Flaming Pear Melancholytron Manual

What it does

How to Install

Controls

Hints

Versions

How to Purchase

Questions

Melancholytron

What it does

Melancholytron makes pictures blurry, dark, and discolored in a way that varies across the image. It can leave the picture clear and lucid in the center, and increasingly fatigued toward the edges. With this effect you can produce a faux-antique look with vignetting and sepia-toning, or a sad, moody look with blurred and dampened colors.

How to install

To use this software, you need a paint program which accepts standard Photoshop 3.0 plugins.

Just put the plug-in filter into the folder where your paint program expects to find it. If you have Photoshop, the folder is Photoshop:Plugins:Filters or Photoshop:Plug-ins. You must restart Photoshop before it will notice the new plug-in. It will appear in the menus as Filters->Flaming Pear->Melancholytron.

Most other paint programs follow a similar scheme.

If you have Paint Shop Pro: you have to create a new folder, put the plug-in filter into it, and then tell PSP to look there. In PSP's menus, choose File-> Preferences->General Program Preferences (PSP versions 5 and 6) or File->Preferences->File Locations (PSP version 7). Next, click the Plug-in Filters tab. Use a "Browse" button to choose the folder. The plugin will appear in the menus as Image->Plug-in Filters->Flaming Pear->Melancholytron.

Controls

When you invoke Melancholytron, a dialog box will appear:

Quick start |  |  |

If you just want to see some effects quickly, click the dice button until you see an something you like; then click OK.

Using the dice is the easiest way to use Melancholytron. If you want to hand-tune your own effects, it helps to learn the controls, which are arranged into three groups:

> Shape

> Focus

> Color

...and a few other controls that affect the whole image.

dice

1. Shape |  |  |

Melancholytron's effects are applied from zero to full strength across the image according to a gradient.

Shape specifies a round, horizontal, or vertical gradient.

Clear Area opens up a zero-strength region in the center of the gradient.

To move the gradient to a new position, click anywhere in the preview.

If you click and drag while zoomed in, that moves the whole preview.

clockwise from top left:

round, wide, and tall gradents; a round gradient with more clear area.

2. Focus |  |  |
Focus makes the image blurry. This can simulate depth-of-field to draw the viewer's attention to the center of the picture. |  | original image selective focus with a round gradient |

Color blur smears only the color while leaving the luminance intact. This control says how much of this effect to apply. CB width controls how blurry the color becomes. |  | blurred color |

3. Color |  |  |

Saturation infuences the vividness of the colors. Unlike the other controls where 0 means "no effect," Saturation works like this:

-100 strong negative color

-50 negative color

0 gray

50 normal color

100 strong normal color

saturation 0

saturation -50

Dampen makes vivid colors darker. |  | dampened trees |

Vignette fades the edges of the picture to a uniform color.

The color button lets you choose the vignette color. Black works best and produces the appearance of a picture taken with a cheap lens or a bad flash.

The center vignette checkbox will arrange the vignette squarely on the middle of the image, regardless of where you have put the gradient.

vignette

color button

Sepia applies a tint to the image.

The color button lets you choose the sepia color. Medium gray yields a black-and-whute picture; subtle hues close to gray give a traditional sepia look. Colors very close to black or to white can dramatically warp the contrast.

The uniform sepia checkbox applies the tint everywhere, instead of just near the edges.

uniform sepia

several effects combined

4. Other controls |  |  |

Dice The dice choose a random effect. Click as much as you want to see different effects.

Glue mode popup menu Lets you combine the result with the underlying image in various ways. Modes other than "normal" produce special effects.

Plus, % and minus buttons: If the selected image area is larger than the preview are, these buttons will let you zoom in and out. You can also reposition the preview by dragging it around; your cursor will turn into a hand.

Load preset Melancholytron comes with some presets, which are files containing settings. To load one, click this button and browse for a preset file.

Save preset When you make an effect you like, click this button to save the settings in a file.

Undo backs up one step.

Three more buttons:

OK Applies the effect to your image.

Cancel Dismisses the filter, and leaves the image unchanged.

Register Allows you to type in a registration code.

dice

load preset (top)
and save preset

undo

Hints Apply the filter twice for extra-intense results. The dreamy effect that Melancholytron produces works best with wide-angle shots, views looking steeply up or down, and pictures depicting solitude or isolation. |  |  |

Version History

Version 1.02 June 2001

Makes the focus effect in the preview better resemble the final result.

Version 1.01 January 2001

For Windows only, this fixes a problem where the plugin would make the host paint program would either crash on startup or fail to be recognized.

Version 1.0 December 2000

The first public release.

How to Purchase

You can place an order online here. A secure server for transactions is available.

Questions

Answers to common technical questions appear on the support page, and free upgrades appear periodically on the download page.

Trouble with your order? Orders are handled by Kagi; please contact them at admin@kagi.com .

For bug reports and technical questions about the software, please write to support@flamingpear.com .