Color Pop Mode
Separate Color from Grayscale
What It Does
Color Pop splits your image into two zones: colored regions and grayscale regions (areas that are close to black, white, or gray). Each zone gets its own height range in the print — you control which is on top.
The result is a "color pop" effect where colored elements stand out as raised (or recessed) sections against a grayscale background. The split between what counts as "color" vs. "grayscale" is adjustable with a tolerance setting, so you can fine-tune which pixels go into which zone.
Within each zone, brightness still determines height — just like Standard mode. Think of it as two Standard mode filament paintings stacked on top of each other: one for the colored pixels and one for the grayscale pixels.
Because Color Pop naturally creates repeating dark-to-light sections, it's one of the best modes to pair with the Color Drop plugin for height reduction.
When To Use It
- Images with colored elements against a neutral background — the colors will visually "pop" in the print.
- When you want clear layer separation between colorful areas and neutral/gray areas.
- Ideal for Color Drop — the repeated dark-to-light sections are natural nesting candidates, often giving significant height savings.
- Multi-material designs where you want colored and neutral regions handled differently.
Not the Best Fit For
- Multiple colors in the color section that aren't separated cleanly by brightness — they will merge together. Color Match is better for this.
- Images that are entirely colorful — if there's no grayscale to separate from, Color Pop doesn't have two zones to work with.
- Images that are entirely grayscale — same reason in reverse. Use Standard/Combo for grayscale images.
Key Controls
Controls the color/grayscale split percentage — how much of the total height range goes to colored regions vs. black & white regions. Adjust to balance the visual weight between the two zones.
How close the red, green, and blue channels must be to each other for a pixel to count as "grayscale." Lower values = stricter (only very neutral grays). Higher values = more pixels classified as grayscale.
Enables stricter grayscale detection for finer control over the color/grayscale boundary.
Adds extra layers at the boundary between the two zones. Since you're often printing dark filament directly on top of light, a gap of 1 or 2 extra layers helps ensure the dark color is fully saturated and doesn't look washed out.
Reverses which zone is on top. By default, colored regions may be higher — toggle this to put grayscale on top instead.
Example
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