Filmulator v0.11.0 released!

These are planned to be released in the next version of Filmulator, together with noise reduction.

Interestingly, there is no conventional sharpening step in Filmulator, it comes entirely from the film simulation.

What I had initially hoped to do was “develop” in filmulator and bring in the result as a tiff file into darktable to continue any final edits.

ii.e in filmulator - let the image look good, which it already does achieve, minor fine tuning, set white balance if needed, then export as tiff.

Fortunately it does look like I can still achieve my intention with the current version. I checked the tiff format, its a 48 bit file. and full resolution, same as the original image.

That definitely meets my needs for now, kindof like how Adobe Camera Raw is the development “engine” for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, I can thankfully use your current version to “develop” the raw image, save as tiff, which is already an included capability, then continue my edits in dt.

Thank you for all your work. I have a solution with the combination of Filmulator and Dt, which works ok for me.

Is it possible that when you add the noise reduction, could you make it optional, so that if one were to continue photo editing in another app, one does not end up with too many layers of noise reduction, in different apps, which could reduce the image quality.

In dt there are a couple of ways for noise reduction, which I will not go into here, but to mention one which I found interesting - a raw denoise module, which is NOT enabled in the pipeline by default, but which I usually use now in all my photo edits, cos I found it to be the most appropriate, so I do not bother to use any other noise reduction except this one.

What’s interesting about this module is that it comes pretty early in the pipeline, even before the demosaicing. It would be interesting to discover where in your pipeline, your noise management is handled - before or after demosaicing, and especially if its optional in the app, I can then decide where (in which app) to do my denoising.

One more question. I have not been able to figure out where you store your image settings, in Filmulator. What I know is that when I edit an image, the settings are saved, and whenever I close filmulator and come back to it, the settings are saved, but I have no clue where this “state” of the image has been saved to. I am aware you have a database installed with filmulator - is this where recallable image settings are saved into, which would need me to ensure I maintain the same directory structure and also backup this database - if I move to another computer.

Then one more thing. There is a bug in Filmulator. When you use the white balance picker tool, rather than set a new white balance, it also overwrites the “saved” white balance and you cannot recall this saved white balance.

Ideally if I set and “save” a white balance for example so I can use the same white balance across many images, and then change the current white balance either through teh white balance picker or manually, I should be able to revert back to the “saved” white balance, by clicking on the appropriate button on the right of the screen, for this “restore” of the saved white balance.

At this time, any change to white balance using the white balance picker, erases and immediately overwrites, any “saved” white balance and there is no way to recover from the loss of the saved white balance.

And one more, I have now accidentally while learning your user interface - set the font size so big that I am no longer able to change it, cos the fonts are now so large after a restart, I can no longer get to the button that saves the new font setting, which should then be enabled after a restart. I can no longer save the revised user interface settings.

What initialisation file do I go to to - to restore things back to the default for user interface font size? The only thing I can think of now would be to uninstall, and reinstall, but then if the settings are in the database, I cannot access these as an end user via an editor. Please let me know how to resolve this. I am on Windows 10. 20H2.

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Good point on the white balance UI. I’ll change that for the next version.

Noise reduction will 100% certainly be optional.

Processing parameters are stored in a database right now. The database doesn’t get touched by uninstalling and reinstalling.

The settings location depends on your OS: for Linux it’s ~/.config/Filmulator/Filmulator.conf and ~/.config/Filmulator.conf, while for Windows I think it’s in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Filmulator\Filmulator and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Filmulator\OrganizationDefaults.

Thanks - will check and get back to you. I am away for a few days so it may take a while.

Keep well.

I resolved the user interface issue by deleting the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Filmulator\Filmulator\ui\uiScale

And restarted the app. The app on restarting set the value to 1 in the interface on the settings “page”.

Please check that all the settings actually resort to their default values, when the reset button is used in the app.

In the case of the UiScale for resizing, the reset button does not work, and return this to the default value, if default value is changed. i.e unless you had a user who was really observant they do not know what the default value is and it would be impossible for them to go back to the default value

In the case of the UserInterface Scale setting on the settings page, definitely the reset button is not working as expected.

But I’m ok now, thanks for your help, at least I can use the app for now.

Please let me have your thoughts on what should be the best way to manage the non-destructive settings for each image which you have stated are stored in a database.

Are these settings stored in the database for each image, using relative links, or other kind of reference to the image file names.

If one moves the image files to another location or to another computer and wishes to retain the same settings, even if I copy the database to the new computer, how does one manage this since the new location of the file has no link to the previous location of the file on the old computer?

Obviously lots to think about.

I ran into a similar issue with darktable where I backed up my image files but did not backup the database. Fortunately darktable also generates .xmp’s for each image or virtual image duplicate, so I did not lose everything.

