Record of effects

[jdfeka Profile]

I feel like I may be hogging this part of the board, but each time I use the program --which I'm lovin' more each time-- I get an idea for something else I might use it for.

Today I had a request from someone that led me to want to reproduce, exactly, the steps which I had taken to produce an edited photo. The problem is, I don't really remember what the steps were or their exact order. The Recently Applied Effects list does not seem to list the effect used in chronological order, but even if it did, I had done some other images since so that might not have applied.

So my request would be to have the editor record the effects and their sequence, which were applied to produce a given image. Hopefully this would be included in the final image file (jpg or otherwise), so that a person could go back and recreate the final effect. Perhaps there could be a option to turn this off if you wanted to keep the info private (or encrypt it).

This feature might also be helpful in tracing bugs in the program output. I earlier reported a bug where the output file had ugly marks on it. I think this may have been related to one or more effects which are in the database, but right now i can't remember what they are. I mention this because when I was working on trying to reproduce the file I mentioned above, I think I saw some of the same marks show up in the thumbnails when I was searching for the effects I'd previously used but I didn't stop to note them (although one may have been "Vibrant colour by david" when used with a mask).

Jack

[admin]

Hi Jack,

You're in luck, I think all these things are already in the software. The list of what you have done already is shown at the top right of the screen. You can click on anything you have previously done to go back and change it. If you want to save all the steps, choose "Save As Session" from the file menu. When you load a session back in, the steps will be shown at the top again.

You can even apply the set of steps to other image files, using the "Batch Apply Effect" option from the File Menu. Obviously some tools like Erase or Red Eye can't easily be transfered to other pictures.

Tony

[jdfeka Profile]

Tony,

This isn't what I had in mind. The batch effect or the record of steps is only available while a file is open. Once a file has been saved and closed, there is no record of what went on. In the case where I wanted to re-create a previous job, the file had already been saved and closed. I had no idea that I might want to replicate it.

If it is saved as a session, then if there has been some erasing or selections applied the batch edit won't function. I also found that the image which is returned from a saved session (at least in version 10 on a Mac), isn't the same as what was on my screen when I saved it.

So, even if I recorded a session and wanted to apply it to another file and there were selections or erasing done, I'd have to get a notepad out and write down all the names of the effects, then open up a new picture and manually apply all these effects from my written list.

It would be much better if just the sequence of effects were recorded and then, if manual intervention were required at certain stages, the program would stop and promo the user to manually do these things, while other simpler processes could be applied automatically. In addition, if a "log" of steps were kept rather than the actual effects, this might save considerable file space. I noticed that a session file for an image of 3mb turned into 10.5mb in the sample I tried above. I'd guess that a list of steps which would be like a script which the program might run wouldn't need to add anything more than maybe 10 or 20,000kbs to the file size, even if many effects had been added.

[admin]

Hi Jack,

Some interesting points. I see what you are saying about it not working if there are erase steps involved, what you suggest sounds like a nice idea, and actually very similar of something we are thinking of working on. As a kind of workaround at the moment, what you could do is just delete any manual steps involved and then batch apply (hover over a tab to get the "X" delete button).

The session files are a log of steps and the only image that is stored is the original one. The reason it is so big is that the original image is stored losslesly. If, say, we stored the original version of the file, then a session would only be a little larger than the original file. We could also add the option not to store the original file, which would make sessions tiny. However it obviously means they would break if moved away from the original file.

Tony