Make the view transform an operation the photographer can set

FR-DEV-3j gives the view transform two controls, contrast and the white
point in stops above middle grey, persisted and held per mask layer like
any other setting. A scene-referred pipeline whose white point cannot be
moved hands the photographer a shoulder they cannot place.

`view_transform` is a hand-written node in `Stage::View`, a new stage
the composer emits last and emits whatever the node's state: a neutral
operation is otherwise left out of the shader, but a photograph with no
view transform is a scan. "Active" keeps meaning "moved from the
defaults", so an untouched photograph writes nothing for it and
`every_node_starts_neutral` still holds. A caller whose chain holds no
view operation gets a default one.

The composer's loop becomes an ordered list of steps — camera nodes, the
matrix, scene nodes, layer-only nodes, the view — so each is emitted in
exactly one place. The base curve could not be a node because it
belonged to the camera; the ops README records why that argument went
with it (D19). The panel shows it in the Light group as "Tone Mapping".

Tests that counted the blocks of a neutral graph now count one, the
view transform, and the two chain-wide tests that load a film expect the
view transform to be absent, since a stock replaces it.
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-27 16:52:54 -04:00
parent 37a6d99dc4
commit 92afaebd34
11 changed files with 386 additions and 99 deletions
+21 -12
View File
@@ -293,19 +293,25 @@ in raw pixels is a different photograph on screen and in the exported file.
## What is not a node, and why
Three things act on every pixel and are deliberately not in this directory:
the as-shot white balance, the camera matrix, and the **view transform**
(FR-DEV-3j). They are emitted by [`../src/operation.rs`](../src/operation.rs)
into the composed shader around the block of nodes.
The first two are properties of the *file*, at the same standing as the
Two things act on every pixel and are deliberately not in this directory: the
as-shot white balance and the camera matrix. They are emitted by
[`../src/operation.rs`](../src/operation.rs) into the composed shader around the
block of nodes. They are properties of the *file*, at the same standing as the
masked-photosite crop (FR-RAW-3) and the stored orientation (FR-DEV-3h): nobody
chose the sensor's green sensitivity, and reading the file correctly means
undoing it. The view transform is different in kind — it is the one stage that
maps scene-linear colour to a display range (D19, ARCH §6.14) — and it runs
after every node, because corrections to capture are only meaningful on linear
values. It replaced the per-body **base curve**, which was looked up by camera
model and flat past 1.0, so it clipped every recovered highlight.
undoing it.
The **view transform** (FR-DEV-3j) *is* a node — `view_transform.yaml`, a
`rust:` one — and that is a change of mind worth knowing about. It replaced the
per-body base curve, which was kept out of this directory because it belonged
to the camera: as a node it would have carried one body's rendering onto
another body's file through a shared sidecar. D19 retired the per-body curves,
and with them the argument. One view transform serves every body, so its
settings are a decision about the picture like any other. What is still
special about it is `Stage::View`: the composer emits it at the end of the
chain *whatever its state*, because a photograph with no view transform is a
scan and not a picture. Its neutral is its defaults, like every other node's,
so an untouched photograph writes nothing for it.
## Stages
@@ -315,7 +321,10 @@ primaries, scene-referred and unbounded. White balance is the only camera
node, because its multipliers scale the sensor's own channels. Everything else
belongs in the scene, where a hue or a luminance weight means the same thing
whichever body took the frame (D19). The composer emits the camera nodes, then
the matrix, then the scene nodes, each group in `order:`.
the matrix, then the scene nodes, each group in `order:`, and the view
transform last. `stage: view` is not offered to a declaration: a node that
maps into a display range is exactly what ARCH §6.14 forbids of everything
before the end, and the one that is allowed to is hand-written.
## Errors