[CREATE] plug-ins

[Kai-Uwe Behrmann]

Am 24.04.06, 02:55 +0400 schrieb Alexandre Prokoudine:

> 4. Is it possible at all to create a uniform API for plug-ins that
> could work e.g. in both Krita and GIMP (and with GIMP I mean upcoming
> GEGL-based GIMP) with regard to color management, bit depth (8/16/32
> floating point per channel), color spaces etc?

The API exist as the ICC standard.
ICC profiles are designed to describe nongeomtric colour manipulations. 
For instance a desaturation can be descibed within a ICC profile.
Such profiles are most often designed as abstract ICC profiles. The 
mechanism is deployed for instance in ColorSync. Abstract profiles provide 
a easy meachanism to handle basic colour effects systemwide and 
application independent. On osX one can use such profiles as print 
filters, in applications like Photoshop and CinePaint and from the command 
line.

As of the nature I would suggest to cover these profiles just under the 
OpenICC. If someone likes to contribute useful profiles, we could discuss 
a good place in the file system.

ICC profiles are bit depth and raster/vector independent. They provide a 
high abstraction layer. Look at Argyll/littleCMS and how CinePaint handles 
them. They are called Look Profiles in CinePaint. (Maybe not the best 
name.)


Further for manipulation with geometric components, like in a blur filter, 
ICC profiles are not suitable.


Just to mention, CinePaint's rewrite called Glasgow will support a plug-in 
architecture with a command line as well as a gui interface. Possibly the 
ideas can get in thouch with Øyvind Kolås suggestions.
Using plug-ins across applications (like realised with Kipi for KDE) is 
a nice idea.

regards
Kai-Uwe Behrmann
                                + development for color management 
                                + imaging / panoramas
                                + email: ku.b at gmx.de
                                + http://www.behrmann.name