Whether an effect works from the loaded photographs is now part of the
declarative plug-in contract, next to params(): Effect::needsSources()
defaults to true, and blur — which only softens what it is handed — says
no and blurs an empty canvas when given nothing.
Only the first stage of a cascade ever sees the sources, so
chainNeedsSources() just asks the first stage. Both front-ends gate on
that instead of on "are there any images": the CLI only refuses an empty
batch when the chain wants one, and the interface renders a blur-led
chain with no images loaded, saying whichever thing is actually missing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A project is the whole setup as a small text file: the source paths, the
effect chain with its params, the canvas and the seed. Reading and writing
are driven by the effects' ParamSpecs rather than by whatever sits in a
stage's values, so a new effect is saveable without touching this code, a
key an effect does not declare is never written or read back, and an old
project keeps the defaults for params that did not exist when it was
saved. Paths under the project's own folder are written relative, so a
folder of images and their project can be moved whole.
src/core/project.cpp carries its own small JSON reader instead of a
dependency, and names the line when a hand-edited file is wrong.
The interface gets a header-bar menu: New, Open, Save, Save As, with
Ctrl+N/O/S. The title shows the project name. Opening a project replaces
the sources, discarding a decode still in flight rather than mixing it
into the new project.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
renderChain runs a list of stages in order: stage 0 works on the loaded
sources, every later one on the output of the stage before it, so blur
after scanlines softens the scanlines rather than the photographs. The
effects themselves are untouched — none of them knows whether its input
came from disk. All stages share one Rng and run in sequence, so a seed
still reproduces the cascade byte for byte.
The sidebar grows an "Effect chain" list: add a stage from a menu built
from the registry, reorder it, remove it, and edit the selected stage's
params underneath. Each stage keeps its own values. The CLI takes the
same chain from repeated -e, with every flag going to the stage whose
effect declares it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fills the canvas from one source, tiling it when it is smaller, then
applies a separable box blur repeated `passes` times to approximate a
gaussian. Params: radius, passes, direction and first_source, so the CLI
flags and the GUI widgets come out of the ParamSpecs as usual.
All random values (source index and crop offset) are drawn serially
before the parallel pixel work, so a seed reproduces the image exactly;
the box window clamps at both ends and the radius is clamped to the
canvas so an oversized radius cannot read out of bounds.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Decoding a batch of photographs took seconds on the main thread, so the
window froze with no sign of what was happening. loadImages now takes an
optional LoadProgress (per-file callback plus a cancel flag) and hands files
out from a shared cursor, so one large file cannot stall the queue behind it.
The GUI decodes off the main thread and shows a progress window with the
count, the current file and a Cancel button; it only appears if the batch is
still running after 250 ms. Headless mode keeps a "reading n/total" line on
stderr when it is attached to a terminal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Port of the Python prototype to C++20 with a CMake build:
- effector_core: GUI-free static library (effects, image IO via gdk-pixbuf,
declarative param specs, registry, portable seeded RNG, thread helper)
- scanlines effect: plans strips from the seeded RNG, then copies pixels in
parallel with memcpy and doubling horizontal tiling
- gtkmm 4 interface: native file dialogs, widgets generated from the param
specs, coalesced background renders, preview as a GDK memory texture
- CLI: flags generated from the effect registry, headless rendering with no
display required
- ctest suite covering the RNG, registry, effect geometry and image round trip
The Python prototype is kept under python-reference/.
