Reset, Undo & Presets

The Reset Button

If you want to restart with the default settings or just opened a new image, it is a good idea to click on the Reset button. The behavior of the Reset button can be defined by the On Reset combo box on the Prefs tab sheet. For more information, please read the Prefs Tab page.

When you use the manual controls, the sample area in the preview disappears, because it doesn't correspond with the selected settings any more. Holding the CTRL key and clicking on Reset activates the sample area marquee again and makes it visible. Any manual adjustments to the Source and Target color boxes will be lost.

Right clicking on the Reset button displays a context menu with various options. The first five options correspond to the options of the On Reset combo box of the Prefs tab: "Default Settings"deactivates a lot of other controls, but activates the default setting for the Auto Contrast and Exposure Fix options."Original Image" deactivates all corrections and displays the uncorrected image. "Preview Settings" loads the settings that were used for correcting the previous image. "Own Defaults" will automatically open the preset file that you have chosen when selecting the "Own Default" in the Prefs tab. "Logged Settings" will try to open a preset that was automatically saved when you corrected the same image the last time.

The four "Reset ... Tab" options resets only the controls of the appropriate tab sheet. The same effect can be achieved by shift clicking the appropriate tab button. "Restore Sample Area(s)" will recreate the sample area(s) that were removed when clicking the Reset button or doing adjustments on the Cast tab sheet. "Remove 2. Sample Area" will delete the second sample area while keeping the first one.

The Top Arrow-Down Menu

If you click on the arrow-down button at the left of the Mode combo box, a menu will be displayed. This menu includes options for opening and saving presets and a list of all presets from the presets folders. A preset is file that stores the effect settings of ColorWasher. It can be used to restore often needed settings.

Open Preset

Several presets for removing different casts or producing artistic effects are already delivered with ColorWasher. They only deliver rough values, but they may be useful as a starting point for a manual color correction or artistic effect. When opening a preset of ColorWasher 1.0, only the two color boxes and the Adjust Cast slider will be changed. Version 2.0 presets change all settings that are related to the image effect.

When you choose the Open Preset menu item, a file dialog displaying the files of the Presets sub folder appears and let you select a preset file. The folder of the last opened preset is displayed by default in the file dialog.

Save Preset

You can save the current ColorWasher settings as a preset with the help of the Save Preset menu item. Please save presets into the Presets sub folder at

Windows 2000/XP: c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\ThePluginSite\ColorWasher\
Windows Vista/7: c:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\ThePluginSite\ColorWasher\
MacOS X: /Library/Application Support/PhotoWiz/ColorWasher/Presets/

otherwise they will not appear at the bottom of the menu.

You can open a saved preset again with the Open Preset menu item or by selecting them on the same menu.

Undo

Clicking the Undo button will simply restore the control settings that were used before the preview was updated again, because you changed a slider value or pressed a button. If Instant Preview is activated on the Prefs tab sheet and you move a slider, the Undo function will not work properly, because of the quick preview updates.

Preset Items

At the bottom of the menu is a list of ColorWasher presets. In case you already saved presets in the application data folder (see "Save Preset" above), they are displayed first followed by a separation line. Then the included presets, which are located in the Presets sub folder of the installation folder, are shown.

If you choose a preset from this menu, it is immediately applied and changes all settings. Choosing a preset directly from the menu, is faster than hunting it with the Open Preset command.