Warning meaning

[Marpel]

I have been compositing a few images, some that are a typical 48bit Tiff, and some are temporary New Images which consist of a plain colour. Some of the Composites occur a bit down an image ladder. And during this, I often close/delete some of the images and also use the "Reload Last Settings" on some of the image processes.

I have done this sort of thing many times in the past, but just recently started seeing a Warning pop up - "Settings file was saved from a transformation that depends on other images. These dependencies will not be restored."

When I press Okay, things just continue on as expected, and I think I understand the first sentence but the last sentence less so. Is that related to the "Reload Last Settings" parameters or something else?

[jsachs]

The Composite transformation, if you define an overlay image rather than a solid color, depends on that image as an auxiliary input. When you save the Composite settings in a file (as is implicitly done when you click OK), it saves everything except the auxiliary inputs since these in turn may depend on one or more other images. Thus when you reload the settings (e.g. via Reload Last Settings), Picture Window cannot restore the overlay image (since it was not saved) so it is reset. The purpose of the warning is to let you know this is happening. If you want to restore the overlay image after a Reload Last Settings, you need to do it manually. If the Overlay was set to a solid color instead of an image, you should not get the warning message. A similar situation can occur when using any other transformations that supports auxiliary inputs, for example Layout, Blend, Difference, Compare, Stack Images, Stereo, Extend Dynamic range, etc.

[Marpel]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, but I am still not getting what is happening.

I open 2 images (a and b).
I crop b. (b-crop).
I duplicate a and use a transformation on that image (say, brightness curve for this example).(a-brightness).
I Composite b-crop onto either a or a-brightness, using 1 point alignment. Everything is okay for that first Composite.
I then Composite b-crop onto the other a or a-brightness image, using "Reload Last Settings" (for the same position in the image). The warning appears.
It does not matter which a or a-bc that I first choose for the Composite (and everything is okay), but when I try to Composite onto the other a or a-bc image, that warning comes up.
Is it the crop operation that causes the warning to exhibit? And if so, why no warning when the crop is Composited onto the first image? Or is it the Brightness Curve on the Copied image? Or.....?

[jsachs]

When you click OK on the first Composite to finalize it, its settings are automatically saved in a file called Previous.composite. Those settings include everything required to recreate a new Composite transformation except for the other transformations it depends on, if any. When you Reload Last Settings in the second Composite, it loads the Previous.compisite file saved by the first Composite, which restores almost all of the previous Composite settings, but it cannot restore the Overlay image so it resets the Overlay image to a solid color and gives you a warning that you will need to set the Overlay image yourself. Similarly if there were any image dependencies via one or more of the composite masks, those will not be restored.

If you want to see what dependencies a transformation has, right click on its thumbnail and select Show Dependencies... from the menu. Any dependencies with an up-arrow that are marked In (auxiliary input) or Ma (initial mask image) are settings that are not restored by Reload Last Settings.

The Composite Overlay image is simply one example of an auxiliary input -- an input image other than the primary input image (i.e. the one directly above the current transformation). Auxiliary inputs are not saved in settings files since, unlike all the other settings, they require information from transformations other than the current transformation. Thus, if you wanted to load a settings file in a totally different workspace where the auxiliary input image did not exist or existed but was changed, there is no way to restore the auxiliary input so as to produce the same output image as the original Composite.

Similarly, if the current transformation has a mask and that mask is built based on another image as a starting point, that image is not saved and you will get a warning if you try to do a Reload Last Settings and the initial mask image is reset.

In your example, you get a warning if the first Composite had an Overlay image or used a mask that had an initial mask image. If the Overlay image is a solid color and there are no initial mask images, then you don't get a warning when you Reload Last Settings.

[Marpel]

Thanks for taking the time to write out a detailed explanation.