Image Editor

The features of the Image Editor apply to any asset that can be previewed in Cumulus. Start the Image Editor by selecting Asset > Image Editor.

Use the slider of the Navigator to zoom in and out the selected image. Clicking on the icons at the edges of the slider also zooms in and out. Double-clicking the navigation image optimizes the display size of the image for the window size of the Image Editor. The statusbar at the bottom of the window displays the zoom factor, the size of the image, its color space and color mode. The various tools for image editing are offered on the toolbar. Click the icons to activate a tool and see its options.

To save the image modifications performed with any of the tools described in the following sections, click the Save icon (

) in the Image Editor toolbar. Then you may define the file format and color space (and compression rate or image quality, if applicable for the chosen file format) for the edited image. The following options for saving a file are offered:

• Save as new version of asset (only available if asset versioning is enabled for the respective catalog, either via Vault or via File System Versioning).

• Save as new asset – creates a new asset and, if desired, assigns it as variant to the original asset

IMPORTANT! Embedded digital photo metadata (IPTC, XMP or EXIF) that may have existed in the original file, will not be saved with the edited image.

The following sections describe how each of the Image Editor tools work.

The Crop tool is used to reduce the visible area of an image.

To begin cropping, click the image and draw a box around the desired area. Before accepting the crop, you can adjust the edges of the selection. Simply place the cursor over one of the four side handles and drag to the desired location. While adjusting the cropped area, you can review the coordinates of the crop in the fields on the right.

You can also enter the desired size of the area to be cropped. This is useful for cropping an image for specific print or screen sizes, such as 4x6 or 640x480. If you enter a size, a box according to the dimensions is displayed and can be dragged over the image. To add sizes click the

button.

You can adjust the unit of dimension by selecting pixels, inches or centimeters in the Unit list.

Select the resolution for the cropped area from the Resolution list.

Click Crop to accept the crop.

Click Cancel to exit the Crop tool.

The Rotate tool is used to adjust the angle of an image. You can rotate by 90 degrees clockwise and counter clockwise, and by 180 degrees. You can flip the image horizontally (along the vertical axis) and vertically (along the horizontal axis.)

Click the button for the desired rotation.

If you want to rotate JPEG images, you might prefer to use the Transform JPEG Original command in the Asset menu.

This tool offers to adjust the tonal range of your images through brightness and contrast, the gamma value and colors.

Select the desired adjustment from the pull down menu. Depending on the selected adjustment., you are offered different options.

To see the result of your modifications in real time, activate the Live Preview option.

Click Apply to accept the adjustments.

Click Cancel to exit the tool.

It can help to correct blurry images and bring out fine details in tone. Dragging the sliders to the left decreases the levels of brightness and contrast; dragging them to the right increases the levels.

When Preserve Color option is activated, you can change brightness and contrast without losing color. (Only the brightness information of the image is affected by the modification, the color shades are left unchanged.)

The gamma value of an image affects the way how its colors are perceived.

Dragging the slider to the left decreases gamma value; dragging it to the right increases the value.

The options offered depend on the color space of the asset.

Dragging the sliders to the left decreases the levels; dragging them to the right increases the levels.

The Resize tool is used to change the size of an image. To resize an image, define the new width and height in the corresponding fields. To maintain the current proportions of width to height, activate the Keep Proportions option.

The original resolution of images is not affected by resizing with Cumulus.

Click Apply to accept the resizing.

Click Cancel to exit the tool.

Select a filter type from the pull down menu. Depending on the filter type you can define the strength and the radius range for the filter (1-100.) The radius determines how far the filter considers surrounding pixels that affect the filter action. Select the radius according to the image resolution.

The following filters are available:

• Average Blur Filter
Softens an image. It smoothes transitions by averaging the color values of surrounding pixels. Eliminates noise where significant color transitions occur in an image.

• Median Filter
Reduces noise in an image by blending the brightness of pixels. The filter adapts the brightness of pixels to the median brightness value of the surrounding pixels.

• Gauss Filter
Works similarly to the Average Blur filter but uses a weighted average of the color values of the surrounding pixels. The weighting is determined using the Gaussian bell-shaped curve that is generated.

TIP: The Average Blur as well as the Gaussian filter decrease high-frequency details and can produce a hazy effect.

TIP: Applying the Sharp filter is recommended when scaling up images to keep their visual sharpness as high as possible.

• Unsharp Mask Filter
Makes images appear sharper by increasing the contrast of small brightness changes.

• Add Noise Filter
Applies random pixels to an image, simulating distortion or noise. You can also use the Add Noise filter to give a more realistic look to heavily retouched areas.

To see the result of your modifications, you can activate the Live Preview option. To avoid time consuming live preview recalculations, you should activate this option after you changed the filter parameter values.