Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch translation & understanding question...

Software RawTherapee
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I’m rushing a Chinese Simplified translation for the soon-to-be-released Rawtherapee 5.12, and one of the new tools added is GHS. I would like to have some (or most, if possible) of its content translated, but I’m already struggling with the tool’s name itself. I have some ideas about the “hyperbolic” part, but I can’t quite grasp the meaning of “generalized” and “stretch”. My current understanding to them is:

“Generalized”: I can’t find any contextual info about it. I asked GPT-4o when I was at work today, and it basically said that “generalized” refer to the tool’s ability for general and broad use, like, it can be used in some medical image processing and photography and stuff. Makes sense to me, but I don’t really trust AI, so I want to get some confirmation from real human regarding this if possible, since I can’t find document about why it was named like this.

“Hyperbolic”: Straightforawrd mathematical term. I think its purpose is to apply a large (exponential? I’m not a good math student) amount of tonal adjustments in a user-defined small tonal range and minimize its effect outside of this range. From a translation point of view, I think it should be an easy one even if I understand it wrong.

“Stretch”: There is very few documentation in Chinese regarding GHS but I did come across one. The guy translated “stretch” quite literally, using the word’s “enlarge pixels’ height/width” meaning (Merriam-Webster’s 8 a) meaning I believe). But I don’t think it means that in this context. My understanding to “stretch” is “the manipulation of pixels’ value and adjustments to tones”, which is similar to GPT-4o’s response.

If my understanding is on point, I would translate the tool’s name to the equivalent of “General purpose hyperbolic adjustments” in Chinese.

Appreciate your input and corrections!

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Maybe add tone or contrast before the word adjustments to aid in the description??

No idea…these translation things are so interesting and so easy to take for granted esp as an English speaker… I look forward to seeing what others propose and how it would translate in Chinese

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@syyrmb

Indeed, the language is a bit disturbing, because it is outside the usual guidelines to which we are accustomed by Adobe, ACES, etc.

You can find the documentation (very incomplete, because I can’t update it) on Rawpedia
GHS - Generalzed hyperbolic stretch

You can also find the documentation made by the author of the algorithm himself (astro - photo).
GHS astro - documentation

I was forced to adapt this algorithm dedicated to astro-photography to extend it to more classic images. In particular, the management of highlights, local contrast, mid-tones and an (essential) adaptation of the notion of White-point and Black-point, which I think will raise a lot of questions (beyond semantics).

And also the discussions on Pixls.us
Discussions

To be a little provocative, the best explanation is in the mathematics used.
Equations

Of course, I remain at your service if you would like to know more.

But, I’m an old Frenchman, I already have a lot of difficulty with English… so for other languages!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank @Lawrence37 for his rigor (I don’t have much of it) in optimizing the code.

Jacques

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In french

On pourrait prendre comme définition - évidemment c’est un peu long: “Étirement et compression basé sur plusieurs combinaisons de courbes linéaires et hyperboliques asymptotiques”

On peut dire aussi que c’est une combinaison de plusieurs TRC “Tone response curve” comme dans Abstract Profile.

Les courbes hyperboliques sont des fonctions mathématiques souvent asymptotiques comme “tanh(x)”, “sinh(x)”, ou des combinaisons de “e^kx” et “e^-gx”. Par exemple:
image

Sigmoid est un exemple très simple de fonction hyperbolique… mais elle n’a pas de possibilités d’être complétée par des parties linéaires pour les basses et hautes lumières. De plus son paramétrage est limité.

Peut être un titre, comme le Chinois est une langue imagée :
“Ecrêter les montagnes et remplir les vallées”.

Jacques

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Thanks, though my original proposed translation in Chinese is already disturbing long as a tool name (“通用型双曲线式调整”, a whopping 9 words, I can’t think of any longer tool name in Rawtherapee (well, I just realized “理查森-露西反卷积法” is a thing, for RL Deconvolution), adding another 2 words (for “tone” or “contrast”) will definitely pose some reading challenges to some users! But I’ll consider it, since it should make the tool be better understood, in terms of what it does.

Thank you Todd for your advice!

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Thanks Jacques, I read a little bit of the contents from your links before posting my questions. I can’t read them all, because they’re usually too long, and I just want to know the meaning of the 3 words. I did laugh when I saw you say the name is a bit “disturbing” in RawPedia! :slight_smile:

Your 4th paragraph helped me understood it better, regarding what the tool adjusts.

I always appreciate your insights and development works, even your physical condition isn’t the best, and I do like this tool, I downloaded an astro image, with some simple GHS parameter changes, I thought my IPS screen just got an OTA upgrade to an OLED one! The black are blacker and the stars are brighter, it really impressed me.

Thank you again for replying and developed this (and other) excellent tool for Rawtherapee!

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@syyrmb the wording in german also sounds confusing, so i will leave it as GHS, once translated and explained in the tooltips. I think, this short term will find acceptance more easy.

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Thanks for the suggestion @marter, I’ll look into the tooltips which I generally don’t like to translate because I’m lazy… If the tooltip can be of help, then things could be easier for me.

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Thank you @syyrmb and @marter for these evaluations and comments.

Thank you @syyrmb for your assessment of my health (and my age) which are not, to say the least, resplendent.

I think the choice made by the algorithm’s creator is intentional to raise questions… What is this thing? What does it mean? etc. (GHS is a good choice).

