posted November 12th, 2007
Public Beta 0.1 is out! Compared to the last one, this is a lot juicier. Keep it mind though, this is still lacking in features—although it’s mostly the filters that are missing.
Also, sorry, PowerPC friends: this one is Intel-only for the moment. Naked light 1.0 will definitely be Universal, but for right now my G5 doesn’t have Leopard installed.
Quick Look
One of the most common complaints about the first beta was
that it didn’t do much of anything. Fair enough. But it turns
out most people never even got past the Library screen. So,
working to make Naked light more immediately self-explanatory
is a good thing. 
So the most obvious was to add a Quick Look-like feature (I’ve done away with the shiny black, though). When you double click on an image in the library, you get a quick full size preview of your image. If you want to start a composition with this image as the base, you can click the “Use in New Composition” button. Alternatively, you can just start using tools or applying filters.
Naked light, of course, doesn’t get rid of your original image—you’re creating a new composition with the same dimensions as your image, and using that image as the background.
Brushes
Brushes are up!
Brushes are currently labeled ‘Slow’ for two reasons:
- They’re not yet multithreaded, which means that Naked light stalls while redrawing them. Depending on the complexity of your brush strokes and the speed of your computer, it may beach ball for a bit if you resize or scroll your canvas.
- Brushes are drawn on the GPU. That’s a greater idea for large brushes—unfortunately, on smaller, more typical brushes, this isn’t very efficient at all, and can be tediously slow. This means lots of those annoying straight lines that appear when the computer is too busy to pick up all your mouse movements.
Curves
Not too too exciting, but really important. This is one of those filters that I was surprised to find missing in Pixelmator and Acorn.
Linear Gradients
Linear gradients are up. The great thing about gradients in Naked light is the live preview—both when using the Gradient Tool, but also when editing an already made gradient with the Move Tool. The not so great thing for the beta: gradients are only from one color to another, there’s no fancy, multicolor gradients (yet).
November 13th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Hi Your app looks sweet. Two aspects I dont understand though: Your Tools are on the right side. But as soon as you can see the Desktop behind it,, it s colliding with the files and disks and folders on your laptop. So please allow for moving the lools to the left or switching on a solid unicolored (black) background. And secondly: The tools fan out like the dock items in the original dock, but could you make them stay that way after you mouse-clicked on them? Maybe with a longer release time? Maybe customizable? Thanks and keep up the good work, maybe get someone in the boat to help you advance faster,, since I m really looking forward to using the app once its beyond 0.5
November 13th, 2007 at 2:43 am
You have undo/redo and some really nice ui elements. Two things that I find hard to code. And the future plans for Naked light are great. Good luck
November 13th, 2007 at 3:36 am
I’m not a big fan of the custom composition window. Is there a technical reason for this? It leads to crazy behaviors such as being able to shrink the window down to next to nothing, the close, minimize and zoom-to-fit widgets not showing their x - + symbols when hovering the mouse of them, as well as other oddities. Since beta 0.0 I have been unable to actually view my library…I’ve drag and dropped several images onto the library, the app seems to import them but they don’t actually show up until I click and drag randomly on areas where I’d expect thumbnails of the images to be…sometimes I’ll be able to grab these invisible thumbnail and they’ll actually turn visible when I’m dragging them in their ghosted state. I can also double-click randomly until I find the thumbnails. This will open a blank window (yes, again, the image won’t show up)…with the button ‘Use in a composition’ at the bottom of the window. When I click that, it opens up a (yup, you guessed it) blank composition window…and the tools that used to be on the right side of the screen don’t show up in 0.1. The blank media window has been a problem in 0.0 and 0.1…but the blank composition window and the disappearance of tools is a new 0.1 problem in my case (apparently this behavior isn’t exhibited for most people.)
November 13th, 2007 at 4:55 am
This is an interesting project! With this version we can all se where you’re heading. The future looks bright…
I’m just having a Mini 1.66GHz and I can see the inbuilt graphics just don’t cut it. When Naked Light hits 1.0 I guess it’s time for me to upgrade my hardware.
