Flare User Guide

What is Flare? Flare is a fast, easy, and beautiful darkroom for your Mac. With Flare, you can apply photographic effects to your photos, then save them to your Mac, upload them to Flickr, or send them in an email. Flare comes with over twenty presets that create different kinds of effects, but if the preset you’re looking for doesn’t exist yet, you can tinker with the presets or even build your own from scratch. How to use it Using Flare is easy. 1. Drop the photo you want to edit on the Flare window or dock icon. 2. Rotate or crop it as desired. 3. Apply a preset to get the look you want. 4. Save the photo to your Mac, export it to Flickr, or email it to a friend. Flare has more tricks up its sleeve, but if you never need them, you’ll never see them. If you want to know everything Flare can do, keep reading. © 2012 The Iconfactory & ARTIS Software Basic principles The basic principles of Flare fall under six headings: 1. Photos: You can call them images, photos, or pictures, but Flare exists to make ’em more awe- some. ’Nuff said. 2. Presets: Presets are bundles of effects that you can apply to your photos. If one of the included presets don’t quite do what you need it to do, you can edit it or make your own. You can even share customized presets with your friends, so they can use them too. 3. Effects: Effects are individual changes that can be applied to your photos. You can use them as part of the built-in presets, add or subtract them to edit the built-in presets, or use them as building blocks for your own custom presets. 4. Snapshots: If you’re working on a preset but it’s not quite ready to save yet, you can save it tem- porarily as a snapshot. Beware, though—if you save more than 24 snapshots, you’ll start to lose your earliest ones. Make sure to save your presets as soon as you’re happy with them. 5. Image Controls: Flare doesn’t just do presets and effects. If you need to rotate or crop a photo, Flare is right there with the goods. 6. Save and Export: Flare lets you save your now-even-more-awesome photo as a file on your Mac, send it to flickr, or send it in an email. © 2012 The Iconfactory & ARTIS Software Presets Presets are the easiest way to use Flare. If you want to make an photo look like a scene from a comic book or a photo you kept in a shoebox for years (just to name two examples), Flare has you covered. Just click Presets, choose the preset you want, and click Apply. Boom—you’re done! You can skip ahead to Image Controls and Save & Export. If you want to get into the gritty details and build your own presets, though, read on. Adding and editing an effect To change a preset, add or edit the effects that make it up: 1. Select the preset you want to work from—say, Mr. Blue Sky. 2. Click the Edit tab next to Presets. 3. Click the arrow next to any of the applied effects to see more details. …