And indirectly, this leads us to look at how it works, what are the results?

But as I have written several times, apart from the title, everything has to be “relearned”…Of course it is difficult, the user loses familiar reference points, has to learn new vocabulary, etc.

And contrary to popular belief, it is a huge source of progress and personal enrichment. Beyond my career as an engineer and manager, I have spent more than 10 years working on human factors, ergonomics, sociology… I have discovered fantastic things, but experience shows me that it is (very) difficult to share it… people think I am talking nonsense… or he is kidding :wink:

Coming back to GHS, beyond the name and the mathematics, everything is different, we must abandon terms like contrast, brightness, Black Ev, White Ev, middle grey, etc. We have to talk about “Strech”, “Symmetry point”, etc. And completely review the notions of Black point (linear) and White point (linear) which are distant cousins ​​of the traditional Black-Ev and White-Ev, and an essential condition for the proper functioning of the algorithm.

Thank you again

Jacques

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@jdc Thank you for clarifying. This different approach drives me feel very confident with a new naming, so GHS is perfect (in any language).

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@Lawrence37 @syyrmb @marter

and also @paulmatth @XavAL , etc.

Now that we’ve realized that “Generalized hyperbolic stretch” is very difficult to translate into many languages, and that the abbreviation “GHS” is a good fit, what do we do?

From my point of view, each translator (Chinese, German, etc.) does what he thinks is best and that’s perfect.

The original (in US English) remains. Should we:

  • leave it as it is currently with the title “Generalized Hyperbolic Thresh”?
  • change it for the sake of harmonization for “GHS”?
  • I don’t think the tooltips need to be changed.

If we make this change, it would be advisable to implement it in the branch
release-5.12 (or a new PR ?) and when ? and who ?

Thank you

Jacques

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I think it’s better to keep the full name, since this tool is adapted from ghsastro, also Siril has an implementation/documentation for it, in its full name. If some English speaker want to know more about the tool, it’s easier to search these documents in its full name. Also, changing tool name in Rawtherapee probably means extra work to update RawPedia, not only English, but also other languages (French, Japanese, etc.) These are extra works that people may or may not choose to do.

I think it’s fine to just add “GHS” at the end of its full name, naming it as “Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (GHS)”. History tab use this abbreviation without explicitly introducing it, so it might be nice to add it.

These are my 2 cents.

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I agree with that, that’s what I already did for the Dutch translation. As you said, it’s easier for users to search on this term than on an unknown translation.

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Days passed, and now I think “Generalized Hyperbolic (-something)” is some kind of math term, and “Stretch” is also a math term, which does mean “stretch” (in opposition to “compression”)?
If so, I can’t find any info about “GH” in Chinese, so I’ll have to steal from Japanese. I now translate it to “一般化双曲线式拉伸(GHS)”, which is a word-to-word, very literal translation. I think I can’t go wrong with that.

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@syyrmb

Yes, you’re right.

Hyperbolic, as I wrote above, is a mathematical term that refers to functions of the same name, such as tanh(x) - hyperbolic tangent, sinh(x) - hyperbolic sine, etc. These are asymptotic functions, meaning they never reach a predefined absolute maximum. Hence their usefulness in relation to, for example, highlights.
Stretch is the opposite of compression. And it seems obvious that if you apply a “stretch” to one part of the image, there will necessarily be a “compression” elsewhere.
As for the translation into Chinese or Japanese, I think you’re more knowledgeable than I am - a given.

:wink:

jacques

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@syyrmb at the end you can use any wording you want: It’s a very complex and new tool to all users and you are the one to give it a name, so the users of your language will take it as given.
In case you call it a “dance on a needle” the users will try out, understand, how to use it and will be happy with “(针上跳舞)” :wink: isn’t it?

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Indeed, it is hard to introduce something when you’re the pioneer and there is few reference, even worse when you don’t really understand it :upside_down_face:!

I feel like I’m the one who’s dancing on the needle when translating this tool. I’ll admit I didn’t fully grasp “针上跳舞” part, because it’s 23 o’clock (or 11pm) here and my brain is barely functioning. I tried to figure out if its “针尖上跳舞” (dancing on the tip of needle, doing some difficult things with technique) or “带着镣铐跳舞” (dancing with shackles, doing things with great restrictions). Though it would also be hard for Chinese users since there is no Chinese translation for RawPedia and I don’t have any social accounts to promote Rawtherapee/answer questions. They’ll needs to make it on their own.

As always, thanks Jacques @jdc for your answers and everybody else for discussing this!

I’ll have to get some sleep as I’m not sure what am I saying and typing now. Sorry if something doesn’t make sense or is not very considerate. I’ll look into things tomorrow.

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I am sorry, i didn’t intend to confuse you, just tried to find an example VERY far from GHS and those chinese characters were created from gogle translate then.
Don’t worry, your translation will be very good :+1: and the users will be able to use the incredible tool, which @jdc added to this great software. Thank you!
Sleep well :slight_smile:

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I think it should stay as “Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch”. “GHS” tells me nothing about the tool.

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@Lawrence37

And the proposal of several participants to add (GHS) at the end

“Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (GHS)”
as in Tooltips…

My personal point of view is of no importance, I am only reporting the majority opinion of the people questioned (who responded).

If we leave it as it was originally “Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch”, of course I don’t do anything, otherwise what should I do, open a PR to Dev? or ?

Jacques