https://ansel.photos/en/ Ansel * News * Workflows * Documentation * Community * Resources * Support * English * Francais Your digital darkroom Ansel is an open-source photo-editing software for digital artists, designed to help you achieve your own interpretation of raw digital photographs. Ansel screenshot It is grounded in the legacy of Ansel Adams, pianist and photographer, who pushed darkroom craftsmanship like never before to serve his photographic vision. The negative is the score, and the print is the performance. Ansel Adams --------------------------------------------------------------------- Install --------------------------------------------------------------------- Linux Distribution-agnostic executable Download ansel.appimage Windows Windows 10 & 11 installer Download ansel.exe Build from source Best performance for your hardware Building instructions Minimal recommended configuration : CPU Intel i5 (4 cores) / 8 GB RAM / GPU Nvidia GTX 850. The links above always point to the latest nightly build of the "fairly stable" branch. If you want a particular version or need to roll back, you can find all intermediate versions on Github. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Why Ansel ? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Many solutions already exist to produce ready-to-consume photographs for masses, from smartphones filters to out-of-cameras JPEGs, followed recently by AI-driven automagic applying [DEL:caricatural :DEL] dramatic toy filters. These make photography easier than ever, but are the produced images really your images and, in any case, the images you expected ? Pressing the camera shutter merely started a process ending when the on-screen picture looks like the one you had in mind. Ansel proposes to put the artists back at the center of the creative process and enables them with an interface to manipulate images with precision and nuance, using state-of-the-art color science and independent color controls. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ansel lets you interpret your raw photographs much like a music instrument, when most software tries to automatically play the score for you, but mechanically and soullessly. --------------------------------------------------------------------- What can Ansel for you ? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ansel allows you to manage your collections of pictures, to edit your raw digital photographs and film scans non-destructively and to export the result to common file formats. It stores your editing histories as text and lets you go back in time at any editing step you like, anytime. Color work Ansel ships a recent color science, compatible with HDR : the chromatic adaptation CIE CAT 2016, the HDR color space JzAzBz (2017) and the perceptual color space darktable UCS 2021, developed specifically to manipulate color saturation without the fluorescent effect. Color calibration After After Before Before Fix white balance and get high-fidelity colors in just a few clicks, by calibrating colors with a Color Checker directly in the darkroom. Color-grading After After Before Before Give ambiance and character to your pictures by polishing their color palette with nuanced and fine-grained controls, in RGB, Ych or HSB color spaces, for creative and corrective purposes. Color matching After After Before Before Force the chromatic adaptation such that any selected object matches a predetermined color, input from CIE Lab coordinates (for logos and brand colors), or by sampling the color of the same object in another shot, as to even the color rendition over the series. Hue qualifying and keying After After Before Before Use the hue, chroma and lightness qualifiers to quickly define masks and apply selective effects. Combine parametric masks with drawn masks and boolean operations. Refine and feather the edges of masks by blurring or using clever edges detection. Tonal work The tonal working methods are designed to manipulate luminance without affecting hue nor saturation, in order to respect the color work, done apart. HDR tone mapping After After Before Before Recover deep shadows and compress the dynamic range while retaining original saturation and hue, with gamut mapping to ensure the colors fit in the output color space. (Photo : Andreas Schneider) Zone-system editing After After Before Before Balance densities based on exposure zones, by preserving local contrast thanks to an edge detection algorithm, and select the exposure zones to affect directly from the picture, through the interactive cursor. (Photo : Andreas Schneider) Image reconstruction Lens deblurring After After Before Before Unleash the power of multiscale, gradient-based machine learning to rejuvenate old lenses, recover focusing mistakes or add emphasis on your subject, but without the typical edge artifacts, over-sharpening oddities or added noise. Dehazing After After Before Before Restore some depth in foggy and hazy shots by bringing back textures and saturation in colors, without overaccentuating already sharp details. Denoising After After Before Before Remove chromatic noise, soften and blend lumaninance noise. Highlights reconstruction After After Before Before Salvage both color and texture in highlights, recover blown areas by propagating gradients while the gamut-mapping watches your back to ensure colorful highlights can still be printed at their proper hue. You don't have to bleach highlights to hide problems anymore. Specialized features Automatic perspective correction After After Before Before Let the machine learning detect automatically vertical and horizontal lines and compute the best geometric correction to rotate, straighten and crop the picture, optionnaly taking into account the kind of lens used. Censoring After After Before Before Anonymize people, license plates, etc. and play with use conditions of socially prude network without defiling your pictures too much. Compatibility Edits Ansel is based on darktable 4.0 and is fully compatible with darktable 2.x up to 4.0 database and XMP files. Coming from darktable ? Find out what is changed Cameras Ansel uses Rawspeed and Libraw to decode raw photographs. New cameras may need up to 24 months to be fully supported after their commercial release. Supported cameras Languages The software is integrally translated in English, French and simplified Chinese. Partial translations are available in German, Spanish, Portugese, Ukranian, etc. Improve translations --------------------------------------------------------------------- Darktable, but better Ansel is what Darktable 4.0 could have been if its developers were not so busy turning it into an usability nightmare. Ansel is a Darktable 4.0 