Hello -

Shapiro Consuting Group, Inc. is pleased to send out it's first Asiva Newsletter for Registered Users of Asiva® products in an effort to stay in better contact. In this newsletter, which will be sent out once a month, we hope to build and maintain communication with our users by providing information, tips and tricks, examples and articles. We hope this newsletter will be something you will enjoy receiving and get good use of. We would like to keep a forum open between you and our staff to hear any suggestions you may have for our software or topics you would like to read about in this newsletter or on our website. Please feel free to e-mail us at info@asiva.com. Thank you for supporting Asiva digital image enhancement products.

Shapiro Consulting Group, Inc.

Asiva Sharpen+Soften, the first in a series of plug-ins for Adobe® Photoshop®, will be released by the end of this month. We are excited to release Photoshop plug-ins to further spread Asiva digital image enhancement technology.

This first plug-in is essentially the soften and sharpen found in the Matrix or Kernal Operation of Asiva Photo. The plug-in (Mac-Classic/OSX, PC-Win 2000/XP) supports 8 or 16-bit, RGB or CMYK files. The user may choose to sharpen or soften one or more color components or channels. In addition, HSL components may be selected for sharpening or softening.

At the heart of the Asiva Sharpen+Soften plug-in are three maps: Hue, Saturation and Luminance. The Maps define, or 'select' the colors to sharpen or soften. This provides precise control over not only the quality but also the quantity and distribution of sharpening or softening. A built in Sampler Tool provides an automatic starting point for setting the Maps. Asiva's technology often eliminates complex masking and generates natural looking results effortlessly.

We will be releasing a series of Photoshop® plug-ins over the next few months. These plug-ins will have some similarity to the Operations you are familiar with in Asiva Photo. The big differences in owning all the plug-ins as opposed to having Asiva Photo are significant.

So what are the differences? Well...

1. The plug-ins have the benefit of being usable in an environment that most people are familiar with (Photoshop®).

2. Asiva Photo works with proxies of your image file, which make working with large image files much more manageable.

3. Asiva Photo has vector-based regions, including paintbrush, rectangle and ellipse. These vector-based regions can be altered or removed at any time.

4. With the plug-ins you will not have the ability to access and change any of the Operations in your Sequence or save any of the Operations or Sequences.

5. The model dialog in the Photoshop environement requires you to click OK before you see the effects rendered to your image file, necessitating an 'Undo' if you need to make any changes. As you already know, Asiva Photo does not use this schema and as such you are able to change anything at anytime. (Future versions of the plug-ins will allow you to save plug-in settings)

In a nutshell, an existing Asiva Photo user will not really benefit from having the plug-ins as Asiva Photo already offers you considerably more capability. The plug-ins are designed to offer some of Asiva's technology working within a program most people are already familiar with.

Applying 'Make-up' with the Apply Color Operation of Asiva Photo

An often overlooked way of cleaning un-flattering fleshtones in portraits is to use the Apply Color Operation of Asiva Photo. Here are a few steps to get the results you see in the Before and After pictures to the left.

Step 1: Create a new Apply Color Operation.

Step 2: Use Eyedropper Tool to sample a representative area of the face. Use Command+Click and Drag to sample into the Hue, Saturation and Luminance curves simultaneously.

Step 3: Click on Target Color in the Apply Color Operation Control Window and select a desired 'make-up' color.

Step 4: Move the Blend Slider to maximum blend. This will effectively apply a 'thick' coat of make up. Working in this mode, we can see obviously where the Apply Color Operation is being applied to the image. We will adjust this later when we are satisfied with all the other parameters of the operation.

Step 5: Adjust the Hue, Saturation and Luminance curves to fine tune where the 'make-up' is being applied.

Tip: Use the Color Information Window to help you find and include/exclude specific areas. Numeric values displayed in the Color Information Window are directly related to the numeric values displayed at the top of the Operation Maps Window when you click and move map points around.

Step 6: Once you are satisfied with the distribution of the 'make-up' move the Blend Slider around until you achieve the optimum amount of 'make-up' being applied.

Tip: You may adjust the color of the 'make-up' at any time by clicking on the Target Color color tile. Also, don't forget you can still apply your 'make-up' with Brush or any of the other Region Tools.