Processing History in History Explorer

[niteman1946]

Two observations.
1.  I can watch the process history develop as I process an image.  But the history evaporates when I do a save.
2.  When executing the DBE, a new image is generated and the history starts anew.

I suspect I'm missing something fundamental. 

Can the processing history be saved with the image?  If so, how?
Can processes performed earlier be modified at their original location?

Thanks for your help.

Mark

[pfile]

i think juan has something up his sleeve in this department in the future...

the history should not disappear when you save, but it will disappear if you save the image and then close it and open it again.

for now, the only thing you can do is load the history explorer (right click on the image), and then open the history explorer and drag it's triangle to the desktop. that will create a process icon that contains all the processing steps you did. you can then save that icon like any other processing icon.

but yes, the history and the image are decoupled from one another and that's a bit of a bother.

regarding DBE, yes, that's true that the history begins anew, because a new image is generated.

so in answer to your questions, the history can't be directly saved together with an image. you end up with an image + an xpsm file.
not sure what you mean by #2, but you could save the processing history as described above, then undo to the point where you want to change something, do the new process, and then go into the saved history process icon and delete (or disable) all the actions that were already done on the image (and of course the one you just re-did) and then apply the process container to the image by dragging it's triangle to the image.

[Juan Conejero]

As Robert has said, right now images and processing histories must be saved separately, using image files and icon files (XPSM files).

This is going to change completely with the new project functionality, which I'm working on right now. It will be available (a first version of it) in PI version 1.7.0. Basically, a project file will be able to store all of your images with their histories (including undo/redo states), icons, workspaces, tool settings, preferences, color management settings, RGBWS settings, ... a lot of things

There is something important that must be pointed out regarding your second question. When you create a new image with any tool, the process instance that originated the image is always stored as the image's initial state. You can access the initial state from the History Explorer window. Initial states are always ProcessContainer instances that store the sequence of instances that have been executed to generate an image. For example, you can try the following procedure:

- Open any image.

- Apply any sequence of processes to it.

- Right-click the image and select the 'Load History Explorer' context menu option. This will open the History Explorer window to show the image's processing history, where you have all processes you've applied in the previous step.

- Now click the image's main view selector (the vertical tab at the image's left border) and drag it to the workspace. This will create a duplicate of the image.

- Right-click the duplicate image and select 'Load History Explorer' again. On the History Explorer window, expand the <Initial State> item and you'll see the same processes that you applied in the second step. This is the initial state of the duplicate image.

An initial state represents the 'baseline' form of an image in PixInsight. Unlike the rest of history items, you cannot undo an initial state. When you drag the blue triangle from the History Explorer window, the initial state is not included in the resulting ProcessContainer. You can however click and drag the <Initial State> item to create a ProcessContainer icon.

[niteman1946]

OK, lots of info here.  Thanks pfile and Juan.  Considering my brief post, you both gave me excellent feedback.

I did multiple operations to an existing image and drug the blue triangle from the History Explorer to the PI desktop.  It created an icon that contained the current history.  Then saved that icon as an xpsm file.  This was opened in Internet explorer and gave the written history of the processes.

Feeling pretty good about this, I next re-opened the original image (without the recent operations).  Opened the saved xpsm icon (Process/Process Icons/Load Process Icons/xpsm file).  Then drug the History icon to the image.  It gave an "invalid unlock operation" failure.  PI shutdown and computer reboot could not correct this.

The culprit was the first operation (AssistedColorCalibration).  This could be imposed by itself - and would work, but would not when used from the History icon.  With it disabled, the 2nd and 3rd operations (FastRotation and CurvesTransformation) worked fine by simply dropping the History icon onto the image.

So, is my basic approach correct?
What suggestions do you have about the "invalid lock" issue?

And a separate issue is updates.  The Core application bugfix 1.6.9.652 will not accept my user name and password (from my trial license).  Will not allow copy and paste.  Any suggestions?

Thanks again for your quick and valuable replies.

Mark