variant where 30.000 lines of poorly-written code and half-broken features have been removed, and 11.000 lines rewritten : it runs faster, smoother, uses less power and requires less configuration. Enjoy an app focusing on getting work done and stability. --------------------------------------------------------------------- A software by Aurelien Pierre [Auto-portrait-0088-MLM_0774] On the following picture, I made the styling, the make-up, the lighting, the shot, the editing, the retouching, the software color filters, the documentation to use them, the website to talk about them in 2 languages, and even the colorspace used for saturation adjustment. You will find very few people with this kind of full-stack understanding of light and color able to also write efficient computer programs and read academic research papers on applied mathematics. Yet, you will find a lot of image editing applications and a lot of guys trying... I have given 4 years of my life to the Darktable project, only to see it destroyed by clueless geeks playing code stashing on their spare time, everyone pushing his own agenda with no sense of design, in a project where nobody is responsible for anything and where we work too fast on everything at the same time. Ansel development is driven by results and achieved by proper color science throughout the pixel pipeline. Things are done at a pace that ensures the quality of the code. The design is based on the user feedback I gathered from giving individual editing/retouching lessons with Darktable over the past 3 years, and on the 2 user surveys I ran in 2020 and 2022. The software is only a mean to an end and it infuriates me when it gets in the way of creativity and productivity. Having one designer leading the project and managing priorities should hopefully prevent that. Developing it still takes an average of 45 h/week for not even minimal wage, and if you think open-source imaging options need to be made better, well it will not happen by itself (and don't expect the guys who created the problems to be the ones fixing them). Support the development [Shoot] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Source code Ansel software and documentation are released under the GNU/GPL v3 license and versionned with Git. The website is copyrighted but still publicly visible. The work repositories are hosted on Github and are mirrored on Gitlab for backup. Software GNU/GPL v3 license. Github (original) Gitlab (mirror) Documentation GNU/GPL v3 license. Github (original) Gitlab (mirror) Website Copyright. Github (original) Gitlab (mirror) (c) 2022 Aurelien Pierre. All rights reserved. * * * Search [ ] You can also ask Chantal, the AI search engine. (title) (score) (section) *(summary) Ansel * Resources + Color theory readings + Common misconceptions * News + Darktable : crashing into the wall in slow-motion * Workflows + Printing + Basic Editing + Monochrome toning + The scene-referred workflow * Documentation + Install o Install on Linux o Install on Windows o Install on Mac OS o Install OpenCL drivers o Configuration files o Import configuration from darktable o Debugging + Overview o User interface o Supported file formats o Sidecar files & non-destructive editing # Sidecar files # Importing sidecar files generated by other applications # Local copies + Views o Lighttable # Lighttable view layout # Undo/redo # Lighttable modes @ Filemanager @ Zoomable lighttable @ Culling @ Full preview # Digital asset management @ Collections & film rolls @ Thumbnails @ Star ratings & color labels @ Image grouping @ Metadata and tagging o Darkroom # Darkroom view layout # The pixelpipe @ The anatomy of a processing module @ The pixelpipe & module order @ The history stack @ Undo and redo # Processing modules @ Module header @ Multiple instances @ Presets @ Module controls @ Curves @ Wavelets @ Deprecated modules # Masking & blending @ Blend modes @ Masks - Drawn masks - Parametric masks - Combining drawn & parametric masks - Mask refinement & additional controls - Raster masks # Organization @ Module groups @ Quick access panel @ Manage module layouts o Map # Map view layout o Slideshow # Usage o Print # Print view layout + Modules o Processing modules # Final resampling # Astrophoto denoise # Blurs # Censorize # Chromatic aberrations # Color balance rgb # Color calibration # Color look up table # Color reconstruction # Color zones # Contrast equalizer # Crop # Demosaic # Denoise (profiled) # Diffuse or sharpen # Dithering # Exposure # Filmic rgb # Framing # Graduated density # Grain # Haze removal # Highlight reconstruction # Hot pixels # Input color profile # Lens correction # Liquify # Local contrast # Lut 3D # Negadoctor # Orientation # Output color profile # Raw black/white point # Raw chromatic aberrations # Raw denoise # Retouch # Rgb curve # Rgb levels # Rotate and perspective # Rotate pixels # Scale pixels # Sharpen # Surface blur # Tone equalizer # Unbreak input profile # Vignetting # Watermark # White balance o Utility modules # Darkroom @ Clipping warning @ Color assessment @ Duplicate manager @ Gamut check @ Global color picker @ Guides & overlays @ History stack @ Image information line @ Mask manager @ Module order @ Navigation @ Raw overexposed warning @ Snapshots @ Soft proof # Lighttable @ History stack @ Import @ Lua scripts installer @ Select @ Selected images @ Styles # Map @ Find location @ Locations @ Map settings # Print @ Print settings # Shared @ Collections @ Display metadata @ Export @ Filmstrip @ Focus peaking @ Geotagging @ Metadata editor @ Recently used collections @ Scopes @ Tagging + Preferences & Settings o General o Import o Lighttable o Darkroom o Other views o Processing o Security o Storage o Miscellaneous o Shortcuts o Presets o Lua options + Color management o Display profile o Rendering method o Rendering intent o Ansel's color spaces o Unbounded colors o Possible color artifacts o Ansel's color dimensions + Performance o Opencl # The background # How opencl works # Activating opencl in Ansel # Setting up opencl # Possible problems & solutions # Scheduling profile # Multiple devices # Opencl still does not run for me o Memory & performance tuning + Special Topics o Transitioning from darktable to Ansel o Variables o Ansel's color pipeline o Midi device support o Translating dtdocs + Command Line Interface o Ansel o Ansel-cli o Ansel-generate-cache o Ansel-cltest o Ansel-cmstest o Purge_non_existing_images.sh + Scripting with Lua o Basic principles: luarc files o A simple lua example o Printing labeled images o Adding a simple shortcut o Exporting images with lua o Building user interface elements o Sharing scripts o Calling lua from dbus o Using Ansel from a lua script o Lua API * Support