vkdt

a graph-based photography workflow tool

node-editor

after developing darktable for about ten years, why did i restart from a new codebase?

the vkdt project addresses several shortcomings of the core architecture of dt. these points are the main motivation to start fresh:

developer sanity

single code-path GPU processing only (not i386, SSE/AVX, OpenCL mixed)
single pipeline with full res full region only (no need to sync gui, preview, cropped)
bloat free
no gtk (also no qt)
introspection code not needed: configs are human readable
most data stays on the GPU from initial processing to display
strict separation of gui (c++) and core code (c, glsl)
module reordering/multi instancing transparently solved with a node graph

core processing features

vkdt does roughly 20x more work and is roughly 20x faster at the same time (don't ask me how this happens, classic dt just loses speed between the cracks)
more speed means we can enable more advanced modules by default, pain free (see below)
processing is a node graph: vkdt supports multiple inputs (merge/align frames) and multiple outputs (variants, histograms, ..) at the same time

user facing features

full res raw processing usually faster than vsync
supports 10-bit displays out of the box (try this with gtk/cairo..)
better highlight inpainting
interactive brush strokes (pentablet) with guided smoothing
local laplacian pyramids for local contrast
deconvolution sharpening
thumbnail processing is disk i/o limited (be sure to use fast SSD where you can) and rawspeed limited: some raws can be decoded quicker (RAF) than others (CR2)
animated graphs with optional feedback loops
full screen colour management that supports dual monitors even when the window is split between the two
support for raw video (mlv) and ldr video (mp4, mov)

images shown here are taken from the playraw category on pixls.us.

lighttable mode:

darkroom mode, showing the configurable favourites tab:

darkroom mode, showing the node graph connections:

December 2022