Survey on the linear workflow

[afre (Alan)]

Currently, I don’t touch black levels because it affects colour balance as @age said above. I would also like a full explanation on it.

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PS Thought I might drop these posts into this thread as they are relevant to our discussion.

Quick question on RT Richardson–Lucy implementation

I have a quick question myself. If resize is later in the pipeline and post-sharpening after that, how do you make the data linear after nonlinear manipulations? How does RT, dt, PhF, etc., tackle this, respectively? Not thinking too hard, I can see 2 options: a do all nonlinear operations at the end or b all operations are somehow in linear space; only preview and final output are nonlinear.

Quick question on RT Richardson–Lucy implementation

Even though you have lumped the three in one discussion, I view RL, wavelets and guided filtering as apples and oranges. We have already established that RL does well in linear, so I will let that go for now. To me, wavelets are their own domain, just as there is a Fourier domain and a gradient one, etc. As long as I get to recompose and return to the original domain, all is well. Of course, it might be simpler to start from linear, as transforming one too many times may introduce discontinuiti…

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PPS I forgot to thank the above contributors for reminding me that I have been using the term linear loosely. Yes, where possible, I would like the conversation to tend toward radiometric integrity. Thanks!