
The free Econym plugins
=======================

These plugins may well work with any program capable of using Adobe compatible plugins, but
they've only been tested with PaintShopPro 7 and PaintShopPro 8.

Installation
============

Copy the plugins into [a subdirectory of] your plugin folder, then [re]start your graphic
application.

For PSP8 I'd suggest creating a new folder inside MyDocuments\MyPSP8Files\plugins and
keeping just your Econym plugins there, and ensure that "scan subfolders" is enabled in the
corresponding "File Locations" preference.

General Operation
=================

Click the [+] and [-] zoom controls to zoom the preview image.
Shift-click the [+] zoom control to jump to 100% zoom.
Shift-click the [-] zoom control to scale so that the whole image is visible.

Click [Random] to randomize all the control settings.
Click [Reset] to set all the controls back to the factory defaults.
Click [Cancel] to close the plugin without applying the effect.
Click [OK] to apply the effect and close the plugin.

You can set the control values by:-
 Dragging the sliders with the mouse.
 Clicking the nudge arrows, which typically adds/subtracts 1 from the value.
 Clicking in the slider track, which typically adds/subtracts 10 from the value.
 Selecting the slider and pressing the arrow keys.
 Typing a numerical value into the number box.

Image Types
===========

These plugins work on full colour and greyscale images, but not on images with restricted
palettes (e.g. 256 colour GIF images).

These plugins only operate on the currently active image layer.

If the image has a selection, the effect will only be applied inside the selection.

The plugins honour layer transparency, but you might not get what you expect if you later
remove the transparency.



Krazy Kolours
=============

There's not much to say about the individual controls. Different settings give different
crazy colours, but it's hard to predict the details of what a particular change in the
settings will do to the result.

It generates wild, strongly saturated colourings.

I like to use it on images that have little colour, and which don't have strong textures.

If you apply it to a greyscale image, then the Green and Blue Tweaks have no effect, and
the result is still greyscale.

Silver Dream
============

Depth: controls the number of bands.
Phase: shifts the banding up and down the image
       (useful if part of the image is washed out)
Colour Sliders: If the Blue/Yellow slider is set higher than the other colour sliders
       then the result will be blue. If it's set lower than the other colour sliders
       then the result will be yellow. Similarly for Red/Cyan and Green/Magenta.

Click [Presets] to cycle through four preset control settings, one of which is the
       factory defaults.


This plugin doesn't work well with images that have noticeable JPG artefacts or which have
been converted from 256 colour images. It tends to enhance the artefacts.

One neat effect is to make a copy of the original layer, apply Silver Dreams to the copy 
and change the mode to 'Luminance'. 

Stained Glass
=============

Glass Colour: Click this to invoke the colour picker of your graphics application.
Density: Controls the strength of the colouring effect.

Contrast Mask
=============

This is my version of the traditional photograhic technique of contrast masking.
The technique can enhance the detail in an image by locally enhancing the contrast
at the expense of decreasing the large scale contrast variation.

Radius: Keep this value small, if possible, to reduce rendering times. In the 
traditional technique, quite large values of radius tend to be used, but with this
particular implementation the result doesn't seem to change very much with different
radius values.

Intensity: Logically, this should be kept below 100%, but I've allowed intensities
up to 256% because there might be situations where such an effect overload might be 
useful.

Texture Throw
=============

This effect of this plugin isn't anything like what I expected when I wrote it,
but it can produce interesting effects.

Try using large values, or using the RANDOM button.

HSL Crossover
=============

You've probably seen lots of plugins that switch data between the Red, Green and 
Blue channels of an image. This is the same sort of thing, but it switches data
between the Hue, Saturation and Lightness channels of an image.

When it starts up, it's set to simply copy 100% of each channel to itself, thus
causing no change to an image.

Some simple things that you can do with this plugin are to increase or decrease the
Saturation and Luminance of the image by setting the "Saturation: Sat" and 
"Luminance: Lum" sliders to values other than 100%. But you can also, for example,
change the Luminance of a pixel in a manner that depends on its Hue and Saturation.

YUV Crossover
=============

You've probably seen lots of plugins that switch data between the Red, Green and 
Blue channels of an image. This is the same sort of thing, but it switches data
between the Y, U and V channels of an image.

When it starts up, it's set to simply copy 100% of each channel to itself, thus
causing no change to an image.

Clicking the "presets" button will cycle through settings which, perform the
following:
  1. Double the Y channel, adding half U+V to Y. This doubles the contrast.
  2. Swap the U and V chroma channels
  3. Set U and V to the average of U+V
  4. Invert Luma, keeping the chroma data the same.

Chroma Shift
============

This plugin shifts data between the U and V chroma channels.

If "Chroma Wrap" is ticked, the values wrap round past 255 back to zero.
If it is not ticked, values above 255 are clipped to 255.

It's possible to achieve exactly the same effect with the YUV Crossover plugin 
by adjusting four of its sliders. In this plugin, a single slider alows you to
shift the colours while keeping the Luma value and the aggregate of the chroma
values fixed. This is similar to, but not quite the same as conventional colour 
balancing or hue shifting. In particular, it doesn't preserve saturation.

YUV to RGB Switch
=================

This simple plugin reads the Y U V channels of an image and stores those values in
the R G B colour channels, and vice verca.

I'm told that there are certain interesting processing techniques that can be achieved
by switching the colourspace in this way and performing certain operations on the 
separate channels before switching back.

Colour Catcher
==============

Catches pixels that are either Red, Green or Blue and separates them from the others.

Colour to catch: can be Red, Green or Blue

Tolerance: Specifies how Red a pixel has to be before it is considered to be Red.

Blend: When this is set to zero a pixel either has the "caught" action or the 
"uncaught" action applied to it. When greater than zero, pixels that came close
to being caught have an action applied to them that is a blend of the caught and
uncaught actions.

Caught Colour Action: When a pixel is caught it can be left alone or changed to 
be Black, White or Transparent.

Uncaught Colour Action: The uncaught pixels can be left alone or changed to 
be Black, White or Transparent.

Note that the Transparent action only works on an image layer that supports transparency.


Support
=======

I change my email address from time to time to control spam. My current email address is
displayed on my web page http://www.econym.demon.co.uk
