Photos

The Image node

Drop a photo on the canvas, or add an Image node and Choose image. It opens RAW files from most cameras (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RW2, RAF, PEF and others) and JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF, GIF, JPEG XL, PSD and BMP.

Some files have limits: HEIC photos show in a Folder node but can’t be adjusted, HDR AVIF can’t be adjusted, PSD only in RGB, CMYK or grayscale, TIFF at 8 or 16 bits. A CMYK PSD, JPEG or TIFF is shown with the colour profile it carries, or with the standard Windows CMYK profile if it has none, so the colours can differ slightly from Photoshop.

To put a different photo in a node, drag it onto the node from a Folder node or from File Explorer: the node outlines itself, and when you let go the new photo takes the place of the old one. Ctrl+Z brings the old one back.

The format chip in the header shows the size, for example JPG · 6000×4000, or the cropped size when there’s a crop. Click it for the details: pixels and megapixels, the resolution written in the file with the print size it gives, colour model and bits per channel, the embedded colour profile, file size and, for a JPEG, an estimate of its quality. When the file doesn’t state a resolution the panel says so instead of assuming 72 ppi. Copy the information copies it all as text.

The folder icon in the node’s header opens the photo’s folder in a Folder node next to it, with the photo already selected, even in a folder with thousands of files. If that folder is already open on the canvas, Warpstead uses that node and brings it into view.

Adjusting

Select the node (and make it big enough) and the panels appear: Light, Color, Optics.

• Light and Color: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Temperature, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation, and a tone curve in four zones (Shadows, Darks, Lights, Highlights). The Light sliders and Vibrance respond the way they do in Lightroom Classic: Blacks at −100 takes everything below 16% grey to black, Exposure rolls off into white instead of clipping, and Vibrance pushes muted colours more than saturated ones and spares skin. Photos adjusted before 0.17 keep the sliders they had.
• Drag a slider, or click the number to type a value. Double-click a slider to reset it.
• The histogram has zones you can drag, and warnings for closed shadows and blown highlights: click them to see where.
• Auto sets light and color for you. Auto for color takes the white from the parts of the photo that are really grey: it removes a cast, leaves the colour alone when nothing in the scene is grey (a sunset, a cave under a lamp), and stops halfway on a very strong correction. On photos adjusted from 0.17 it also sets Vibrance, higher on a dull photo and zero on a colourful one.
• The eyedropper sets white balance from a neutral gray you click in the photo. Esc cancels it.

Ctrl Z undoes the last adjustment on the photo.

Optics

Lens correction uses the lens profile found in the photo’s data, or one you choose. Then vignetting (amount and midpoint), lateral fringes, and purple and green defringe with their hue. If the lens isn’t recognized or the photo has no lens data, the panel says so.

Crop

Press Crop. Choose the proportions (Free, Original, the usual presets, or Custom from 1:10 to 10:1); X swaps portrait and landscape. Rotate 90° left or right, flip, or Straighten. Enter confirms, Esc cancels. A crop applies only to that photo. While you drag the frame, the size that will come out shows inside it, in pixels and megapixels.

Drag a handle past the edge of the photo and the canvas grows, as with the Crop tool in Photoshop: the node keeps its size and the photo shrinks inside it to make room. New area sets what goes around the photo: transparent, black, white or a colour you pick. The colour swatch opens a picker: drag in the square or type the hex code, the eyedropper next to the code takes the colour from a spot on the photo, and below are five colours taken from the photo’s edge, on the side of the new area. A file without transparency, a JPEG or a PNG without an alpha channel, gets a white new area when you Save it; copies in PNG, TIFF or WebP keep it transparent. The frame goes past the edge only while Straighten is at 0°; straighten after widening and the photo turns inside the canvas, with the corners filled the same way.

