The modes in Photogenics determine how what you paint interacts with the underlying image. At the very simplest it replaces the underlying image with the chosen colour (i.e. Paint Mode), at its most complex, Modes can apply stunning special effects to the part of the image you painted over.
(Uses Current Colour) means that this mode uses the colour selected in the palette to modify the image, so try different colours for different results.
(Has Options) means that if you bring the Mode Options Container to the front (by clicking on the fourth page of the Options Window on the left), you will find controls for altering the look of the effect.
(Uses Secondary Image) means that the mode uses information from the Secondary image to perform its effect. If you don't have a secondary image selected, you might not see any effect at all.
(Uses Current Colour)
Adds the current colour's red, green and blue values to each pixel in the image. If you paint with red on a dark image, the image will become redder. Painting with black has no effect as adding zero to the image's pixels leaves the pixels untouched.
(Has Options)
Adding noise to an image is often very useful to add texture or character. You can specify the amount of noise, and how spaced apart the noise is. You can also toggle between colour noise, where each red, green, and blue channel has noise added separately, or grey noise where each channel gets the same amount of noise.
Try blurring the noise afterwards to age an image. Also try adding a large amount of very spaced out noise to a black image, then using Radial Blur with a high radius to create the kind of effect you see in movies where spaceships travel at high speed. For more practical uses, add some noise to a white image, apply Motion Blur, then use Adjust to change the colour for a wood or marble effect that is a useful basis for creating textures.
(Has Options)
Adjust Mode lets you adjust the Brightness, Contrast and Gamma of the image, as well as the Red, Green and Blue levels. Bring its options to the front and experiment with the sliders to see changes take place in real time.
(Has Options)
BasRelief brings out the contours in an Image. You can change the angle the light appears to fall on the contours, the radius of the effect, and amount of strength the effect has. For some neat effects, try a radius of about 30, but a really low amount of around 5.
(Uses Current Colour)
(Has Options)
BiColour Mode applies a blend of two colours, an outer and inner colour. Find the Mode Options holder to adjust each colour individually. Try using two slightly different colours with the Sponge Media to get a very nice mottled effect. Try white in the middle and orange as the outer colour to achieve an effect similar to the Fire Mode. Experiment with this mode using all the available media (Neon is a good one) for some neat effects.
(Has Options)
What can I say, its Bizarre. The main sliders to play with are Length, Width, and Height. The Length slider determines how zoomed out the image in each square becomes, small values less than 10 usually look best. The Width and Height sliders determine the size of the squares. The Quality slider wont appear to do much until the Length is greater than 5.
(Has Options)
Blur, unsurprisingly, blurs the image. Somewhat more surprising is the ability to control the blur by specifying the X and Y radius of the blur. Set the H and V (Horizontal and Vertical) radius to the same value for a standard blur. Set the H Radius to zero and increase the Vertical to get a horizontal blur, and set the V Radius to zero to get the opposite effect.
(Uses Current Colour)
Burn reduces the image's brightness depending on the colour selected. The darker the colour, the darker the image.
(Uses Current Colour)
(Uses Secondary Image)
This Mode is best applied with one of the Fire Media, or Sponge. Set the secondary image to the one you want to burn through to, set the colour to a nice fire colour, and simply burn through!
(Has Options)
ChannelFlip lets you flip the Red, Green, and Blue channels of an Image independently of each other. For example, you could flip the Red channel over the X axis, the Red over the Y axis, and the Blue over the X and Y axis to create a very colourful effect. The options are split into three groups, one for each channel, and have check box gadgets that define what axis the channels are flipped over.
(Has Options)
Channel Randomize works just like Randomize, but with individual controls for each Red, Green and Blue channel. Please read the documentation on Randomize for more details.
(Has Options)
Clone Mode rubs through to a different part of the image. You specify what part of the Image by clicking on the Clone Tool in the toolbar, and dragging a line from the bit of the image you are interested in, to where you want it moved to. Click on the draw tool to go back to drawing.
This is a very powerful mode, it can be used to erase unwanted portions of images (such as the wires an actor is suspended from, or an enemy from an old photo), or move features of interest around the image.
(Has Options)
Making a colour image grey isn't always as easy as it seems. The human eye perceives the different colour channels - red, green and blue in different ways. Simply adding up the three values and averaging them doesn't usually make a pleasing image with the same brightness as the original. For this reason Photogenics provides many options for de-saturating an image, or making it greyscale.
