[Digikam-users] Some other questions about RAW importing tool

[Gilles Caulier]

2009/5/28 gerlos <gerlosgm at gmail.com>:
> On mercoledì 27 maggio 2009 21:04:29, Gilles Caulier wrote:
>> For advanced users, just go to Editor Settings page, and set on " Use
>> RAW Import tool..." option. Now open RAW file in editor and enjoy.
>
> OK, I found the RAW import tool great!
> I started working on some more "terrestrial" ;-) and easier images, like flowers near home, everything is good, but there's something that I didn't like and since I know all of you love constructive criticism ;-) I will tell you...

No problem (:=))). When time permit, i try to respond to users...

>
> Just after I opened the RAW image in the editor, I wanted to tune its white balance. I expected to find a color picker tool like in the "other" white balance tool, but it wasn't there. OK, not a great problem, since I can use it after I imported the RAW image, but I really liked if it was there, so I can do it in just one step.

For this one code already exist in libraw, but libkdcraw interface
from kdegraphics need to be adjusted. still in my TODO list.

Also, preview widget used by RAW Import tool is not yet factorized
with all preview code from digiKam core (used by other editor tools).
It's planed to do it and to add picker color tool here.

>
> A second point: I'd liked to take the camera white balance as a starting point, and then tweak it. But I've seen that when I choose "camera" as method, the temperature and green sliders are locked, and I cannot change them. I'm sure there is a good reason for this behaviour, but, another time, I'd expected that I could change them and as I did it the method automatically changed to "manual". Same thing for the other methods different from "manual".

All other Demosaicing WB options than Manual are computed
automatically by libraw. you cannot adjust green factor...

> The important thing it's missing imho is that I can't see the values of temperature and green from the camera, so when I want to change them manually I have to start from scratch.

I'm not sure if libraw provide this meta-information as feedback. I
need to check it too in the future...

>
> Another thing I didn't like is that when I've changed something in the "post processing" tab, and go back to the "raw decoding" tab and change something and click "update", I find that my changes in the "post processing" tab are lost, and I have to tweak them again. I'd preferred very much if they still were there as I leave them.

Raw import to divised to 2 part :

1/ demosaicing using libraw algorithms.
2/ post processing using digiKam core algorithms

Both are 2/ do not depand of 1/ : you can adjust postprocessing
without to run demosaicing. digiKam store demosaiced image in memory.
Post processing is generally faster than demosicing. This is why it's
can be computed in live (with a delay of 500ms).

But of course if you change something in demosaicing settings all need
to be done again: 1/ and 2/. As demosaicing is really slow, an
"update" button is present in GUI.

Note : to compute faster demosaicing, you need to install libgomp and
recompile libkdcraw. demosaicied computation will be parallelized, but
you need at least double core CPU (:=)))

>
> Why during RAW import is the zoom drop down menu in the toolbar locked?  When I was trying to correct the chromatic aberration I wanted to zoom in to 100% and the only way to do it was click many times on the "zoom in" icon on the toolbar. The same when you want to zoom out back to fit window. The only commands I can use are "zoom in" and "zoom out", any other zoom option in the menu is disabled.

Hum, it's fixed in current implementation. Try to use mouse wheel instead.

>
> Last thing (no more RAW import tool, just see this thing and reported it): when I choose the "Gray" theme of Digikam, it's almost impossible to use the curve tool, since the color of the curve is the same of the histogram, and you can't see the curve.

Already reported in bugzilla. Still in my TODO list

>
> hope you won't hate me :-)

no (:=))

Gilles