Hello everyone and excuse my bad English.
@anon43125638 , I am the designer of these “idiotic masks”. Should I take it to mean “village idiot” or “useful idiot”, or ??. I prefer to think of it as a stylistic device to show your dismay. You feel the same way about the general philosophy of the software, which you find impenetrable.
Thank you all for expressing your point of view and a certain form of support. I appreciate it.
Just a historical reminder, 5 or 6 years ago the number of developers (what’s a developer?) was at least 5 or 6. Today, for various reasons, there are only 2 people (a little more) who do most of the development. Among them, there’s me, a sickly old man of 77, who’s absolutely not a computer scientist and is quite incapable of making certain modifications, particularly those affecting the GUI.
I admire the abilities of others, such as :
- Alberto’s work @agriggio integrating CTLs into ART is remarkable - I’m not talking about the CTLs themselves.
- @Lawrence37 work on (almost) real-time updating of executables, either from current “Dev” or from Pull Requests, is a substantial plus.
- Aurélien Pierre’s creativity in Darktable is also worth mentioning.
I’m not doing RT development to flatter my ego, nor for any kind of report, nor for glory, but for the most part out of personal challenge. It’s by examining RT and seeing other products in action that I decide whether or not (depending on my computer skills) to create a new algorithm.
These creations include (but are not limited to) either the work of researchers (Ciecam, Wavelets, etc.), or a totally personal creation (White Balance Auto Temperature Correlation).
Selective Editing is a special case. When I bought my first D200 in 2006, I was seduced by the U-point approach, different from masks. Of course, I didn’t have the code, so I just imagined an algorithm. It took about 10 years, with a lot of help from Pierre Cabrera (GUI) @Pandagrapher and Ingo Weirich (code optimization). Depending on your habits, you may find it easy or difficult to approach.
Depending on one’s skills, habits and beliefs, software will initially be easy or difficult to use. Some people’s opinions evolve over time. For example, if there are 3 software products A, B and C. A few years ago, A was perceived as more complete than B and less complex than C. Later, the opinion was reversed: B became the best and A the most complex…yet little has changed in terms of code and algorithms. But why should they all be the same and similar to paying customers? Diversity is richness.
Now to the masks. In principle, they’re almost contrary to the RT-spots philosophy. Nevertheless, in response to demand, I’ve added some. It’s a lot of work for a mixed result. I could have copied the masks that already existed in RT, or Darktable, but I did it differently. There was a challenge with 6 difficult photos in the spring of 2024… nobody used masks, but that doesn’t mean anything.
That’s not to say that they can’t be improved - either by integrating curves and polygons, or by changing the concept a little (ART type), but it’s a big job, and one that I don’t know how to do for the most part.
One of the current challenges is to make an algorithm designed for astro-photography work for more traditional photography. The algorithm is complex (very) - I’m not questioning it, but I’m having to deal with what is rare in astro-photography, the problem of highlights. You can follow this development (Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch), here.
ghs
Gamut compression (ACES) is also an interesting point that I think will soon come to fruition.
Gamut
I’m pleased with the current cooperation at RT, in terms of code - fortunately I’m not alone, our cooperation is working well, forum opinions and documentation (thanks to Wayne @Wayne_Sutton ). There’s still a lot of work to be done:
- improve the code and algorithms: new contributors are welcome.
- improve documentation and tutorials: RT is sorely lacking in videos, and progress is being made on Rawpedia. However, documentation (content and support) won’t happen on its own, so thanks to all the initiatives underway, and here again, contributors are most welcome.
Jacques