Min: Takes the darkest of the three channels
Max: Takes the brightest of the three channels
Average: Takes the average of the three channels
Red Filter: Takes the red value to be the brightness
Green Filter: Takes the green value to be the brightness
Blue Filter: Takes the blue value to be the brightness
Red Filter: Takes the red value to be the brightness
Cyan Filter: Takes the average of the green and blue channels
Magenta Filter: Takes the average of the red and blue channels
Yellow Filter: Takes the average of the red and green channels
Luminance: Creates a greyscale based on how the human eye perceives the brightness of colours
Video Weighted: Creates a greyscale the same way a black and white TV displays a colour signal
(Has Options)
ContourMap breaks up the Image into lots of squares in a manner similar to Pixelize, and then displaces each pixel depending on how bright it was. The Options allow you to set the Length and Angle of the displacement, as well as how big the pixellated squares are.
(Has Options)
Convolve lets you apply convolution matrixes to the Image. In case you weren't paying attention during your maths lessons, a variety of preset matrixes are supplied, and can be loaded in with the Load button.
(Uses Current Colour)
Darken compares the red, green, and blue values of the current colour to each pixel, and replaces them with the darkest. Painting with white thus has no effect, as the underlying pixels will always be darker than white and therefore never change.
(Has Options)
If you have an image that has been captured from video, you will often find that it flickers when displayed in interlace mode on a TV or video monitor. This is because TV and video work with fields, an even field that is displayed first, then an odd field, which is interlaced with it to complete a full frame. If there is any movement between fields, it will flicker horribly when displayed. Normally the images would be moving at 50 or 60 fields per second so you wouldn't notice, but when paused, it becomes apparent. Often it's only a part of an image that flickers, so use the Airbrush to apply this mode to the affected parts. Covering the entire image will result in loss of quality and isn't usually necessary. You can choose to average the two fields to reduce flicker but at the expense of blurryness, or choose to just show the odd of even fields, eliminating the flicker, but reducing the resolution by half. Try each option for the best results.
(Uses Current Colour)
DifferenceRGB replaces each pixel with the difference between it and the current colour. If the current colour is white, then it has the same effect has the Negative mode. If the colour is red, then only the red channel will be inverted. Experiment with lots of different colours for very psychedelic results.
(Has Options)
(Uses Secondary Image)
DisplaceMap is a very powerful mode. It uses the secondary image to warp the current image and apply highlights and shadows. Try painting some white blobs with the airbrush on a black image, and using that as the secondary image. Draw some text, blur it, and use that as the secondary image to wrap the image around the text. Emboss the text and create very cool text effects.
(Uses Current Colour)
Dodge brightens the image based on the current colour. Painting with black therefore has no effect. Try white or grey, or for more colourful results, different colours.
(Has Options)
EdgeDetect detects the contours of an image, and makes them white, leaving areas of flat colour black. You can change the sensitivity with the Amount Slider.
(Has Options)
(Optionally uses Current Colour)
Emboss has the effect of making an image look like its etched in stone. You can change the angle the light appears to be coming from, the radius, and the amount of power the effect has. If you don't want it to look grey, ensure that the Colour checkbox is ticked, this uses the current colour instead.
As you increase the radius, you may find that you need to decrease the Amount slider to get the desired effect.
To make the emboss look nicer, try blurring the image beforehand (especially if the image is text).
(Uses Current Colour)
Fire Modes takes the current colour, and ramps it up to white the more paint you apply to the image. Use the Fire Media for best results, although using the Airbrush, Sponge, and Watercolour all create nice effects too. See the FireEye tutorial for instructions on the best use of this mode.
These two modes flip the image upside down, or from left to right. Unlike other packages, you can paint these on for some very interesting effects.
(Uses Current Colour)
If the current colour is dark, then this mode darkens the image as with Multiply Mode. If its light, then it lightens is as if you were using the Screen Mode. It's useful for painting on shadows.
(Uses Current Colour)
This is the opposite of Darken. It compares each red, green and blue channels value with the current colour, and replaces it with the lightest.
(Has Options)
Max compares the surrounding pixels up to the radius specified, and selects the darkest or brightest respectively. You can set the horizontal and vertical radius independently, for some nice effects. As with blur, try setting one of the two values to zero and just increase the other, or keep them the same for the typical effect.
(Has Options)
MotionBlur blurs the image in the direction specified, for the requested length. Apart from the obvious use in making things appear to be moving fast, try using it with text and then embossing for some interesting effects.
(Uses Current Colour)
Multiply mode multiplies the red, green and blue components of the image by the red, green and blue components of the selected colour. So if you paint with red, the green and blue components of the image will be knocked out as they have been multiplied by zero. Experiment with different colours to get a feel for what you can achieve. Often you can get a nice tint effect.
This inverts the colours of the image to make it look like a photographic negative.
(Uses Current Colour)
Overlay Multiplies or Screens the colors, depending on current colour selected. The pixels of the underlying image are mixed with the blend color to reflect the lightness or darkness of the original colour.
(Uses Current Colour)
Paint simply replaces the underlying image with the current colour. Try adjusting the transparency of the image for a more subtle effect.
