DaVinci™ Photographic Filters™

This is a creative tool for coloring the image or part of the image in selected color. It is used to make the blue sky bluer, or darker, add sunset colors to the images taken at noon, add color to the washed out or featureless sky and so on.

The tool emulates the process of using a colored pieces of glass in front of the lens when taking picture.

It can also be used to convert the image into Black and White, as an equivalent of shooting the black and white film through the color filter. That has an effect of brightening or darkening the selected colors. For instance, when shooting the portrait in the nature with a lot of green, you can apply the red filter for a black and white conversion. That will make the portrait stand out on the dark background.

Start the tool from the 'Image' menu:

And the user interface that looks like this will pop out:

Let's explain what's what.

Hardness
controls the transition from the top color to the bottom color. If hardness is 1, the transitions is very abrupt. Hardness of 0 means that transition takes full length of the filter.

Strength
Controls the strength of the filter. Strength of 0 means the filter is fully transparent. Strength of 1 means the filter's strongest color is equal to specified color.

Offset
Controls the position of the filter, equivalent of moving the colored glass up or down. It's only meaningful when 'Grad' box is checked.

Angle
Equivalent of rotating the colored glass in front of the lens, so the transition is no longer horizontal, but can take any angle.

Presets
Photographic Filters™ comes with full lineup of Cokin filters. They retail for ~$20+ each. Additional benefit is that you can apply them after the photo has been taken, not during the shooting process. Simply click on the category name to see all available filters for that category. If you have made your own filter, you can create your own category and add the new filter there.

Colors
Here you can see the hardness and strength parameters in action. You can also click on the top of the color bar to select the top color and on the bottom to select bottom color. Color white (RGB 255, 255, 255) is fully transparent. Gray colors will behave as neutral density filters, not adding any color, but making the colors underneath darker.

Grad
Specifies whether the filter is graduated or solid. If solid, Hardness, Offset and Angle have no effect and only the top color is used.

Black and White
It's possible to use this tool for black and white conversion by checking this box. It has identical effect as shooting black and white film with color filter, which will convert different colors into different shades of gray, depending on the selected color. So, it's possible to get completely different black and white image from the same photo just by changing the filter color.

Interesting photo with blown-up sky: