Topaz Vivacity Interface

All the filters in Topaz Vivacity™ use the same user interface layout, as shown in the following screenshot. All the GUI items, such as buttons and parameter settings have context-sensitive help, which is disabled by default. To use context-sensitive help, check “Enable popup help on each item” box. Now if you place a mouse cursor on an item for one second, a help balloon wpop up and display help text for that item. Click the “Help” button to get an overall description of the filter.

The Preview window always displays a portion of the filtered image by default. To pan the preview image, click and hold the left mouse button on the preview image and drag it around. When you let go of the mouse button, the new portion of image will be processed according to the current settings and the result will be displayed. The checkbox “Pan faster” controls the speed of the pan action. Check it to pan around a large image.

To compare the filtered and un-filtered images, click and hold the “View Original Image” button to switch to the unfiltered image. Letting go of the button will switch back to the filtered image. In this way, you can toggle the filtered and un-filtered image quickly to evaluate the effect of the current filter setting.

You can zoom in or out of the preview image using the “+”, or “-” buttons below the preview image. We find ourselves using the 200% setting most of the time. You will also find that the larger the zoom factor you use, the faster the image gets processed. This could be useful for some filter settings for which it takes a long time to update the preview image.

All the filter’s parameters are in the tabbed panel under the image preview. Most filters have three tab pages. The “Main” page contains the most commonly used parameters. The “Advanced” page has additional parameters. Drag the slides in these pages to change filter parameters. Whenever you release the mouse button after dragging a slider, the preview image will be updated according to the new setting. The “Reset” button will return all parameters, including the ones not shown, to their default value.

For RGB image, some filters will have an addition tab pages which usually contains fine parameter adjustment relative to RGB channel or YCbCr parameters. This tab will not appear when the filter is used for gray or single channel images.

The “About” page contains the version information of the plug-in. It also has two buttons, one of which lets you email us directly. We would like to help whenever you have a question. We also appreciate any suggestions or comments and would really love to hear from you concerning how to improve Topaz Vivacity™. Please don’t hesitate to email us. Your email address will be kept strictly confidential and we will not send unsolicited messages except for product updates. The second button will lead you to the Topaz Vivacity page of our website, which contains more updated information and other resources.