos and GamSat.

Purchase 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. As well as ColorNeg for Mac, this same registration Key is valid for the Mac version of ColorPos and the Mac Version of GamSat.

Version Notes: The current download version of GamSat is 1.02a. This version introduces the concept of Ambiance, which gives even greater color accuracy in GamSat. This version also makes GamSat our first plug-in fully compatible with Photoshop CS3 Smart Filters. (We are evaluating how [and whether] to make ColorNeg and ColorPos compatible with Smart Filters, as we find Adobe's implementation of this concept to be weak.) The current download version for both ColorNeg and ColorPos is 1.02a. Version 1.02a introduces 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 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 embarassing 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.

Dialog Size: The preview image for 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 have 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. However, users with valid registration Key codes can e-mail us and request versions of ColorNeg or ColorPos (only these two) to fit higher resolutions. Specify the resolution desired and include the Key code in the e-mail. We will try to honor such requests but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. In particular, we have not yet tried doing this for the Mac version.

Photoshop Elements: These plug-ins will work with Photoshop Elements and have been tested with PC versions 3 and 4. They may work with later versions and with Mac versions but we have not tested 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.

Table Note: In the initial release of ColorNeg and ColorPos version 1.02a on 4/1/8 there was an error in the table of Silent General Controls in the Addendum Manual in which incorrect Control Values were given. The download was corrected on 4/3/8. The complete correct table is:

Control Value	Action	Signal
-1	Toggle CC Adjust or Old Color Adjust	CC Adjust mode will or will not appear when Color Adjust color is selected
-2	Toggle Old or New Auto Color	AUTO in caps for old version
-3	Toggle Enter action	Default: Enter means OK, Escape means Cancel Or: Neither Enter nor Escape do anything
8	Call up registration dialog box	Necessary to change a key code (rarely necessary).

The Control Values -1 and 8 apply to all versions of ColorPos and ColorNeg. The Control Value -2 applies only to ColorPos and the Control Value -3 applies only to Mac versions.

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