Opening an Existing File
Select “Open” under the “File” menu, or click on the “Open” toolbar icon. If the file you’re interested appears in the list of “recent” files under the “File”menu, you can select it directly. In all cases the file will open with the curve family displayed.
To create a new file you can select “New Matcher” from the file menu or click on the corresponding toolbar symbol. A dialog window "Select a Plotter Film File" will open asking you to select a film file to load. Next a similar dialog, "Select a Plotter Paper File" will open asking you to select a paper file to load. If either of these dialogs is canceled, the new Matcher document will be closed.
Saved Matcher documents store references to the original Film and Paper files. In order to reload a Matcher document both the Film and Paper files needs to be available. If the Film and/or Paper files are in different folders than the Matcher document, the Matcher document must store the complete folder path name for each of the files. If either of these two documents have been moved or are missing you will be prompted to search for them.
Note: It is possible to select a different set of Film and Paper files under these circumstances which may lead to unpredictable results.
While it is not strictly necessary to store all of your Plotter files in the same directory, we recommend that you do so to avoid possible problems when reloading Matcher documents.
Normally, the Matcher will use the analysis parameters (Paper ES, Exp. Adj., Flare Density, etc.) that accompanied the original Film and Paper files. However it is possible to override these parameters and your changes will replace the original values when the Matcher document is saved. In this case the Info tab will remind you that “Analysis parameters have been overridden.” Click on the "Restore File Defaults" option on the Edit menu to return to the original values.
Plotter also attempts to detect when the original Film and Paper analysis parameters have been updated. Plotter uses the modification date and time of the original files to detect when the files have been updated. Upon loading a Matcher document, Plotter will check these dates against the dates that were saved when the Matcher document was created and if the Film and/or Paper file is newer you will be prompted whether to reload the updated analysis values. If you choose no you can always use the "Restore File Defaults" option later.
Note: When transferring files between computers via email, the internet, etc... it may trigger this update checking since the file creation dates will change. You should use your discretion in choosing whether or not to reload the analysis parameters.
Reloading Film and Paper files into existing Matcher documents
After you’ve matched a film/paper combination and appraised its gradation relative to the reference curve, you may be interested in examining other pairs of materials. Choose the Match tab and select either “Load New Film” or “Load New Paper.” Make your selection from the list of files that opens, and the new curve family will appear. Choose one of the curves to initiate the match and select the Paper tab (if it’s not already selected) to see the new match. You can repeat this process as many times as you like but unless you save your work each new file will overwrite the previous one.
Reloading new Films and Paper will cause any override values to be discarded (i.e. the original Film or Paper file parameters are used). In addition, an approximated Film curves will be discarded.