Keep up the good work! I’m sure you will be rewarded for it in the end.
// Leif
November 13th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Writing this as I play with the new version: - First thing I noticed there’s no obvious button to import images into the Library - You can drag images to it okay, but it’s a little more intuitive to have a button to import. - Double clicking a library item and making a new comp is sensible/useful. - The gradient is a little odd, I wasn’t sure when my clicks actually set the gradient-points (Do you drag to make the gradient, click two points?) - Having to click-and-hold on the tool-dock is annoying, the way the Dock stacks makes more sense, click once to expand the dock, click again to collapse it - when you click an item, it collapses. Having the expanded-items move while I’m trying to click them is also annoying. — Not particularly important, but it’d be nice to have other means of switching tools - a Shake-style tile-of-buttons, a “Filter” menu bar, most importantly: keyboard shortcuts - The Curves is shiney - one of the better I’ve played with. - The saturation thing has two rather pointless “NULL” sliders? - Is there a way to mask various filters? This is a important thing. - It’d be nice to be able to stack the brush tools, to have: [brush][brush]> [Cover] [image] - Personal opinion more than anything, but the way the nodes are arranged isn’t much of an improvement over traditional layer system - The best thing in nodal compositing applications is being able to branch a node and do different stuff with it. Like branching a paint tool, using it to mask a saturation tool, then layering the same paint tool over an image. The rigid nodes is a nice way to visualize what you’ve done, and go back and change stuff, but the lack of “noodles” - Being able to marquee-select multiple nodes would be nice, although shift-selecting them works fine. - Large gaussian blurs are really pixelated. - Spacebar+mouse1 to pan around the image would be nice (it’s a fairly common shortcut, from Photoshop the Apple Preview) - Not sure what the selection tools can be used for..? - I can’t change the color of rectangles once created? Or any other settings - such as the size, maybe things like edge feather (although the blur node makes this a bit unnecessary). - Panning an image is incredibly slow. — A little overview-image would be handy when zoomed in or working with large images. - Being able to ignore nodes will be useful - Green zoom button doesn’t do much, zooming it to fill the screen would be the most logical action for it, I’d say - There’s no way to scroll the node-view, and only 3 nodes fit horizontally. - It’d be nice to have different views for the node-views, an icon-only, or text-only view (to save space) — The ability to group nodes will be useful. Basically grouping several nodes into one block - maybe be able to select what controls are visible when it’s selected (to make a hue/saturation/brightness node, for example) - Command-clicking nodes is
November 13th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Mh, my comment seemed to have been truncated… [continued..] - Command-clicking nodes is normally used to select single, non-connected items, and shift-click to select a range of nodes. - I just closed the comp I was fiddling in, there was no warning, and it’s now gone. I would have expected it to show a “Are you sure? Save/cancel/don’t save” dialog, or it to be autosaved into the Composition section in the library. — Autosaves is an important thing, shakes method of saving it to ~/nreal/autosaves/[compname][0-9].shk every 5 minutes is pretty good. - How on earth do I change the colours of the rectangle?! - A preference to change the default comp-background colour (either the default diagonal lines, or a solid color) — An option to change the UI colour would be nice, if rather superficial - dark backgrounded images are much much easier on the eyes. - The hue node is called “hue + saturation”, when it only deals with Hue (negligible problem :P) - As a test, I’m trying to work out how I would: create a box, with a drop shadow. This seems impossible currently. Yes there’s a shadow node under the naked-light Dock item (currently disabled), but what I would expect to do is: Take my box image, drop the brightness right down (or use it as a mask for a clamp operation), put a gaussian blur, put it underneath the original box-image. Or, in layered-program: duplicate the layer, put it underneath, blur and drop the brightness (or change the blending modes) - Something that seems to be missing in every compositing application: The abilty to quickly create nodes via the keyboard! Nuke has “r” to create a read node, and.. that’s about it. b to create a blur, p to make a paint tool, r to select hte rectangle tool etc would speed up using the application a lot, but not interfere with regular use of the program. You’ve quite possibly fixed a lot of there problems already, but I find feedback useful on the stuff I do, so might as well “do unto others..”