Lots to think about for your next software update. Happy to help you test the beta versions. If you let me know when they are available for download. I already test some key software for some well known apps, but cannot state which it is, cos of NDA.

Pretty familiar with software testing, but I cannot say much more about this.

I wish I had not stopped developing software, which was once my day job a long time ago, but its too late to go back to that. Life is too short. I do still code here and there but nothing major, just for fun., and only for myself, on very rare occasions, where I really cannot find an app that does what I need. Much better to reuse, and use software written by others.

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Hello CarVac -

One more thing (maybe I will change my username to OneMoreThing) !!

Is it possible to allow the end user to enter values for things like White Balance. Using only the slider, it is impossible to set an exact White Balance like 5500. If I could enter this directly, that would be ideal, as well as having the option to use a slider.

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@CarVac I spent some time tonight with Filmulator. You really have done a nice job here. I used it on my Pixel 3 dng files. Despite all the hype I don’t really like the jpg files. On the phone they can look not bad but the skin tones are funny sort of pale and they crank up the blue so the images are too cold but I think it works with their tone mapping to give the impression of more contrast…In any case I have not yet mastered the controls but even so without too much fiddling and truly knowing the ins and outs I got some nice images as I would rate them.

For me the noise reduction will be a nice add but 2 things I really miss are something like ctrl-z. I was trying to be systematic and I went to tweak the shadows slider from the default value. I didn’t take note so when I decided to revert my change I could only guess or reset to the "hard " default of 250 not the one determined when the file was processed. I think that would be a nice add. If you had the ctrl z ctl y pair you could go back and forth is you wanted. I am not sure how hard that is to code so I don’t know but I think there is good value.

On that same note the thing that I really miss is some form of comparison to the starting point, in other words toggle off the edit and back on or a split screen / snapshot type comparison. Some form would be extremely useful.

Great work. I could see running a few editing sessions and seeing how often I find the need to do more. Thx

PS I second the call for adding manual numbers its nice sometimes but again I don’t have to write the code for it so I don’t know how much effort there is for each ask…

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Hidden trick in the documentation: right-click on the name for any tool with a continuous slider, and you get an iPod-style scroll wheel for more precise input. Great for fine tweaking.

I think I can still add the ability to type in numbers, but not having thought about it too hard, it might be more complex than it appears at first.

The current behavior of the settings values was intentionally “reset to what it was when the settings were last saved” rather than to the default. Which, now that I check, is clearly in violation of what the tooltips say it does. So I’ll fix that, but I’ll also add a single “reset all settings” button to the top left so that no matter if you’ve set it to 4x scale, you can still rescue it by pressing that button (probably twice) and then restarting the application.

I appreciate your receptiveness. After a good nights rest, a quick one.

I hope its ok to be open, and state that as part of any tests or review, I am obviously comparing Filmulator with other tools. Winter is only winter, because we have other seasons like summer.

I noticed that the pixel size changes from the original.

A original raw file captured in Sony Nex-F3 digital camera as a 4912 x 3264 image, becomes saved by Filmulator, in both tiff and jpg formats as a 4920 x 3276 pixel image.

But Filmulator is not alone in this “slight” alteration of the aspect ratio.

I had always felt that there was something not quite right about the portraits which I processed in darktable, and now I can clearly see why, from an objective opinion, the same image, and in fact all my images from this camera are saved by darktable as 4928 x 3276.

The in-camera jpgs are exactly the same pixel width and height as the raw image. And when I check the output of Capture One 21, which is free to download (but needs logging in to get an account/license) it also generates images in jpg at the same size as the raw image.

All knowledge is positive. But this makes it more difficult to directly appreciate any differences between the “colour science” of the different apps, cos as you switch from one image to another in the image viewer, you eyes also have to adjust to this instantly modified aspect ratio.

This is a pretty interesting observation, and in all the brief discussions I have been priviledged to read online, or watch on youtube, this issue has not ben raised with respect to darktable, which has already a good number of users.

When I go into the various photo raw tools, and check the image proprties in the tools, each of them displays a corresponding set of width and height pixels that corresponds to their jpg and tiff outputs/exports. So there is consistency between what the app “thinks” and what it generates, but there is no consistency between the apps, and the two open source apps that I have checked - Filmulator and Darktable, deviate, in different ways, from the original image pixel size, which is adhered to and not altered by the three other apps I have tested with - Adobe Photoshop Express, Capture One Express for Sony, and Sony’s own Imaging Edge app - all these closed source apps are free to download.

Clearly as the open source photo apps rely on some common libraries which are most likely not created by the developers, but reused, I deduce that the this deviation is coming from the image processing libraries, e.g libraw or rawspeed.

Cosmetically - not a big deal, but if one had a forensic kind of use case, or different human editors working on a large pool of images taken on the same camera, but using different photo editing tools, this slightly varying pixel size results, would be something one would wish to avoid.

