ColorWasher 1.0

Harald Heim/The Plugin Site

www.thepluginsite.com

Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

Recently I received a press release from Harald Heim announcing his new plug-in ColorWasher (for Windows).  ColorWasher plugs into your favorite image editor and is used to revitalize the color in photos and other images. It also fixes the contrast and exposure. Having purchased other plug-ins from Harald in the past, and always been pleased with his products, I wanted to know more about this product. I’m always fiddling around with photos trying to improve the color and other problems, especially in old family photos that have. I visited his web site, looked at the ColorWasher information, and liked what I saw. The plug-in made the sample photos on the site come alive again. Now that I have used it, I am very impressed with it. When I was going over some things with our editor, I showed him what I was working on for this review and he had the same reaction to this plug-in....he thought it was great too.  My reaction to this plug-in was so positive that I stopped working on some other things in order to test this product and write the review. Thanks to Harald Heim, color correcting just became a whole lot easier to do. Click here to view a flash demo showing the plugin-in in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 and the tools and other color corrected photos. If you don't want to see the demo but would like to see some examples that have been enlarged, there are a couple of links at the bottom of this page.

Images must be in RGB color mode or 16 million colors for the plug-in to work. If images aren’t in this format, they must be converted to RGB for ColorWasher to work. ColorWasher is compatible with most image applications. There is a compatibility list in the manual. The manual is available for download on the Plugin Site web site if you would like to look at it to learn more about the plug-in.There are a few products that it won’t work with. Support for other color modes in promised for future versions.

ColorWasher can also be used on other images besides digital and scanned images. It will enhance web graphics, drawings, paintings, screen shots, or cartoons. You can correct and apply color effects in a single step.

ColorWasher uses revolutionary algorithms to color correct photos. It contains six cast types that reconstruct lost colors and details in photos. Built-in features hide image noise, hide overexposed sections, transform other are color areas increasing the number of colors.

I have reviewed and used several other plug-ins that improve the color quality of images. I have had a fairly good degree of success with them. However some are difficult to use because they have so many adjustments that it takes time to figure out what’s going on and how to use all the tools. In some the automatic adjustments left a lot to be desired. ColorWasher has an unbelievable ability to bring color back to life in images and improve the overall look. I mostly use the same photos in all reviews that are about color corrections or image repair to keep the playing field level. I apologize if you are getting tired of seeing the same images time and again, but it shows just what each application does to the same photo. You will see examples of dramatic color improvement, but some of the photos are damaged and the damage remains in the color corrected photo. With some, I made attempts to repair damage with other products just to further enhance the image. I will indicate what I have done to photos that have been repaired as well as had the color revitalized. This product did a great job fixing the color problems and I like it very much. (The example here shows a dark photo in a split image mode. The left side is the original and the right side has been color corrected.)

You begin by installing ColorWasher into your favorite image editor’s plug-in directory (for example: Adobe Photoshop – version 3 or higher, Jasc Paint Shop Pro v 4.12 or higher, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Photo-Paint v6 or higher, Micrografx Picture Publisher 8 or higher, etc.)  (ColorWasher is compatible with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP.) Open an image in the application, select the plug-ins or effects menu, and choose PhotoWiz: ColorWasher. When the plug-ins interface loads, you can start color correcting the image using either QuickMode or the Advanced Mode. I have a tendency to refer to the Advanced Mode as “manual mode”.  I do this because you can make more manual adjustments in this mode. If I do this again in other places, please know that it is properly entitled Advanced Mode.

ColorWasher’s QuickMode will make automatic adjustments with a few buttons. Start by drawing a sample area on the preview or you can use the advanced mode which has a variety of tools to work with. (The image on the left is using the QuickMode and the one on the right is in Advanced Mode.) Not all of the controls are available in QuickMode. Values that were set in a previous image will be retained when opened. You may want to reset the image first and then do a sample on the preview.  Each mode has a reset button to return the image to its original state. To save the improvement you click ‘OK” and return to the image editor. If you choose not to save the changes, you simply click “cancel” and return to the application with the original image.

These two images are a photo of my father taken in 1965 at the Upper Greenwood Lake Volunteer Ambulance Corps building. He was the captain back then. It’s faded, yellowed, and the photo has damage. I used this photo several times in ColorWasher both in the Quick and Advanced modes to adjust the color. I came up with great improvements with each thing I tried. I also used Adobe Photoshop 7’s Healing brush to repair the bars that are running down the photo and the right and left sides. I used Alien Skin’s Image Doctor’s Smart Fill to repair the yellowed edge. I didn’t fix the bottom edge just to show the difference between the repaired section and the damaged area. I don’t know how well this is going to show up when it’s in grayscale in the newsletter but the color in the sky returned to a beautiful blue, the clouds bright and white, the draping color is more vibrant, and the brick building looks brand new. ColorWasher made the photo come alive again. You will see the difference if you look at the online version. *Please note that ColorWasher did improve the overall white border of the photo but due to the extremely damaged and unevenly yellowed sections, I wanted to do justice to the dramatic color improvements by whitening the border as much as I could.

