Why ONLY two preview sizes, Actual and Reduced ?

Now the Beta 3.0 have included the very good and well done progressive preview, I want to suggest if it would be possible in some way to put more preview sizes than only having Actual (which is 100% real size) and Reduced which is a much reduced version in low resolution.

Why I am asking for more preview sizes ?

Because in some filters that are quick and renders and previews quickly is not very important (although it would be useful too), but what happens with very intensive and complex filters and large resolution images as base source ?

I have tried using 12 Megapixel photos 4288x2848 pixels and in some filters it works fast enough, but on some filters is very difficult to use the Actual preview because it is really very very slow and would take some minutes even to show the first part of the image.

So what I am suggesting that it would be possible in some way to have a more wider choice options in the preview sizes. Perhaps it could be 5 instead of just 2 = Reduced, 25%, 50%, 75% and Actual.

I am using an AMD QuadCore Athlon X4 640 3.0 GHz and 8 GB RAM DDR3 1333 with Nvidia Geforce 9600GT 1GB DDR3 RAM.

I know that I would surely speed up much the preview if I had a newer better CPU , like for example the Intel i5-2500 or i7 2600, but I think that not everybody have a very new computer with the latest CPU, and many of us are using normal CPU with not great power and as Filter Forge does not support any kind of graphic acceleration, so it depends totally on the CPU power.

Hello uglyboys

Please, Do you mean with Low, Medium, and Best that Low should replace reduced and Best should be Actual ?

Low - Change for what reduced option is now
Medium - 50% of the resolution of the image ?
Best - Change it for what Actual option is now

Please, Is this what you mean ?

Because in this way you would ONLY have just ONE more option added, that is medium, and if they are going to change it I think that is not enough, at least in my opinion and point of view to work better with Filter Forge.

As said before what I am suggesting as said before, is to add 3 levels in the middle, wich I tink is not too much to ask, so it would be possible in some way to have a more wider choice options in the preview sizes.

5 instead of just 2

Reduced - very low resolution as is now already shown
25% of the resolution of the image
50% of the resolution of the image
75% of the resolution of the image
Actual - 100% - Real image you will get when final rendering

I really do not know how difficult and complicated can this be to add this feature of 5 levels to FF and what amount of work would be needed, but seeing that I think that the Filter Forge Team are expert programmers, they could be able to find a middle solution to this.


OPENGL OR NVIDIA CUDA ACCELERATED PREVIEW ZOOM

The IDEAL woul be like other software that have now deleted all this and changed it this preview levels to just ONE level, because it is a OpenGL, OpenCL and/or with Nvidia Cuda so you get a smooth and real time zoom preview to any level, but Vladimir has already told that it will NOT be posible to have any kind of hardware GPU acceleration on Filter Forge so this option is really not an option.

If You want to know what I am talking about yopu can see what Adobe have done in Photoshop CS5 with Nvidia Cuda

Please see the videos examples in this page here, just sel ect Zoomimg and Scrubby Zoom, as you can see they are very fluid ONE level zoom, or thousand levels zoom, whatever you want to consider

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_photoshop.html

FILTER FORGE CAN¨T BE COMPARED TO PHOTOSOP BECAUSE FF NEEDS TO RENDER THE IMAGE

I know that really the comparison between FF and Photoshop is not fair and good because is like comparing oranges and apples, because FF needs to RENDER the resulting image before showing the final image, and I do not think that it would really be possible to render IN REAL TIME.

ACELLERATED PREVIEW ON PROGRAMS THAT NEED TO RENDER


Well there is a better comparison for Filter Forge preview and are the newest video software that ALSO needs to render the final result before showing it to the user.

I am talking about the Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5

Sorry that there are no videos for plain and normal GPU, but you can get an idea with the Quadro series cards.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_Af...tsCS5.html

In AfterEffects is like in Filter Forge that it needs to calculate a lot of things and make a pre-render of all the image before making any kind of zoom.

Please, see the Camera zoom video difference.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_PremiereproCS5.html

Also, although really different, is Adobe Premiere Pro

Quote

At the heart of Premiere Pro CS5.5 is the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, built using the NVIDIA® CUDA™ parallel processing architecture. Accelerated by Quadro, you get real-time previewing and editing of native, high-resolution footage. With a wide selection of solutions now available, you can get boosted performance and fluid, real-time video editing fr om a range of platforms, and feel confident to work your magic in front of any client

I could put more examples of other software, but I think it is really pointless to continue with this because Filter Forge WILL NOT HAVE ANY HARDWARE ACCELERATION so there is not point in showing what other can do, only ask at least to have a wider choice in zooming and size preview.

Thanks for the answer Vladimir and confirming that Filter Forge won't have any CUDA/GPU based acceleration BUT the hope is on the new future Intel chip architecture generation, and thanks for the link that as you say looks promising.

BUT PLEASE YOU DID NOT ANSWER MY MAIN QUESTION OF THIS THREAD

Why ONLY two preview sizes, Actual and Reduced ?

Quote

As said before what I am suggesting as said before, is to add 3 levels in the middle, wich I tink is not too much to ask, so it would be possible in some way to have a more wider choice options in the preview sizes. 5 instead of just 2 Reduced - very low resolution as is now already shown 25% of the resolution of the image 50% of the resolution of the image 75% of the resolution of the image Actual - 100% - Real image you will get when final rendering I really do not know how difficult and complicated can this be to add this feature of 5 levels to FF and what amount of work would be needed, but seeing that I think that the Filter Forge Team are expert programmers, they could be able to find a middle solution to this.

Please, I will be thankful if you as the expert programmer and main person knowing how FF works, could explain the limitations and technical difficulties to have more than 2 preview sizes.

Would it not be possible to have 5 preset view sizes as I suggest ?

Or perhaps it could be possible but it would take a lot of work to do and you think that there could be more important thinks to work on and with higher priority.

Sorry that I am not any kind of expert at all and do not know abut programming and I am only suggesting and asking if it could be possible or not ?

Thanks very much

Quote
Crapadilla wrote: Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." -- William of Ockham

Is not really needed MORE than 1 preview ???

Reduced preview which is the default one, is small and even does not fit the whole available screen, and the only other preview available is the 100% preview that is too big to fit the screen and it too slow to be useful as preview. And there is nothing in the middle.

RECONSTRUCTION AND REORGANIZATION OF THIS THREAD

I want to say that I am sorry that I have done this thread in a bad way and want to apologize for this

This thread has been oriented and organized in a bad way by me and now I have thought to make a new one much more clear, simpler and shorter one to explain this in a much better way and so it can be understood better and see why it would be needed more than one additional preview beyond the default one.