Glossary

Button bar

The button bar is the bottom-right area of the FilterOptix window, consisting of a number of generic controls.

Control

A "control" is anything in the window that you can use to change (hence "control") the plug-in.
It includes the preview, all buttons, sliders and tabs but also more complex things like dials.

Dial

A custom type of control common in FilterOptix.
Dials are used to determine the angle of rotation of an effect or the filter.
Typically you can click and drag the control in a circular manner to rotate it.

Editing

The process of adding, deleting and changing effects of a filter.

Effect

An effect is the most basic type of change a filter does to a picture. Filters typically combine one or more effects.

Filter

A filter is a group of effects that, as a whole, resembles the type of filters you would use on your photo camera.

Filter settings

A number of settings that are applied to the filter for the active filter only; they are not stored with presets.

Gradient

A smooth transition of one color to another. May also apply to other things than color, such as transparency.

Ordering

The process of determining the order in which the individual effects of a filter are applied.
By careful ordering  of effects, the amount of filters possible increases greatly.

Main controls

An area of the FilterOptix window which is used to change the look of the filter, edit filters and change options.
It consists of a row of tabs at the top and controls beneath them.
The main controls area takes up the right-middle part of the window.

Mask effect

A type of effect that makes no changes to the picture itself but influences how successive effects are applied.
In particular, mask effects determine what areas of the picture may be altered by effects appearing after it.

Options

Options are used to control how the FilterOptix plug-in itself works.
Options have no influence on the results rendered on the picture.

Preset

Presets are filters made earlier.
Presets are just like normal filters created using the "Edit" tab but exclude information for a single specific usage of the filter such as the settings in the "Filter" and "Options" tabs.
Presets allow you to quickly access common filters, add (or replace) your own set or exchange sets of filters with others.

Preview

The preview takes up the left part of the window.
It shows you what the picture will look like after the FilterOptix filter has been applied.

Settings

"Settings" is the set of all effects in a single filter and it's filter settings.

Snap

To snap something is to have it's value rounded to the closest interval. Typically the size of intervals can be configured using the options.

Tab

A tab is a type of control of the FilterOptix window that looks and acts somewhat like a button.
Clicking on a tab changes the part of the window directly next to it, changing the controls shown.

FilterOptix v1.0 manual - Copyright © 2008 VanDerLee. All rights reserved.