Pro Motion Color Balance Plugin v20150224
by http://www.dennisbusch.de

Content:
A - requirements to run
B - installation
C - usage instructions


A - requirements to run:
------------------------
1.) (just try running the plugin first and only install this if it gives an error about a missing .dll)
  Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29
  
2.)
  Pro Motion (at least Version 6.0)
  http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php
  
  
B - installation
----------------
Extract the plugins executable somewhere: e.g. "C:\mystuff\"

Now there are two options.
You can run the plugin from there without telling Pro Motion of its existence.
In that case start Pro Motion first, open a project and then run the plugins executable manually.

The other option is to edit the "plugins.ini" file which can be found in the folder where you installed
Pro Motion.

Add something like this to it:
[plugins]
plugin1_exe=C:\mystuff\PMColorBalancePlugin.exe
plugin1_shortcut=B
plugin1_name=Color Balance Plugin
plugin1_type=manipulation

Depending on whether you already have other plugins installed you must adjust that "1" in each line.
Change it to the next unused number.

Each option, started manually or via the plugin.ini has its advantages or disadvantages depending how 
you look at it.

Manual start:
Here you can still use Pro Motion in the background while the plugin is active but you must take care
to know what is going on with the palette, how the plugin works to not accidently change a palette you do
not intent to change when you have multiple projects open and switch between them while the Plugin is active.
(more on that in the detailed instructions below)

Plugin Menu start:
In this mode, Pro Motion runs the plugin as a modal dialog, so you can not do anything else inside Pro
Motion while the plugin window is open (thus in this mode, only the project active upon running the plugin can be
manipulated but there is also less potential to accidentally overwirte the palette in a different project).
(this will become clear in the detailed instructions below)


C - usage instructions
----------------------
WARNING:
Until you have familiarized yourself with how the plugin works and what it does it is strongly advised that
you save your palette&project before running the plugin so you can always fully undo any changes made by the plugin.

Quick Start for the impatient:
Open a project. Run the plugin. Play with the sliders, buttons and menues. :)

Detailed instructions:
When the plugin starts it reads the current palette from the currently active project into a plugin internal
"working palette".

Whenever you change any of the sliders, the plugin re-applies the effects to that first read "working palette" and
sends the resulting/modified palette back into the active project.

So, if you were to switch projects while the plugin is open, and then modify a slider, the plugin will send
the modified palette into the newly active project.

However, if you switch projects you can, before(!) modifying any slider again use the command menu inside 
the plugin to retrieve a new "working palette" which will be whatever palette is currently displayed inside Pro Motion.

When getting a new "working palette" for the plugin you can choose to keep the slider states or to reset
the slider states.

This can be useful if you want to repeatedly apply the same slider states to the same palette or even different palettes.

Technical stuff:
The middle of the plugin shows information, so you always know, what the sliders currently modify.
It shows which state is currently active, which tone-range the sliders affect and the normalized number values for the sliders.
You can jump around between different tone ranges and select different balances for different ranges.
You can define the relative normalized brightnesses which are considered Lows and Heights with the two sliders at the bottom.
There are two states available, so you can quickly compare two different settings.

You can even set bogus values for the lows-below and heights-above values (e.g. a height that is lower than the lows):
In that case know however that the algorithm, upon deciding whether a palette entry is a low/medium or high tone, lows take
precedence over heights and heights take precedence over mediums.
So if you set the heights lower than the lows, there will be no mediums and heights will not start below the lows.