FAQ

How does ColorStyler compare to other commercial color effects filters?

First of all, ColorStyler is less expensive than similar products and offers more effects and more sophisticated features than same or lower priced products. ColorStyler offers a more versatile curve tool, masking brush, selective adjustment feature and histogram than any other color effects filter.

ColorStyler contains 600+ presets that produce a wide variety of photographic and special effects. These presets can be combined with each other allowing ten thousands of potential effects. They were designed with this purpose in mind, so they harmonize nicely with each other. ColorStyler also offers more color film and film grain types than any other product and even allows you combine a color film look with the grain of a totally different film.

Products that offer more presets than ColorStyler usually contain a lot of similar preset variations of the same basic preset. Additionally, presets of most other products were not designed to be combined, so they often do not match very well.

Unlike other tools ColorStyler offers modes for beginners as well as experts thus taking individual workflow preference and knowledge into account.

For a comprehensive comparison with other tools see here.

 

Do ColorStyler and ColorWasher produce similar results?

ColorWasher is mainly meant for removing color casts and white balancing photos whereas ColorStyler produces various color effects. You can use ColorWasher for simple color effect, but it does not allow you to create such a wide variety of creative color effects as ColorStyler. On the other hand you can also use ColorStyler to manually remove weak color casts, but ColorStyler is quite inconvenient, imprecise and not very effective for this task. ColorWasher features various automatic and semi-automatic tools for color cast removal, which ColorStyler does not offer. Both do a much better job when they are used for what they were designed.

 

What is the difference between ColorStyler and B/W Styler?

ColorStyler and B/W Styler share several similar effects, but ColorStyler is not able to produce the sophisticated black & white effects of B/W Styler. Likewise, B/W Styler cannot create the color effects of ColorStyler and only outputs grayscaled images. Both also offer many different presets that are specific to color or b&w photography.

 

How can I make ColorStyler start up faster?

Normally the ColorStyler plugin renders more than 600 preset thumbnails at start up. Depending on the CPU of your computer and the thumbnail size this can take between a quarter of a second up to several seconds. If you use a slower computer and want to avoid this delay, you can click on the arrow-down button on the Preset tab sheet and choose the "List" menu item. This avoids rendering the preset thumbnails at start up, but you will also not see any thumbnails anymore. To view them again, you need to choose the "Thumbnails" option on the same menu.

The Standalone/Lightroom version of ColorStyler renders the presets thumbnails each time you switch to a new image. To avoid a delay, you can click on the arrow-down button on the Preset tab sheet and choose the "Icons" menu item. Then the thumbnails will only be rendered when the first image is opened. The icon-type thumbnails have the presets applied to test patterns instead of the image itself. If you do not need any thumbnails, you can also deactivate them with the "List" menu item.

 

Is it possible to change the intensity of each color of the color gradient effect?

If ColorStyler's color gradient effect has only one color, you can use the Intensity slider to weaken or strengthen the color. When using two or three colors for the gradient, the Intensity slider influences all colors equally. But there is a solution for adjusting each color independently: You can adjust the saturation of each color in order to change its intensity. To do that click on the appropriate color box, which displays the color dialog. On the color dialog you can change the saturation of the color either by entering another value in the Sat text box or by vertically moving the cross in the color diagram.