Digital Light & Color

Kiril and Jonathan have, as promised, made some really nice enhancements to PWP 5.0's ability to process images in batch mode using workflows. For example, I am very happy with the ability to save workflows from hand-processed image streams, and there are some very nice new widgets that we can use in workflows -- especially the 2-zone and 3-zone widgets. Those new transforms (and widgets) go a very long way towards being able to apply den's multi-tone methods to images.

So, what's next? I start this because of the question thover asked in this thread: http://www.dl-c.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=47.

The main thing I would like to be able to do is to generate image-based masks and apply them in a workflow. I wrote a long-winded example (sorry) of how the copyright imprint workflow that thover referred to could be made better. You can download a copy of the pdf file from http://internet.cybermesa.com/~rwalker/ ... wStory.pdf. I think the request is non-trivial, but allows for very powerful workflows to be created.

If any of you have an interest in talking about what new workflow features would help you, perhaps this is a time to talk about it.

Bob Walker

Another useful (at least for me) new feature would be to be able to make manual inputs during the workflow runs.
Like for example to have a Text widget and input a new text (lets say a description of the picture for a calendar) every time a new picture runs through the workflow.
For longer texts, or lots of pictures, maybe the text could be in a Excel-file.
Or, second example, to make a border with a color taken from somewhere within the picture, a bunch of flower pictures where the border should have the color from the flower.
So the workflow would stop at the Border widget and the color could be selected individually.

Dieter,

You can already do it (mostly): if you change 'All except rejected' to 'Selected images only', you can select a single image (or a group), and then go through widgets and adjust the settings (edit text, change the frame colour etc), just for this image/group. Then you select another image and do the same.

Bob,

Having a 'Mask Widget' could solve another potential problem - the size of the workflows. Small is nice. The premade masks may not be that heavy, but they are (were?) stored in the workflows. I recall reporting during the beta that once when using Composite Widget, I ended up with 60+Mb workflow file just because the overlay image was a large 48bit TIFF - and I didn't noticed it untill way after trying to figure out why a workflow (a recipe) could possibly be so big.