Most image editing programs adjust colors by making global adjustments to images. For example, if you are making an image lighter, then the entire image will become lighter. Fix Any Color takes a different approach. Fix Any Color only adjusts the colors that need to be adjusted, and it adjusts them in precisely the way that you want. For example, consider the example of trying to adjust a picture of a flower. Imagine that you are trying to make the flower's color look deeper and more saturated. If you make all the colors in the image more saturated (i.e. make a global adjustment), then the increased color saturation of the flower color won't be noticed much. If you just make the flower more saturated while keeping the rest of the image the same then viewers will really notice the color of the flower more. Professionals routinely use this technique to emphasize the parts of images that they want you to focus on.

A "color space" is a system for describing color, just as meters and the metric system is a system for measuring distances. Most digital images are displayed on monitors using the "RGB" color space. In RGB color space, colors are defined by the amount of red, green and blue in the color. Most image editing software adjust images using this 'RGB' color system because it is the default color space that computers use. There are some real disadvantages with the RGB color system, though:

(1) Not Tuned to the Human Visual System - The RGB color space matches the way that computers see, not necessarily the way that humans see

(2) Not Intuitive to Use - It isn't easy to adjust images using RGB. When the average person sees a color that is not quite right, they think in terms such as 'lighter/darker', 'bolder/weaker color', etc. not red/green/blue components.

L*C*h* color space was developed to specifically be tuned to the way that humans see and perceive color. It also was made to be intuitive to use. CIEL*C*h* color space is a more accurate way to adjust color. "Lighter" in CIEL*C*h* really means "make the color look lighter to the human eye", and not "adjust some of the numbers and hope it looks lighter". CIEL*C*h* produces better results. The only possible disadvantage of L*C*h* is that it takes some more calculations in the software, but Fix Any Color uses innovative methods minimize any increases in image processing times.

Fix Any color works with any 24 bit/pixel color digital images (e.g. JPEG, Bitmap, Tiff, 24-bit PNG, etc). This includes images from any brand digital camera, scanner or any other source. Proprietary "Raw" format images need to be converted to a 24-bit format before they can be adjusted with Fix Any Color.

In Fix Any Color, you specify the color range that you want to adjust, and then only those colors are adjusted. The rest of your image is untouched. For this to look natural, there needs to be a gradual transition from the adjusted colors in the image to the non-adjusted colors in the image. The "edge" is this transition area. A larger "edge" size will produce smoother results, and a smaller "edge" size will produce more precise, localized color adjustments. As a start, it is probably best to leave the "edge" values at their default values. If you are making a very large color shift, or if you see an obvious transition between the selected and non-selected parts of images, then the size of the "edge" area should be increased. The size of the "edge" areas can really be any size depending on your image and the adjustments that you are making.

In some cases you might want Fix Any Color to only work on certain areas of your image. For example, if you had a picture of several people, you might want to change the skin tone of one of the people but leave the others untouched. You can achieve this by setting up a mask. To start, click the "Mask" button on the Fix Any Color main window. In the Mask Window that opens, drag the mouse over the portions of your image that you want Fix Any Color to ignore. Click OK to accept your selection. If you know that there is only one portion of your image that you want Fix Any Color to operate on, then you can drag the mouse over that region (covering the area with a mask) then click the "Invert Mask" button. That will set the mask over the entire image, except for the area that you previously selected.

Typically grass can look a little bit brownish and faded in pictures. To improve it with Fix Any Color, you first need to first select the grass color in your image (e.g. click on the grass in the image). This should be a yellowish green hue. If any area of the grass is still unselected then you can click on it and select the "+ Expand color range" option in the dialog that pops up. Continue until all the grass is selected.

Now that you've specified the color range that you want to fix, the next step is to specify how you want those (yellow-green) colors changed:

Hue (h*) shift --> adjust the hue from yellow/green to pure green. Yellow/green is about a hue value of 100 degrees, and a more solid green is a hue of about 130. Therefore, a shift of about +30 hue degrees is probably what you want.

Saturation (C*) shift --> Increasing the saturation will make snappier greens as well. Possibly +10 C* should help, but you can try different amounts of increase and see what looks best.

Digital cameras are notorious for not being able to capture the full range of colors when photographing flowers and other highly colorful things. To fix photos of flowers with Fix Any Color, click on the flowers in your image, then increase the color saturation by moving the color saturation slider to the right. Try increasing the saturation by different amounts to see what looks best for your image. You can also try changing the hue of the flowers (e.g. to turn a yellow rose into a red rose) by moving the hue color adjustment slider.

Being able to improve skin tones is a critical important for several reasons:

(1) People really notice when skin tones are not right
(2) Digital cameras can do a bad job at capturing skin tones
(3) Faces (skin tones) are the central subjects of many images

Luckily, Fix Any Color does an excellent job at adjusting skin tones. Some possible skin tone fixes that you can do with Fix Any Color include:

BLUE SKIN CAUSED BY CAMERA FLASH:
To fix this, adjust the hue toward red/yellow and maybe increase saturation a little.

PALE LOOKING SKIN:
To fix this, increase color saturation. A slight decrease in lightness (L*) can also help.

CREATE A TAN:
Simply make a small adjustment of hue toward yellow, slight decrease in lightness and a larger increase in color saturation. In under a minute you can get any tan that you want.