(Has Options)
A PanBlur is film speak for a blur in which the camera is moving at high speed. Use the options sliders to set the direction and size of the blur.
(Has Options)
Pixelize, otherwise known as Pixelate or Mosaic, turns the image into lots of little squares, as seen on TV when someone's face needs to be obscured. You can set the size of the squares by dragging the Width and Height sliders.
(Has Options)
Posterize reduces the depth of the colour information in the image. The higher the posterize level, the more information is thrown away. This is similar to the effect you get when you reduce the number of colours in an image by cutting down on the number of bitplanes.
(Has Options)
A RadialBlur is the effect you get when you move the camera nearer to an object at high speed. You can set the length of the blur with the slider. Making the length a negative number has the effect of zooming out from the image at high speed. You can set the focal point for the effect using the X and Y Offset gadgets. The Quality slider determines if every single pixel should be taken into consideration when producing the effect. Most of the time, over 90% of the pixels can be skipped for a huge speed increase, with little quality loss.
This mode looks good when it covers a large portion of the image, you won't even see any effect if you just paint in the middle of the image for example.
(Has Options)
Randomize shifts each pixel around by a random amount. You can increase the distance pixels are jostled around with the X and Y Radius sliders. Increasing these values a lot gives the impression that the image has exploded into lots of little pixels. The X and Y Offset sliders give a bias to which way the pixels will be shifted. With an X Radius of 100 for example, a pixel would normally be randomly shifted up to 50 pixels to the left or right. Increasing the X Offset to 100% means that the pixels will now all be shifted 100 pixels to the right.
(Has Options)
This shifts the image around the page. Where the image goes off the edge, it wraps around the opposite side. This comes in useful for making images that can tile seamlessly. Roll the image by half the width and half the height of the image. Smudge the seams that make a cross in the middle of the image, and it will tile a whole lot better.
(Uses Current Colour)
(Uses Secondary Image)
Similar to RubThrough, painting with this mode reveals the secondary image. The difference is that it's mixed with the current colour. Try this mode with the Neon media and a bright colour to get the appearance of the secondary image appearing in the halo.
(Uses Secondary Image)
Painting with this mode reveals the image that you have selected as the Secondary image (see the ImageControl explanation for details on how to do this). If you don't have a Secondary image, then you'll be rubbing through to the same image. In other words nothing will appear to happen.
You can use this mode to composite images on top of each other. You'll need to add one more paint layer for each image after the first one if you want to be able to move all the images around independently. If you just want to composite lots of images on top of each other without using more layers, just press Fix when you are happy with what you have rubbed through, and change the secondary image to the new one. Note that if you don't do a Fix, changing the image you are rubbing through to will update what you just drew to reflect the new image. Also note that when you are rubbing through to an image, if you change the secondary image, these changes will be reflected on the main image in real time. So if you have two images, and in the first image rub through to the second, painting on the second will update the first automatically. Be careful if you change the secondary's colour or mode options though, it might take a while to calculate if you drag the mouse over lots of colours, or try out lots of values in an options slider. Click on a colour, don't drag it, for the fastest feedback when doing this kind of thing.
To position what you have rubbed through, use the Position Layer Tool (the hand in the toolbar).
(Uses Current Colour)
Screen lightens or bleaches the underlying image, depending on what colour you have selected. The brighter the colour, the more powerful the effect. Using black has no effect, using white results in white. Use in-between values for best results.
(Has Options)
Sharpen Mode enhances the image using a standard matrix convolution. The effect can be increased using the Radius slider, though for small, detailed images it would probably look better if you used UnsharpMask Mode.
(Has Options)
Solarize inverts the colours of the image if they cross a certain threshold. Drag the Threshold slider to get real time feedback on how this effects the image. A threshold of 127 inverts the red, green, or blue channel of the image if they are more than half way bright.
(Uses Current Colour)
Softlight Dodges or Burns the image, depending on the current colour. If the colour is dark, the image is Dodged, if the colour is light then its Burned.
(Uses Current Colour)
This mode subtracts the red, green and blue value of the underlying image from the red green and blue values of the current colour.
Painting with red results in just the red component remaining, painting with blue removes the red and green components and so on.
(Uses Current Colour)
Tint takes the average brightness of the underlying image, and replaces it with the equivalent brightness of the current colour. In other words, if you paint Tint over an image with red, the image turns red.
(Has Options)
UnsharpMask sharpens the image with a great degree of control. The Amount slider controls the strength of the effect. The Radius slider controls how many pixels are examined when working out how much to sharpen each pixel. For most purposes the default radius of 1.5 works best, but if the image to be sharpened is extremely large, increasing the Radius can help. The Threshold slider determines which pixels are sharpened and which are not. By increasing the Threshold value, you can prevent pixels that are only slightly sharpened from being changed at all.