Image Effect Trees (IET) is a new, powerful, nondestructive, image editing program which unlocks the power of Apple's Core Image technology. With IET, you create image sources, and connect them to effects. You can connect the effects and sources to other effects, creating can image effect tree. Your originals are preserved. There is a visual diagram of all your modifications. You can quickly identify where the best quality image resides in your processing chain, allowing you to extract optimal results.
Image Effect Trees (IET) is NOT a general purpose paint/draw program. IET is designed to combine images and text with effects, effects with other effects, and stacks of multiple effects with other stacks of multiple effects, thus creating an effect tree. The original images are always preserved, and since all calculations are in floating point, your image quality is maximized. IET works great with your general purpose paint/draw program.
Most imaging programs utilize the concept of layers. Using layers, you stack effects on top of other effects. The problem with layers is that after stacking several layers together, it's hard to keep track of everything that was done on a layer, and it's hard to see how an effect 10 layers deep might effect the final output. Typically, the designer cannot keep track of all the effect processing which is performed, and only looks at the last layer. As a result, there are often extra effects which are piled on top of each other, which may degrade image quality. For instance, sharpening an image which was previously blurred, or resizing and image which was previously resized.
Effect trees are different. Instead of merely stacking effects, you make a tree of effects and see the lines of interaction. Without even having to think about it, you will automatically identify and optimize your image processing data-path for the best quality.
IET saves your original images, and the processing steps you want performed. It builds your imaging pipeline based on your connections, and recalculates the outputs. If you have a GPU (recommended), all the image processing will take place there. Should you ever decide you want to change the way your images have been edited, you can always make adjustments knowing that all the image processing starts from your originals. You never have to worry about losing information or working with degraded images.
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