Hi Terry let me clarify what I meant – I do use a basic style exactly as you say, to apply a few modules just to let the image shine through and lose the sad face. But I don’t “scan” across different styles the way you do on a smartphone for example (google photos, snapseed, etc) so this is why the style preview has little appeal to me.
Understood. I wasn’t being critical of your comment BTW. I was just saying why I like styles to save me a lot of repeated button pushing. However, the preview size is so small that it is of little value to me, but I love the way the snapshot now zooms. Makes it so much more useful.
Just a filler image I guess. Website ist not ready for viewing yet.
Unless maybe editing for cinema… 
Reminds me of a photo Adobe included in a color management PDF they published years ago. It was of the interior of presumably a color-editing lab of some sort. Everything (I mean, everything: walls, ceiling, floor, chair, furniture, counter tops…) was painted / colored the same dark dull grey. Only the two monitor screens in the photo showed any color at all.
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An important comment, given AP has suggested he views vkdt as the long term solution. I wonder why he is putting all this time into an intermediate solution, instead of going straight to vkdt.
Most of the effort seems to be going into “marketing”. The only published “code” change recently is an update to the windows build instructions, so he seems to be interested in attracting new users to receive donations from. But no pre-build binaries are provide so it would not be surprising if a paid-for version appeared on the windows store at some point. To promote it, he might continue to point out faults of regular dt and dismiss all new features as useless or just more bugs. I don’t mind him profiting off the work, but it would be unfortunate if the community here got damaged in the process, which so far doesn’t seem to be the case. Controversy would be more publicity, so I hope we won’t take the bait.
Given how he’s interacted with us, as the vkdt maintainer would you be looking forward to his contributions?
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So a thought occurs: who owns the Ansel Adams trademark? His estate, surviving relatives, a megacorp that bought out the rights to his work? I know AP is not American so I’m not sure if lawyers can reach across the pond and threaten him or not but that seems to be a bit of a risky name choice.
Famously Apple code named one of their PowerMacs after Carl Sagan and got in trouble about 25 years ago. Wasn’t even an external name, just an internal prototype moniker. After the dust settled they changed the name to BHA for “Butt Head Astronomer” then later to LAW for “Lawyers Are Wimps” eventually settled out of court.
He will find out sooner or later. So this might not be the final name of the software yet 
I think Nvidia has something called ansel as do a couple of other companies…
Not sure if they can control a name or what copyright allows but its sort of similar and referring to a photo applications… albeit for gaming screen captures…
It might not be an issue then, or nVidia got permission, either one. I think this is more of a trademark than a copyright depute. Would more fall under brand confusion, if someone starts searching for “Ansel photography” and the software crops up instead of the Ansel Adams Gallery for example. They are similar ideas but not the same.
I think trademark/copyright law at least here in the US is one of those “use it or lose it” thing. That is in you have a history of not enforcing it and decide to suddenly start it might not stand up in court, at least that’s how it was explained to me once. So if no one’s been enforcing it he may be in the clear. I’m not sure though, it’s just a thought that popped up. Usually using a famous name to promote your work, especially someone as recent as a 20th century photographer, is not a good idea with out checking for permission from their rights holders or paying up a licensing fee. It’s a dumb system and burdensome I agree but getting sued is worse.
Anyway, there already is an Ansel trademark on the books with respect to digital photography and imaging software at least here in the US. Again, I’m not sure how this applies for non-US folks but I would guess trade agreements or some such thing might allow for overseas enforcement of it. When I ran my own photo business I had to run my names through a few checks to make sure there wasn’t an already established brand or trademark to avoid legal problems.
It could also depend on whether “Ansel” by itself is enough to enforce. If it’s deemed a common name and “Adams” isn’t associated with it, there might not be enough leverage for anyone to try anything against it. It’s one thing to name your product as “Larry”, but another thing entirely to try to market it as “Larry Ellison”.
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btw: the trademark you mentioned isn’t Ansel but ANSEL ADAMS
if bothering about trademarks then be precise
https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/results?page=1&pageSize=30&criteria=I&basicSearch=ansel&niceClass=9,OR,16&fTMStatus=Registered&fTMType=Word
He literally references Ansel Adams quotes on the web page. I’m not sure how close they have to be but it doesn’t have to be exact to fall under a likely hood of confusion in a domain at least in the US:
I could see it being an issue if whoever owns that trademark creates a photo retouching smartphone App or something.
@lphilpot generally it has to be in the same domain or field and AFAIK Larry Ellison isn’t the trademarked product but Oracle is, so if you made a piece of database software or a similar product and called it “The Oracle of Delphi” that might fire up some lawyers. If you made a piece of photo software and called it Larry then year you’d be fine as Larry is general and the fields don’t conflict.
Obviously all of this is academic and the likelyhood of a trademark owner going after a fork of an open source project like that is probably pretty low. Usually they’ll go after commercial enterprises or if someone uses their trademark and starts promoting hateful ideology or otherwise does something to smear the trademark image. I don’t think this has near the notoriety to really be an issue for the moment, but it’s probably not the sharpest idea to use a famous name in a similar enough field given how litigious everyone is these days.
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However, there is a lot of free publicity to be had even if a trademark law suit has no merit.
MacDonalds lawyers issued a cease-and-desist to a grocery/food shop in the Scottish Highlands owned by a Mr Mcdonald. This got international press attention, although the burger boys backed off immediately.
Crazy, but their real objective was to send out a message to say they were watching the entire world and would pounce on the slightest trademark overlap.
Agreed. My general point was, there’s a (sometimes very blurred) line of specificity below which you’re OK but above which you can get into trouble.
“Apple” is a common word and still some people where fighting over it
…not that I really care, I will check it out whatever it’s called at the end.
But point is, those legal disputes can be quite distractive, no matter if there is substance to it or not.
And afaik, it only concerns users (in this case) in that they may have to get used to yet another name after the dust settles.
Most likely or it could bankrupt the developers if it devolves into a legal circus and shutdown the project, there are a few outcomes. I just brought it up as a curiosity given the notoriety of that name.
It may very well become a legal matter, but not for the name/trademark.
Darktable was released under the GPL v.3. Iirc, that means any derived work (like Ansel) should make source code available when offering binaries. Though most are still dummy links, there is a Windows executable available. I don’t see any link to source code on the Ansel pages …