COMPANY: Digital Light & Color | URL: www.dl-c.com | TYPE: Plug-in | PLATFORM: Mac, Windows | PRICE: $29.99/49.99
			Color Mechanic is a selective color correction plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. What makes Color Mechanic so powerful is that it lets you change one or more colors in an image without changing any other colors in the image and without the painstaking work of selecting the parts of the image you want to change. This type of selective color correction is both easier to use and more powerful than conventional color balancing or filtration techniques that simply apply a uniform correction to the entire image or give you a few sliders to adjust. The Input Image is a copy of the image you are working on; the Preview Image shows you what you get if you click the OK button. The Input Color Hexagon is where you specify color corrections (more on this later). The Preview Color Hexagon shows you what happens if you apply the current set of corrections to the input color hexagon. The Tool Bar lets you select the Hand Tool (for scrolling the input and preview images) or the Eyedropper Tool (for selecting colors to modify), zoom the input and preview images in or out, or display the Options Menu. Making color changes is easy: 1) Make sure the Eyedropper Tool is selected in the tool bar. 2) Click on a part of the input image whose color you want to change. This creates a Control Point in the Input Color Hexagon at a point corresponding to the color you selected. 3) Drag the control point to a new location. Moving it away from the center of the hexagon makes the color more saturated (more intense); moving it toward the center make the color less saturated (more washed out). Moving it clockwise or counter-clockwise around the hexagon changes the hue. As soon as you stop dragging the control point, the Preview Image is updated so you can see the results. When you create a new control point (or select an existing control point by clicking on it), Color Mechanic displays a Brightness Change Slider. Drag the slider to the right to make the selected color lighter or to the left to make it darker. To make additional color and/or brightness corrections, simply repeat the previous steps to create additional control points. You can make up to 50 independent color and brightness corrections at once. Sometimes as you make a color or brightness adjustment it will affect colors other than the ones you intended to alter. In most cases, this is easily fixed -- all you have to do is create a new control point by clicking on a part of the input image that you don't want to change, and leave the new control point where it is. This tells Color Mechanic that you don't want to change the color you selected, and it will be left unmodified. Changing Control Points To modify a control point's starting or ending colors, simply drag either its circle or its arrow head. You can tell when the cursor is near one of the endpoints since it changes shape from an arrow to a cross. To modify a control point's brightness change, click on it once to select it and then drag the Brightness Change Slider. Removing or Resetting Control Points To remove or reset a control point, Ctrl-Click (Mac) or Right-Click (PC) on it and select Remove Control Point, Reset Color Change, or Reset Brightness Change from the popup menu.