Introduction


 

Curve Pilot is specially created as a learning tool for acquiring color correction basics. The term "color correction" means altering image to make it as close to the original as possible. Most traditional image editors use so-called curve method. The major disadvantage of the method is that you have to keep manipulating the color curve until you get the results that satisfy you.
Take a look at this photo taken with a digital camera (left, picture 1). The picture is not very good, as you can see it with you own eyes. If you open this picture with any image editor (Adobe Photoshop, for example) and apply the "Curves" command to assign new values as shown on picture 2, you will get a "color corrected" picture, which looks much better (right, picture 1). But the person without any experience is not going to determine easily the correct values for moving curves, in order to achieve the desired results.

 

picture 1

picture 2

 

Curve Pilot offers you a completely another approach. Let's say, you don't like the color of the grass in your picture. Simply show the program which color you think it ought to be and Curve Pilot will do the rest. The program will correct the colors of the picture in a new window and will display two color models (RGB and CMY) with the resulting values for a given picture. The corrected image can later be saved in JPEG and TIFF formats, and the curves can be used for fine-tuning in other image editors.