New Contrast Enhancement Plug-in
The Plugin Site (www.thepluginsite.com) is proud to announce the release of ContrastMaster for Windows, a new product in the PhotoWiz series. ContrastMaster is a plugin for effective contrast enhancement as well as creating dramatic contrast looks, photorealistic paintings and HDR-like effects. It can turn low-contrast photos into vivid and detailed images and transforms ordinary photos into interesting and dynamic shots.
ContrastMaster works with dozens of graphics applications including Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Photo-Paint, IrfanView and PhotoImpact under Windows. For accelerated rendering it supports hyperthreading as well as multiple processors and cores. ContrastMaster works with 8bit and 16bit RGB images.
Overview
ContrastMaster offers three local and four global contrast adjustment methods as well as various masking, saturation and brightness options. The three local adjustment methods allow you to dramatically improve contrast in small image details without blowing out highlights or damaging the image. You can apply these three methods separately or use various options to mix them together for even better results.
The four global methods (S/H-Contrast, Stretch, Equalize and Polarize) work on the tonal range of the image and help to improve the result even further. There is also an option for changing the brightness of the image. The masking options let you conveniently remove the ContrastMaster effect from an image area where you do not want to have it applied, e.g. skin areas, a blue sky or a wall. This can be done with the help of shadow/highlight and color masking options. Additionally, a saturation mask feature lets you improve saturation without oversaturating the image.
Sophisticated Algorithms
ContrastMaster offers three sophisticated methods for enhancing contrast in small image details. They are called Dynamic, Adaptive and Local. In fact, these three methods utilize five algorithms in total, because the dynamic and adaptive methods each use another algorithm for certain control settings. Each of these algorithms adjusts the contrast of image details in its own special way, which makes ContrastMaster useful for different types of images and allows you to produce a variety of effects and looks.
Each of the three methods lets you adjust the size of the image details that are affected, the effect intensity and the way the contrast is adjusted. Additionally, the Dynamic Contrast methods lets you avoid artifacts or noise without lowering the effect intensity, the Adaptive Contrast methods automatically adjusts image details of different size at the same time, and the Local Contrast methods lets you independently increase and decrease the contrast in image details as well as influence the brightness character of the effect. Each of the three methods also offers special shadow/highlight adjustment options as part of the algorithm.
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