Continue the photo, the last swatch in New area, fills the canvas with pieces of the photo itself: water carries on as water, sky as sky, gravel as gravel. The fill is worked out when you press Done, and the first time takes a few seconds. Exposure, curves and the other adjustments apply to the filled area too, and it saves like the rest of the photo, with no transparency. It does best on water, sky, grass, sand and blurred backgrounds. A building or an object close to the edge can come out repeated or misshapen; if that happens, widen less or pick a colour.

Remove

The Remove panel, under Light, takes out what you don’t want in the photo: a pole, a passer-by, a stain. The first time it downloads the model that does the work, about 1.2 GB, once. It runs on your PC, on the graphics card when there is one, and the photo never leaves the computer. With the panel open (R opens it too) the cursor becomes a circle, and [ and ] change its size. Paint over the object and let go: a few seconds later, what was around it fills its place. Paint the shadow as well, because only what you cover goes away.

Each stroke is a retouch, with a number on the photo and a row in the panel. Another version redoes the same spot with a different result, the eye shows the photo as it was before that retouch, and the bin deletes it; Ctrl+Z removes the last one. You can paint the next one while the previous one is still being worked out. Retouches live in the adjustment, like the crop: exposure, colour and crop apply to the rebuilt parts too, and the file only changes when you save. Other programs that read the XMP don’t see them and show the photo without. It works best on small and medium objects. A large object among similar ones, a tree in a row of trees, can come back in another shape; try another version or a wider stroke.

Mode

Mode, in the node’s menu (the ··· button, or a right-click on the node), works like Image › Mode in Photoshop: RGB, Grayscale or CMYK…, at 8 bits per channel or 16 bits per channel. The node starts from the file’s own mode and shows it in the header, for example CMYK 8-bit. A change of mode is an adjustment like the others: Ctrl+Z undoes it, and it goes into the XMP with the rest. In Grayscale the photo turns grey straight away; 8 or 16 bits look the same on screen and only matter when you save.

CMYK… opens Convert to CMYK. The profile stands for the paper and the press, so ask your printer which one to use. Five come with Warpstead: ISO Coated v2 (FOGRA39), the default, PSO Uncoated, PSO LWC, SC Paper and ISO Newspaper. The CMYK profiles installed in Windows are in the list too, RSWOP among them. FOGRA51, GRACoL and Japan Color can’t ship with the app, but the ICC registry has them for free: download the file and add it once with Load profile…. From then on the photo in the node is a proof of that press, with the colours it can’t print turned duller, and a label on the photo says CMYK proof and the profile’s name. Change profile… in the Mode menu picks another one. If a profile you loaded is moved or changes on disk, the node says so and shows ISO Coated v2 until you choose again; your choice stays in the photo.

Save writes the photo in its new mode, as long as the format can hold it. When it can’t, Save is off and says why, and Save as… appears next to it: it offers only the formats that fit the mode and writes a new file next to the original, never over an existing one. Save as… is also in the node’s menu.

What to know before sending a file to print:

• CMYK is written at 8 bits only, so 16 bits per channel is off in CMYK.
• Converting a file that is already CMYK, editing its colours, straightening it or extending its canvas rebuilds the separation from the colours. With Save, a straight crop on its own writes the samples back as they are. Blacks and greys printed with the K ink alone (text, thin lines) come back as a mix of all four inks: a 100% K turns into roughly 75% C, 67% M, 63% Y and 82% K.
• A CMYK JPEG saved by Photoshop (YCCK) opens and converts, but Save stays off and tells you why; Save as… writes it to a new file instead.
• A CMYK file without a profile is read with Windows’ RSWOP profile, and Save writes it in RSWOP.
• Save never rewrites a RAW. On a RAW the mode applies to the preview and to Save as…, which writes a new file next to it.
• A file that is already CMYK and goes into a CMYK delivery is separated again, even when the delivery uses the same profile. An RGB photo whose Mode is CMYK is converted once if the delivery uses the Mode’s profile, and twice with any other profile.