I appreciate that it may not be something you can do anything about, cos you most likely did not develop all of the raw-image library which you use, but it gets even more interesting.

I also checked with Raw Therapee only because it is supposed to use the same image processing library for extracting the image from the raw file, as Filmulator, and in Raw Therapee it gets it absolutely right, and maintains the identical pixel size as the original raw file. So it is possible for an open source app to get this absolutely spot on.

But we go one step further, cos when I look at the exif data via Raw Therapee this deviates from the original size to 4928 x 3276 neverthelesss Raw Therapee still correctly displays in the image viewer, and generates jpgs in the original pizel size of the original raw file, using some other method (could be there are two aspect definitions in the exit data - I have not checked the exif using other tools) or a companion database of “corrections” which RawTherapee uses. !!

So we use an Exif viewer and the reasons for some of the above, become a bit clearer or easier to understand.

I used Exif Tool Gui, which relies behind the scenes on some other open source console app. Much easier to use a GUI.

In the exif, we have different values.

  1. ImageWidth 4928
  2. ImageHeight 3276

then we have another set of values

  1. SonyImageWidth 4912
  2. SonyImageHeight 3264

So it appears that the correct info is there, but each app may have a choice in how it decides to use their image raw library to determine the size of the image.

From an accuracy prspective, I do not think there should be any discrepancy or difference between apps, on something as objectively accurate as the pixel height and width. And if the app were to deviate from the exact size of the original raw image, for whatever reasons, it would be good to let the user know or give them a choice.

Especially when taking photos of products, and people, you definitely want to get the aspect ratio absolutely right, otherwise, you have inadvertently distorted their image, irrepairably.

I tell you no lie, a few weeks ago, I was uncomfortable about the image of my wife, whom I obviously know well enough, as I processed some portrait shots in darktable, just did not look right, now I can appreciate one good reason for this. The image had been “distorted” and I had absolutely no clue that this had been done, cos I trusted the app.

I am sure this “bug” is something you can fix in the next release. Best wishes.

I have done, within a few minutes, this morning an extensive comparison of the images generated by different image processors, but this will need a thread of its own, and it may take me about a month or two to find the time to present my thoughts, in a way that allows others to make their own objective and subjective conclusions. That should be another pretty “revealing” thread. As we are speaking of images, the pun(joke) on revealing is intentional.

I hope everyone would agree with me, imaging apps, should not make their own mind up about the pixel size of the image, without the permission or consent of or explicit notification to the end user…! Hopefully unlike the subjective issue of color science, we can all objectively agree that pixels should be presented with the utmost accuracy size wise, especially in a digital domain where this accurate information is available in the raw file.

Nothing gets distorted by having these different pixel counts.

The only difference between them is cropping at the edges.

And no, the information is not available in the raw file. Filmulator uses whatever LibRaw gives it. RawTherapee has a database of pixel sizes in camconst.json that it uses. darktable uses its own way to determine what’s valid image data.

@OK1 As I also have commented in the other thread, you are mistaken about what’s going on. @CarVac is correct in saying that the image is not distorted, just cropped slightly differently.

And I refuse to believe you are able to distinguish between three images that differ in aspect ratio only to the third decimal place. :eyes: (1.504901961, 1.501831502 and 1.504273504).

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I believe this is common that a small portion of the theoretical pixels around the border are not processed for purposes of noise of some other reason but I am sure that this can be part of the process…

EDIT From here Developing a RAW photo file 'by hand' - Part 1

The photo we will develop was taken with a Nikon D7000 using this Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. The aperture was f/11, with 1/200s of exposition time, ISO 100, handheld, and with Vibration Reduction (or Optical Stabilization in Sigma terms) turned on. The target is directly illuminated by the sun at 10:22 AM. The raw file format is “14-bit Lossless Compressed Raw” and is named _ODL9241.NEF with 19.1 MB of size.

The picture has “formally” 4,928 x 3,264 pixels. We say formally because physically we will find raw data for an image of 4,948 x 3,280 pixels. Probably, this is because the pixels close to the borders have not enough neighbors to make the interpolation, so 10 pixels at both vertical ends and 8 pixels at both horizontal ends do not count for the final picture when using regular development software.

This does help improve my understanding. Thanks.

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@CarVac

Is there a way in the latest version to export to jpg or tiff a batch of files or do you have to do it one at a time. If I missed some clear instructions I apologize for wasting your time.

Thx in advance.

It’s one at a time, for now.

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Thanks. They save very fast for sure compared to some software I use…

Filmulator saves exactly what is rendered to the screen, immediately. This is why the save button is unavailable until it finishes rendering.

If you did batch processing it would take longer, because it would have to process each image before writing out.

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I think it would be a good add down the road. You have made it so you can copy and paste settings to images in the queue so it would be good not to have to open each one manually to be able to export it…How is the noise work going??