Digital Light & Color

Picture Window Pro 7.0 beta is now available. Many new features have been added. Here are the highlights:

Multi-threading Nearly all transformations are now multi-threaded for significantly higher performance on multi-core machines.

Calibrating Cameras and Scanners A new Build Camera/Scanner Profile function creates camera and scanner ICC color profiles. This is essentially the same function as Profile Mechanic - Scanner, previously available as a separate application.

Frame and Mat Transformation This new transformation lets you develop the most effective framing and matting design for your images. You can output the specs of your design for conventional framing or print out your image and mat as a single image. You can also create virtual framed images for posting on the web or using in an album.

Wave transformation lets you create patterns composed of interlocking shapes and color transitions. The transformation creates a single repeat of the pattern. The pattern can then be tiled to produce as large an image as required. These patterns can be used directly with other PWP transformations, to create interesting borders, mats and backgrounds.

Watercolor transformation gives images the look of a watercolor painting by simulating brush strokes and darkening edges, imitating the way watercolors pool near brush edges.

Find Bad Pixels Transformation detects bad pixels in a camera sensor and constructs a bad pixel file that you can use in the Raw dialog to fill in the damaged pixels.

Contour Transformation analyzes an image and creates contour lines along brightness boundaries.

Monocolor Transformation creates an image which uses black plus either red, blue or green for an interesting simplified effect.

Blur Transformation gets two new blurring methods. One method helps reduce halo effects when blurring through a mask. The second is useful for reduction of chroma noise in shadow areas.

Extract Jpeg Widget allows you to extract jpegs from raw images in a workflow.

A full description of the new features, documentation and the new beta software can be downloaded here:

http://www.dl-c.com/Temp/pwp70beta

Posting Comment and Bug Reports

Please post these in the new PWP 7 Beta forum. Also before posting a bug report, please search the forum to make sure the bug has not already been posted. Thank you for your help and cooperation.

Jon and Kiril

One of the changes is that the type in dialog windows is larger. This is wonderful.

Anticipating a new PWP7beta section, perhaps I could ask this question here, as I think it may be quite fundamental for new PWP7 performance:

What's the difference between: # of cores, # of threads, multitasking, multiprocesses, and what the settings Files/Preferences/# of Threads and Workflow/File/Do Not Multitask actually do and how they should be set?

Cheers!

When saving a non-raw image after editing in PWP 7.0.5 beta, pressing the Ctrl+S keys, the warning box "A file of this name is curently open. Close its window and replace the existing file? Yes/No" appears. Is there any way to bypass this dialog box and go directly to the "Save image" dialog box, where PWP generates a unique file name with the suffix "-1" added, with settings for jpg quality and saving of the workflow?

In PWP 6, the "Save Image" dialog appears automatically when pressing the Ctrl+S keys.

The larger font size in the dialog boxes (compared to previous PWP versions) is a welcome change. However, the "Save file" dialog box still has the smaller font size.

It would be useful with a new main heading, PWP 7 Beta Comments, on the Message Board.

In Preferences, the Number of Threads parameter sets how many simultaneous processes will be used for multithreaded operations, like transformations. The number should be set to at least the number of cores. However performance may actually improve on some machines with even higher settings. So for convenience, there are two buttons -- Number of Cores and 2X Number of Cores, which set the parameter to these two values. Help-About now also reports how many cores PWP has detected.

Settings between Number of Cores to 2X Number of Cores are recommended. The best setting can be determined experimentally. However, please note that this setting is not critical.

Finally, multithreading of transformations has also prompted a change in the Workflow. Because transformations are now multithreaded, there is generally no advantage to running more than one workflow process simultaneously. Therefore the default is workflow is now 'Do not multitask'. This setting means that only one workflow process will be launched. That process will, however, use the number of threads set in preferences, so workflow does take advantage of multi-threading. (Perhaps the 'Do not multitask' parameter should be renamed.)

To go directly to File Save As, select it from the file menu. Ctl S does a File Save as before unless no filename is available, in which case it displays File Save As.

In response to user feedback we did make a change in File Save behavior in PWP7. The change is that 'File Save' no longer proposes a unique filename and now saves in place. (Overwrites generate a suitable warning.) This is generally in keeping with the way most Windows programs operate.

On the other hand, 'File Save As' is used for giving the image a new name. Therefore the name it proposes is unique within the current folder. This name will generally be the current filename with an appended number if a file of that name already exists. However if you are saving to a different folder or using a different file type from the existing file, the same root name is used.

We will have a PWP 7 Beta forum as soon as I solve a little technical problem with the forum. In the meantime, please post comments to this thread.

Kiril

Newer processors often have multiple cores - usually between 2 and 8 - which are essentially independent processing units that run in parallel. In addition some processors implement so-called hyperthreading which lets each core run multiple simultaneous processes. To see how many cores your processor has, run Help/About Picture Window Pro - the core information is displayed near the bottom of the About box.

PWP 7.0 takes advantage of hardware parallelism by splitting most transformation calculations into strips and processing multiple strips concurrently. Each strip is processed by a thread so when you select the number of threads in File Preferences you are telling PWP how many strips to divide the image into and process in parallel. The fastest performance should be when you set the number of threads to approximately the maximum number of threads the processor chip can handle simultaneously. For example an Intel Core i7 processor with 4 cores and hyperthreading should be able to run 8 threads at once. The operating system does use threads from time to time in the background so the fastest performance may come from reducing the number of threads a little, but this is usually a minor effect.

The best way to determine the optimal number of threads is to time a few operations (with as little as possible going on in the background) and see which value gives the shortest times.

FYI. I've noticed an inconsistency with auto white balance (at least with my Sony .arw RAW files). If I have the white balance set to auto WB when I load the raw file, it displays pretty much as it should. If I change any of the RAW processing settings, the white balance changes and is off quit a bit. If I have the is set to Camera WB, and then change it to Auto WB after loading, it is again, not correct.

ksinkel wrote:...In response to user feedback we did make a change in File Save behavior in PWP7. The change is that 'File Save' no longer proposes a unique filename and now saves in place. (Overwrites generate a suitable warning.) This is generally in keeping with the way most Windows programs operate... Kiril

I respect the opinion of other PWP users regarding their wishes for a change of the Ctrl S behaviour, but personally I think there should should be an option for going directly to the "File Save As" dialogue and bypass the "Warning" dialogue.

In PWP 7.0.5 beta the key combination Ctrl Shift S opens exactly the same "Warning" dialogue (Overwrite Yes/No) as Ctrl S. Wouldn't it be possible let the key combination Ctrl Shift S open the "File Save As" dialogue instead?

ksinkel wrote:... We will have a PWP 7 Beta forum as soon as I solve a little technical problem with the forum... Kiril

Fine. Thanks.

The list of open windows is missing from the Window menu in PWP64 7.0.5. I hope this is not an "enhancement", because I use this feature frequently.

System specs: Win7 Home Premium 64bit, 8GB memory

Thanks,
Ron