Where the adjustments go

Warpstead never changes your original image. Adjustments are written as XMP: inside the file when the format allows it, otherwise in a .xmp file next to it. If writing would change the image data, or the file is read-only, Warpstead doesn’t write and tells you why.

Save into the photo

For JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WebP there’s also Save: it bakes the adjustment and the crop into the pixels. The previous version goes to the Recycle Bin; where there’s no Recycle Bin, Warpstead asks before overwriting. RAW files have no Save button: their adjustment lives in the XMP, and Save as… writes a new file. Save also works in a review, on the photo you’re looking at.

Save is off, with the reason, when there’s nothing to save, when the photo takes its adjustment from a wire (saving would apply it twice), or when the format can’t hold the photo’s mode.

Resize

Resize, the second tab of the Crop panel, works like Image Size in Photoshop. It starts from the size after the crop, new area included. Fit to offers the common long edges (4K, 2560, 2048, Full HD, 1080 for social). Width and height are joined by a chain that keeps the proportions; open it and the photo stretches. Each field takes pixels, percent, centimetres or inches, and Resolution sets the ppi written in the file; when the file doesn’t state any, it starts from 72. It also goes larger than the photo, or the crop, up to 100 megapixels: the pixels are stretched with Lanczos. When you ask for more than the photo, the panel also offers Open Upscale, which adds an Upscale node already wired to the photo: it rebuilds detail instead of stretching pixels.

With Resample on, the pixels change. Warpstead resizes with Lanczos in linear light, so fine bright details don’t darken, then adds a little sharpening that grows with the reduction; Sharper reduction adds more, Softer reduction none. With Resample off the pixels stay as they are and only the resolution changes, which is the print size: type 20 cm of width and the ppi go up. The result is always a new file next to the original, with the adjustment and crop applied, the same colour profile and the EXIF. Its name ends with the new size, for example -3000x2000.jpg.

Culling

Wire a list of files into an Image node (from a Folder node’s All files output, for example) and the node becomes a review of those photos.

The node counts what’s flagged and what’s left, and shows a strip of thumbnails. Its Flagged output sends on only the flagged photos. Selecting a photo in the review selects it in the folder too, and the other way round.

One adjustment, many photos

An Image node has an output called Its adjustment. Wire it to other photos, or to a Folder node, and they all get the same adjustment, and follow it when you change it. The crop doesn’t travel. If you adjust one of the followers by hand it goes its own way; Reattach makes it follow again, and its own adjustments are lost.

Delivery

Wire photos into the To deliver input of a Folder node and the bar at the bottom of that folder becomes a delivery bar. It tells you how many photos are coming, how many are new, renamed or in a different format, or that everything is up to date.

• Export makes the files, Update remakes the ones that changed, Rename applies the naming scheme, Remove deletes the ones you unflagged.
• Stop, Retry, and Undo for the last delivery action.
• Format settings: Originals, JPEG, TIFF or WebP; full size or long side; quality (lossy or lossless, TIFF compression); color space, grayscale, CMYK (JPEG and TIFF), your own ICC profile and rendering intent; the file name scheme.

Where the folder has no Recycle Bin, Update and Remove are final and Warpstead asks first.

Copying a memory card

The Ingest node copies a card to two places and checks both before it tells you it’s done.

Choose the Source (the card), Copy 1 (your working copy, which is also the node’s output), Copy 2 (the mirror), a job name and a naming pattern. Before copying, the node shows the plan: how many shots, how many to copy, which are already there with the same content (skipped), and name clashes (a file with the same name but different content is never overwritten).

Press Ingest · two copies. You can stop it (it stops at the end of the current file), resume it, resume only the second copy, or choose another second destination. At the end there’s a report you can copy, and a button to eject the card. Nothing is ever written to the card.

The option also verify the card reads the card a second time. It’s slower, and it’s the only way to check that the card itself was read correctly: without it, the two copies are checked against each other and against what was read.