Here you see all forms which you will see when starting plasMatrix the first time. Top left the Main Form representing the Main Menu, underneath the Image Provider Form, besides the Cockpit Form, above the Filtered Preview Form, besides the Untouched (unfiltered) Preview Form, underneath the Save-Options Form, underneath the Resize Form.
In the Main Form representing the Main Menu you can show or hide the forms by clicking on the form name in one of the sub-nodes of the View-node, you can edit the general options in the Options-node, you can view the usual things and a bit more in the About-node, and you can leave a comment to artelogic by clicking the Leave a comment-node.
In the Image Provider Form you see the list of images you have opened or dragged in. By clicking on the (file)name of an image you choose that image as the input signal which is driven through the image processing filter which is controlled by the sliders in the Cockpit Form. Or simply said, you choose the image which is currently edited.
In the Save-Options Form you choose in which formats you want to save the edited image and where you want to save the chosen formats. You also control format specific options here. The settings made here will be applied whenever you save an image.
In the Cockpit Form you′ve got multiple sliders with which you control the behaviour of the image processing filter. In the bottom area you also find the very important Save Image (Original Size)-Button with which you save the filtered image as seen in the Filtered Preview Form in its original size by using the options you have chosen in the Save-Options Form. If you want to save in a different size than the original, use the the Resize Form to save the image.
Above the Load Image-Button which opens the standard File Open Dialog to load an image you have the Preset-Slider. With this slider you can choose between a few factory presets and also reset all sliders to default. In the Pro-Version you can save your settings as a preset by clicking the Save Setting-Button.
The three colored sliders on the left define how brightness is calculated. Their defaults are what the standard human eye subjectively senses. The three colored sliders on the right define how the colors are recalculated from the processed brightness. All other sliders define how the brightness is processed. Check them out by playing around. Oscillator is the amount of Frequency and Freq-Accel, meaning that changing Frequency and/or Freq-Accel while Oscillator is zero has NO effect.
Each slider has two further sliders (very tiny), one on top and one at bottom. With those you can change the range of the slider they belong to, respectively change the maximum and minimum value. This can be useful for strange effects.
In the Resize Form you control the resizing mechanism of plasMatrix. With the top slider you either restrict the dimensions to keep the aspect ratio (AR) of the original image or to be completely free in choosing the dimensions. In addition to that you can choose from some dimension presets with this slider. With the two dimensional slider beneath you set your wished resize dimensions (width x height).
At the bottom is the Save Image (ReSized)-Button with which you save the filtered image in the adjusted dimensions by using the options you have chosen in the Save-Options Form.
In the Filtered Preview Form you see what you get. You can choose the view mode with the ViewMode-Slider. There is a Scaled (see above), Stretched (see below) and Original (see more below) mode. The view mode has no influence on what you save. It is recommended to view in Scaled mode and as small as possible, because the bigger the view the more CPU power is consumed. Big views on poor CPUs lead to badly responsing sliders.
