Image Tool ("it") is a robust framebuffer/render view window, offering complete floating point support and a powerful and flexible catalog, as well as a fast and powerful imaging tool that is capable of production-quality image manipulation and compositing usually found only in high-end standalone products.

User Interface

The "it" window can be customized by selecting options in the first two sections on the "Window" menu These optional windows and toolbars can be shown or hidden from the menu, or toggled on or off with their associated hot key as displayed in the menu. They can also be docked into the main window or left as floating windows. Double-clicking on the title bar of one of these sub-windows will toggle it from docked to undocked. Toolbars, such as the "Pixel Readout" toolbar, don't have a title area since they are so small and instead have a grab handle at the end or top that is used to place them. The grab handle can also be double-clicked to toggle the docking.

QLabel#PixelReadout {
    font-family: Courier;
    font-size:   20px;
    margin-left: 10;
}

Catalog

This window shows all the images and renders that are stored in the current "it" session. Multiple catalogs can be used, each storing their own images. To create a new catalog, go to File->New Catalog.

Image Window

This window shows the current image or render selected from the catalog.

Inspector

This window shows information related to the selected image or render. The large text area is the Notes field. This allows you to add any meta data to the image. The Custom View option is explained later in the Views section, under Special "it" Features section.

Tools

The tools section gives you access to the most commonly used tools in "it". From left-to-right, they are:

Pan Tool

Click and holding down the left mouse button on the image window will allow you to pan around the image. (Default hotkey: 1)

Zoom Tool

Click and holding down the left mouse button on the image window will allow you to zoom in and out of the image. (Default hotkey: 2)

Crop Tool

Allows you to draw a crop window over your image. This allow you to re-render a portion of your image. To remove the crop window, left click within the crop window and click on the X in the top right corner. (Default hotkey: 3)

Scrub Tool

Allows you to quickly scrub through all your images in your catalog. Click and holding down the left mouse button while moving the mouse to the left will scrub backwards in the catalog; moving right will scrub forward. (Default hotkey: 5)

Select Object Tool

Will select the object in your content creation application (may not work in all bridge products). (Default hotkey: 6)

Select Surface Tool

Will select the shader for the object in your content creation application (may not work in all bridge products). Note that the render must include a Float id AOV to work correctly. Some IPR renders output this from the DCC application. (Default hotkey: 7)

Reset Zoom

Resets any zoom applied while using the Zoom Tool. (Default hotkey: X)

Wipe Tool

Allows you to wipe between two images in your catalog. (Default hotkey: 4)

To use, select the first image in the catalog, then go to Image->Toggle Background.Then, select the second image in the catalog, and with the Wipe Tool turned on, left mouse button click and drag in the image window.

Background

Toggles the current image as a background. See Background.

Wipe Direction

Changes the direction of the wipe tool (vertical or horizontal)

Cancel Render

Cancels the current incoming render

Sequence Controls

The sequence controls sections gives you access to controls on image sequence playback. From the left-to-right, they are:

Step Back Frame

Step back one frame in the sequence. (Default hotkey: Left)

Play Sequence

Play/pause playback of the sequence. (Default hotkey: Space)

Step Forward Frame

Step forward one frame in the sequence. (Default hotkey: Right)

Loop Mode

Toggle on or off playback looping of the sequence.

For further explanation of Sequences, see Sequences under the Special "it" Features section.

Monitor Controls

The monitor controls gives you access to settings such as Gamma and Exposure. The right-most button resets the Gamma and Exposure controls to their defaults. There are also some useful monitor control hotkeys, including:

Exposure Up 1 F-Stop

(Default hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + ] )

Exposure Down 1 F-Stop

(Default hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + [ )

Gamma Up 0.1

(Default hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + } )

Gamma Down 0.1

(Default hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + { )

Pixel Readout

The Pixel Readout window gives you control of the channels view, pixel remapping, as well as information regarding the current pixel that is under the mouse cursor, including pixel coordinates and pixel values. You can lock the current pixel readout by going to View->Lock Pixel Readout (Default hotkey: M). The remap menu allows some post-processing to be performed on the image (re-mapping) before it is displayed. This does not alter the pixel values in your images. See Remapping for more information.

The channel view shows which of the image channels are currently visible and the options are RGB (normal color) Red, Green, Blue, Alpha (if present) and "Luminance".

Other

Right-clicking in the image area of the window also provides access to the menus. Other windows that are accessible on the "Window" menu such as the "Console", which provides python scripting access to "it" are not dockable and appear as top level windows.

Preferences Window

General

Save Sessions

Controls whether "it" session data should be considered valuable. If turned on, a save dialog will be presented when image catalogs are closed.

Image Cache Size

The number of images "it" should hold in memory. When exceeded, "it' will move the oldest image to a temporary file in the Scratch Image Location.

Scratch Image Location

Location where images are saved, if the total number of images in all catalogs has exceeded the Image Cache Size preference.

Maximum Zoom

Limits how much "it" will zoom in and out.

Short Window Titles

When toggled on, only the image filename will be displayed in the window's title bar.

Burn Mapping On Save

If toggled on, new catalogs will default to having the Burn Mapping On Save option turned on (Catalog->Burn Mapping On Save). With the Catalog->Burn Mapping on Save option turned on, images saved via File->Export will have their current view mapping burnt into the pixel values before writing to disk. This is useful if you want to share your renders from "it", especially in 8bit oriented file formats like png and jpeg.

Appearance

New bucket indicator

This allows you to edit the color of the recent bucket marker. See Recent Bucket Markers.

Events

Focus Incoming Render

If toggled on, the image window will automatically display the current incoming render.

Display Mapping

Sets which view mapping to use when Automatic view mapping is selected from the remap menu, for different bit depths (8-bit, 16-bit, Float) and whether the image is from an incoming render or from disk.

Shortcuts

Allows you to edit any of the hotkeys mapped to specific commands in "it".

Special "it" Features

Color chart generator

The photo and film industry has been using color rendition charts for decades ensure high quality results. You can learn more by reading one of many articles on the topic.

It offers a standard color chart generator (using published sRGB values) that can be used in your look-dev renders as an stable color reference.

• The color chart is generated at 1024x768
• The image should be saved as a 8-bits image (tiff, png) with Burn Mapping enabled.
• Reference it in PxrTexture and enable Linearize.

Analysis Tools

Diff

This command will compute the difference between 2 images from the catalog. Typically, you might want to generate a heat map from the diff image (see below).

Find Variance

This command computes the variance of an image compared to a reference image.

Heat Map

Often, it is useful to create a heat-map from a data image to visualise its content. This function offers a few controls to generate heat maps from single-channel images or the luminance of a color image. You can select more than one image to process at once.

Palette

There are 3 different palettes you can choose from: Classic, Fire and Hue

Custom Display Range

When this is un-checked, the heat map is displayed using the pixels' min-max values, otherwise it uses fixed values of your choice. It is useful to use a fixed range when comparing different images, like the sampleCount AOV for different renders.

• Normalization Min Value: the lowest value visualised.
• Normalization Max Value: the highest value visualised.

Text

You can add some text at the bottom of the image with the minimum, maximum and average values, plus a couple of optional fields:

• Font: choose a font you like
• Font size: adjust the font size, bearing in mind that everything must fit on a single line.
• Display Range: display the custom display range values.
• Notes: display any notes the source image might hold.

Isolate Values

This simple command replaces with black any values that don't pass your test. You can compare the pixel value or luminance to a fixed value, using <, <=, ==, >= and >.

This is useful to find specific values in an image.

Dump Metadata to message log

Retrieve an image's metadata and display it in the message log window. Note that only loaded images have metadata.