Hi there, Sorry this is going to be a lengthy email... Hope there is something interesting in it :-)
I was fooling around with RawStudio the other day and applied the sharpen patch to RS 0.7. I think this sharpen tool has one of the greatest output I ever came across: even with strong sharpening, the end result is likeable, very film grain like. Count me as a fan. Too bad it doesn't has any effect on the export yet... -- the problem -- Now the problem is that sharpening is a quite slow operation; it is also an operation that depends on the final output of the file (you don't sharpen the same amount if you produce a 3000x2000 file for printing or 800x600 for a website) and it has little point in being shown on screen, except at 1:1 magnification. -- a solution? the principle -- I was wondering about having a pre-processing and post-processing sections that would allow the user to define parameters that will be used in the final export only - and not processed interactively as the rest. This would be for operations that are CPU intensive (read: slow) and not valid when the image is zoomed down to the screen size - things like noise reduction (for pre-processing) and sharpening and local contrast enhancement (basically an unsharp mask with a radius of 30 and maybe some halo control à la RawTherapee) for post-processing. --- a solution? the practicalities --- Practically, there would be a button Post-Processing in the right box with the sharpen sliders underneath (and maybe local contrast enhancement - LCE). When you process your picture normally, these operations (sharpen, LCE) are ignored for maximum interactivity and the sliders are greyed out. If you click on Post-Processing, your image switches to 100% and you can change the sharpen & LCE parameters - you view the results interactively although a bit slowly. When happy with your parameters, reclick Post-Processing to go back to "normal processing". In normal processing (on screen) the post processing operations are ignored - for interaction speed as well as because they aren't really relevant when viewed on screen. When you export your pictures, these operations are applied to your batch picture. -- Conclusion -- I think this idea could be a solution to the dilemma of 1) getting all the powerful features out of my RAW files (I want to make the most out of my RAW files) VS 2) keeping speed of operations and good interactivity (I don't want to wait for 30 secs each time I move a slider). I think this makes sense both in terms of photographic usage as well as software design, but maybe there is something obvious that I miss. Let me know if some things aren't clear and if you have comments - unfortunately, my coding skills are not good enough to attach a patch to this email :-( Take care, Joel -- __________________________________ jcornuz.awardspace.com _______________________________________________ Rawstudio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://rawstudio.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rawstudio-dev
