Digital Light & Color

That may be a silly question, but I can't figure how that can be done, and on top I think it may be quite useful.

Is there a way of reopening a transformation to make adjustments, but preview the results of those adjustments not on the same image but some other image downstream?

Add a side branch to the downstream image and then copy the transformation into the empty branch.

Transformations cannot use downstream images as input at this creates a circular reference.

Ok, but how for example can I do this, even with a branch: I Advanced Brightness Curve, Colour Balance and Bilateral Sharpen, one after another, and I would like to adjust Brightness Curve while seeing what eventually happens to the image after the Bilateral Sharpen. That's probably not possible, is it?

Maybe I misunderstood your original post.

If you adjust the Brightness Curve and then click OK and then click on Bilateral Sharpen you can see the result, but not while you have Brightness Curve open.

I originally tried allowing more than one transformation to be open at the same time, but it was impossibly confusing, even for me.

Ok thanks, I understand.

I was thinking that perhaps, somehow, either the Preview Window, or Compare Pannel, or maybe Magnifying Tool, could be optionally set to stay on a chosen image, while only one transformation control panel upstream is open and being adjusted, and the preview would update when Apply is hit and the changes propagate - the preview would reflect the sum of them.

Maybe it's too complicated, but could be useful as transformations interact - for example it's nice to be able to see what adjusting some parameter in Adjust would contribute to the whole combination of them. I was thinking if there is a way of doing it to any combination of transformations.

The only thing like this you can do is to toggle the bypass on one transformation while viewing a different image (by right clicking the bypass button). This lets you see the result of bypassing an upstream image while viewing a downstream one.

I like the idea -- maybe there is a way to salvage it, so I'll think about it.

This may be not very helpful, but I'll mention it anyway.

Left-clicking on the upper LH circle in an image, toggles this transformation on and off and shifts preview focus to its output

Right-clicking on the same upper LH circle of an image, also toggles this transformation on and off, but keeps focus (and preview) on whatever preview was shown before downstream of it.

This is actually quite useful, as - by right-clicking - I can see the effects of any transformation switched on or off upstream of the current one, having the focus kept at the same current preview somewhere dowstream of it.

What would be even better would be the same thing, but in addition to just turning a transformation upstream on and off, optionally bringing up its control panel to adjust the settings, while still keeping the focus on the original preview on the current image output somewhere downstream of it...

How difficult and painful it is to implement it, I have no clue, even if there is a virtue in it...

I understand what you are asking for, but in addition to being non-trivial to implement, I have some problems with it.

1) It could respond very slowly to changes in the settings since all the intervening images would have to be recalculated to generate the preview.

2) It could be very confusing to preview a different image from the one the settings are controlling.

3) If one of the intervening transformations changed the size of the image (e.g. crop), this would mess up synchronized scrolling for transformations that do not change the image size.

A better solution, although still non-trivial, might be to provide a tool that brings up a view of some image(s) you want to monitor in a separate window. You could then update this selectively by clicking Apply, but the preview that goes with the transformation would remain visible. Or possibly just a way to automatically temporarily switch to a different image when you click Apply and then switch back when you click on the image.