This component is obsolete and its use in filters is not recommended. Use the recent version of the component.
The Maximum Level 1.003 component scans through all pixels of the original image currently loaded into Filter Forge (see the Image component) and extracts its maximum R, G and B levels. The alpha channel of the source image is ignored. This component works on the external image only and cannot use other components as sources. This is a map component.
The component combines the extracted R, G and B levels into a single color to form the result. Since the levels are extracted separately, the resulting color produced by the component may not match any of the actual pixels of the original image (that is, the maximum R level may be taken from one pixel, the maximum G level from another one, etc.). The resulting combined color has little practical value, so you may want to use the Extract RGB component to separate the combined R, G and B levels.
Any filter that includes the Maximum Level component is automatically classed as an Effect Filter. For more information, see Filter Classes.
R, G and B Cutoff: Map Input
These parameters adjust the component's sensitivity to noise in each channel. In a simple case when Cutoff for a channel is 0, the resulting maximum level for that channel is taken from a pixel that has the highest channel value compared with other pixels of the image. A non-zero Cutoff for a channel prevents high-brightness noise or occasional bright pixels from affecting the resulting maximum level of that channel. This parameter has the range of 0 to 50 and specifies the maximum percentage of the image area that can be disregarded during the calculation of the maximum level. That is, an R Cutoff of 5 basically 'tells' the component that 'when calculating the maximum level for the R channel, you can exclude pixels with highest R value from the calculation, but make sure that the number of such pixels does not exceed 5% of the image's total number of pixels'.
R, G and B Cutoff are map inputs, so you can control the sensitivity separately for different image areas by connecting map components to these inputs. However, this is not necessary in the majority of cases.
