Emulating the curves effect

[Simon Brown]

In the process of creating the fire effect plugin, emulating the curves effect is necessary. However, when I type into VS "CurvesEffect." intellisense doesn't come up so there is no way I can configure the effect. Thanks in advance.

[I Like Pi]

Search the Paint.NET source for "curves" and you'll find the following:

namespace PaintDotNet.Effects
{
   [EffectCategory(EffectCategory.Adjustment)]
   public sealed class CurvesEffect
       : Effect
   {

I don't know why it isn't visible through intellisense though

[Simon Brown]

I will try typing it in and see if there is a compilation error.

[BoltBait]

Try...

CurvesEffect cs = new CurvesEffect();

cs.

[Simon Brown]

The problem is that that doesn't give me the appropriet constant - just the plugin settings.

Edit: Intellisense also finds no method in the created object called "CreatePropertyCollection()" as in other effects.

[BoltBait]

Curves is not made with IndirectUI.

BTW, I bet pyrochild could help you.

If you have a copy of Reflector, you might want to look around Scriptlab...

[Simon Brown]

If you have a copy of Reflector, you might want to look around Scriptlab...

I don't decompile other peoples' programs unless I have their permission.

[Simon Brown]

OK, I think I understand how to automate non-IndirectUI plugins - but I have another question specifically about Curves. The config token has an array called "ControlPoints" with several collection objects for the points inside - am I right that the items of that array are for each channel?

[BoltBait]

I'm not sure. I've never played with curves from that side of the screen. (That is, from the CPU side. )

[Simon Brown]

The problem is that it appears this array has only one item - even after I change the config token to RGB mode.

[I Like Pi]

Looking at Paint.NET's code is probably the easiest way to figure this out. Take a look at how the dialog generates the token.

[Simon Brown]

Just one thing: Whenever I attempt to change the colour transfer mode an exception is thrown.

[Tanel]

Simon, I guess you are following Tom Jackson's "How to start a fire" tutorial.

In this case I suggest you to use linear transformation instead of curves. That is just few lines of code, easy to handle and basically same result.

Here is a codelab code that imitates linear "curve" with middle control points located as:

Red: 0, 0

Green: 150, 0

Blue: 215, 0

// Author: Tanel Rüütli
int Amount1=0; //[0,255]Red Control Point
int Amount2=150; //[0,255]Green Control Point
int Amount3=215; //[0,255]Blue Control Point

void Render(Surface dst, Surface src, Rectangle rect)
{
   Rectangle selection = this.EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds).GetBoundsInt();

   ColorBgra CurrentPixel;
   for(int y = rect.Top; y < rect.Bottom; y++)
   {
       for (int x = rect.Left; x < rect.Right; x++)
       {
           CurrentPixel = src[x,y];

// initial rgb values that you have after clouds effect
byte r = (byte)CurrentPixel.R;
byte g = (byte)CurrentPixel.G;
byte b = (byte)CurrentPixel.B;
byte a = (byte)CurrentPixel.A;

// Return multipliers from our "Control Point" values
double rx = 255 / (255 - Amount1 + 0.01);  // there is + 0.01 to avoid divide-by-zero exception when Amount is 255
double gx = 255 / (255 - Amount2 + 0.01);  // there is + 0.01 to avoid divide-by-zero exception when Amount is 255
double bx = 255 / (255 - Amount3 + 0.01);  // there is + 0.01 to avoid divide-by-zero exception when Amount is 255

// Calculate new rgb values
double r1 = 255 - rx * (double)(255 - r);
double g1 = 255 - gx * (double)(255 - g);
double b1 = 255 - bx * (double)(255 - ;

// Final RGBA
CurrentPixel.R = Utility.ClampToByte(r1);
CurrentPixel.G = Utility.ClampToByte(g1);
CurrentPixel.B = Utility.ClampToByte(b1);
CurrentPixel.A = a;

           dst[x,y] = CurrentPixel;
       }
   }
}

You can test it on the gray fire image from Tom's tutorial.

Effectively my code does the same as applying following curves setup (I used Curves+ for this example, because it allows "straight curves"):

If you tie the above Amount1, Amount2 and Amount3 with your plugin controls, or even better, a color wheel control (through opposite RGB values)* then user can easily change color of fire.

* Edit:

by "opposite RGB values" I mean Amount1=255-ColorWheel.R; Amount2=255-ColorWheel.G; Amount3=255-ColorWheel.B;

this way the color of fire turns to same range as the selection in ColorWheel.