When clicked , these four buttons change the color cast of the photo. In the right lower section of the interface is a text box that explains what each item does and how it may affect the image. These buttons work well if no sample area is available. You can select the best setting and then work with the sliders to make further color adjustments.

ColorWasher’s  manual details three methods for color correction. The first is the Quick Approach. This method used QuickMode with little or no adjustments made by you –all automatic. It works quite well and I used it many times with very good results.

The second method is the Effective Approach – semi-automatic.  You begin with no changes to the image. Click reset if changes have been made. Then you click the Neutral Button to activate it.  Put a check in the Instant Preview check box to activate the preview. This keeps neutral areas visible when creating a sample area.  Then click and drag on an area in the preview that was white or neutral gray originally. This selection will look like a marquee selection. This selection should be fairly large.  If the image doesn’t have an area to do this, then use either the Quick or Advanced methods. Then you deactivate the Neutral Button.

The third method is the Manual Approach - Advanced Mode.  This method is more difficult and requires more time. You begin with an original image (reset it if changes have been made). Use the click and drag method over an area that is white or neutral gray – if such an area is available. You can also click and drag of a specific area, such as the sky, to enhance that area.  This automatically selects the Source Color Box. You can further adjust the color by using the sliders on the two color boxes.

If an area wasn’t selected, you use the Target Color Box to adjust the colors. Then you continue to make adjustments until the color is satisfactory. All of the adjustments are made by you without using any auto settings. This is very interesting to experiment with and see just what the sliders do and how they affect the image quality.

More adjustments: You can correct contrast and exposure too. The Auto Contrast and Exposure Fix selectors should be set to normal. If this result isn’t good, then try other settings by adjusting the sliders.

Exposure can also be adjusted visually using the Exposure Stripes that are available in the Split View menu. The Alt key can be held and a striped section can be dragged to another area to see how it looks on that spot. To select an exposure click the shift key in the stripe that you want to use. This will remove the stripes and sets the Exposure Slider to the value that was chosen. This setting works very well as you can see by the included examples.

 Original Image

 Exposure edited

Other corrections that can be made include correcting a Color Cast and adding a color effect. Both of these can be accomplished at the same time. Creating an Artistic Color effect, creating black and white effects, and coloring black and white images are other adjustments that can be made with ColorWasher.  Each of these is explained in the user manual and you will find helpful tips for all of the selections that you are using in the interface tip box.  

There were a few features that I neglected to mention. First there are the skin features. There are five tiny buttons on the right side of the title bar that will change the look of ColorWasher. You can change the look by using one of the skin presets. They will change the background color, the background texture, the background image, and a new label color. Secondly, are the color presets. The presets will remove color cast, add artistic color, and color temperature. You can adjust these levels and save them as new presets. Or just experiment and add an artistic color to an image. Another item I forgot was the Cloak Mode. You can use Cload Mode if you have chosen a selection of settings and want to apply them to more images. Once you have the settings, you hold down the Control key and click cancel. This sets cloak mode and all the images you correct after this will have the same settings applied to them. Auto buttons can also be used in these settings. The Shift key is held down when ColorWasher is opened to return to the normal mode. Lastly, when ColorWasher is open, clicking on the "?" button will launch the manual.

I found this plug-in very easy to work with and was able to obtain great results with it. I particularly liked the way I could move the Exposure, Color Temp, Cast, or Hue stripes around in the photos to sample different areas and see which stripe had the best results. Once I found a stripe that I wanted to use a simple “shift + click” in the stripe added that adjustment to the image. The advanced  settings offered a wide variety of options. I like being able to vary the coloration of the photos too. The automatic settings worked very well.  Every photo that I used from my old photos or the stock photo collection that I have was improved by using ColorWasher. I noticed that photos used as samples in this product were also from the same stock photo collection. It has great photos but they are in dire need of color correction! Another thing that impressed me was that photos that had dark shadow areas and were normally very difficult to fix, were improved immensely. Not just in the lighter area but even the very dark areas had a very noticeable improvement and the color was well defined. I would recommend this plug-in to anyone who wants to enhance the colors in the images and bring them back to life. ColorWasher sells for $49.95! This full featured color correction plug-in is worth every penny. There are other tools that cost much more and many don’t deliver the color improvements ColorWasher does! I look forward to seeing the future plug-ins promised for PhotoWiz. Judging by this product, I am sure they will be terrific too. Try this product, it’s a winner!

 Enlarged Examples

Example 1      Example 2    Example 3   Example 4  Example 5