[Erik]

PLEASE NOTE: this specific review is an exception (for its length/detail). It was written before this board was created and included here to help kick off the board. But general "user-to-user" reviews should be much shorter than this.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[size=18px]ColorWasher2:[/size] a plugin for correcting photographs

Introduction

When light hits the photo-sensitive area of a camera it is measured and a mean value is calculated following the algorithms the manufacturer has built in. This means that extreme differences of light intensity are usually misinterpreted. This also means that a photograph taken under special conditions, like artificial light and sunset, often shows an unwanted colour cast. Add to this the mistakes in exposure, don't forget that the machines that create paper copies of your negatives, slides or files have an ?average? setting too, and you quickly get an idea why so many photographs are unsatisfactory, because they?re either too dark or contain colours that are washed out, or show a visible colour cast.
In the days of the real darkroom, colour photography was expensive and difficult because film was very sensitive to several external conditions like temperature, the number of times the baths had been used etc. For most photographers, there was no real alternative to having their pictures printed. Often they would get results that were really disappointing.
Since the digital revolution has begun, things have gotten better. Many people nowadays own a scanner that delivers quality no professional scanner could deliver less than say, seven years ago. Computers are fast and powerful and the digital darkroom is within the reach of many. Several companies produce high-quality software with a really incredible set of tools to manipulate pixels; and yet something is still missing.
Although many companies try to make the software as easy to use as possible, colour-correcting photographs is cumbersome and a lot of experience and a fairly good knowledge of the software is needed. Without histograms, levels, curves, adjustment layers and masks it?s difficult to obtain acceptable results. Many people who spend a lot of money end up with a feeling of disappointment as the learning curve of the recommended software is quite steep, and, without at least six months of intense study, the goal they aimed at, namely to be able to enhance their photographs, proves to be unattainable within the period of time and the effort they want to invest.
Other people, professionals and so-called prosumers still face the limits of the available tools in their favourite software (no better proof of this than the regular updates) or the fact that the tools are not grouped into one window. Which is why I was testing out some add-on applications.

Many plug-ins have appeared in recent years, some more expensive than some others, but not one has ever truly given me the feeling of "this is it". This changed when I ran into ColorWasher1 by Harald Heim. I tested it out, wrote a review on it and gave it the rating "highly recommended". But at that moment mr.Heim told me that he was working on a new version, and asked me to join the beta-test team. Which I did because of my enthusiasm for v1, and also to see which of the things I thought could be improved would be added or implemented.
This plug-in offers good value for your money and is clearly conceived by a someone who is well aware of a photographer's needs, and knows how to offer a solution to these needs by developing really outstanding software.

One last remark: this is a very personal review, and I hope you don't mind my saying that I normally don't care too much for plug-ins. Most of them are like puddings: they taste good, but they don't give the necessary nourishment to live on. So I approached this plugin with the idea of proving that I could do more in my favourite software, than with these plugins. But this proved to be wrong in version1, and version two really outperforms the big applications in all situations it covers.


My test setup

Home-built Pentium IV 3.06GHz HT with 1,5GB DDRam and Radeon9800Pro 128MB graphics card; English Win XPPro, Photoshop 7.01 as host and an IIyama VisionMaster Pro 454 set to 1600x1200 pixels as main monitor. The monitor is calibrated every forthnight.