I’m comparing this application to Shake more than anything - I’m not sure what sort of people you are aiming this application at, so some of my suggestions might be a little irrelevant - but that’s something that will become clearer when the application develops I suppose.
I really wish I could be of more help to this application - the concept of a compositing application which utilizes the GPU, does away with 8bit images, layers, and generally tries to be more ‘modern’ is a great idea - something I’ve always kind of wanted to make after starting to use Shake and thinking with a (even slightly) nicer interface, it could be much much faster to work with - something a native OS X application could do much easier than the old Carbon(?) UI Shake uses.
- Ben
November 13th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
BenWow, thanks. That’s a great list. A lot of those are going to be fixed, and most of them hopefully for Beta 1 (as opposed to Beta 0). The Gaussian blur problem is a major bug in Core Image that’s been there since Tiger. Hopefully I’ll figure out a work-around for it, but that’s probably going to stay there for a bit. There is a way to mask filters, and there is a use for selections each other! You make a selection, and then you choose your filter. Right now, due to a bug, it only works when you apply a selection to an image (as opposed to the entire canvas, or any other node). As for the grid-based node system Naked light uses versus Shake, the main goal here was to find the balance between power and ease of use. Earlier versions did feature a Shake-like composition system, but when you sit people down in front of it, they have no idea where to begin. Naked light is much more self explanatory, and while not quite as flexible as Shake, is still a huge improvement over layers.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Rented MuleThat’s really bizarre. A couple questions. What kind of computer/GPU do you have? Are all the images you added the same type of image (or rather, do basic ones, like say, JPEGs work?) If you zoom all the way in in the library, and drag the window so that it is full screen, does an image show up then? Finally, do you think you could email me one or two of these images so I can see if I can try to reproduce it on my computer? (brandonrosse to the mac.com) Thanks!
November 13th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
I have a Mac Pro 2.66GHz with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. jpg, png, tiff, they all don’t show up in the Library even making the window as large as I can.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
OK… Can you try going into your (home)/Pictures folder and move the Naked library folder somewhere else. Then see if you can add pictures again. If they show up then, can you email me the “Naked Library.dat” from the borked library folder? Sorry this is such a pain, I just have no idea what is causing your problem.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
It would be good if Naked light automagically referenced your iPhoto, Aperture etc libraries and pictures folder. Coming along well. I’m fairly excited to see where it ends up. Making the tool bar behave exactly like the dock + stacks would probably be a good idea. The app seemed very slow to me. I’m using the latest 17″ MacBook Pro with 4GB ram. All in all I like the direction. Thanks.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Is NL suited to PPC or just Intel machines? Or is the reason that the app comes out of the Zipped archive overlayed by a prohibited/delete me graphic over it, that the my 17″ powerbook is not fast enough or without adequate graphic card? I must have missed something reading through the site. Looks like a great app.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Jim Naked light will eventually run on PowerPC machines, but right now the beta is Intel only (which is why it has that graphic overlay on it)
November 14th, 2007 at 2:22 am
No Tiger-Version?
November 14th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Hello,
Windows version available / planned ?
November 14th, 2007 at 11:33 am
@kl3ks + @Geir Ove: Naked Light takes advantage of features and functions built into Mac OSX (10.5) Leopard. I don’t think Brandon wants to develop for “the old” Tiger and make a version for it. As for Windows, I think hell will freeze over first…
Making Naked Light for Windows would be like making a totally new application for that platform and my guess is that Brandon is a Mac developer. Go buy a Mac… 
// Leif
November 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Hello,
I might buy a Mac if the software turns out as sweet as it sounds. I am not fantatic about what equipment I use.. a Computer is a box that is used as a tool. Period.
However, I doubt if everyone else will….. and that will not be my loss.
Geir Ove
November 14th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Just pulled down the Beta and looked it over… I see you have a lasso tool, please tell me that it will work as it was originally intended. Originally the area you described with the tool would shrink until it wrapped the objects inside of it, like a lasso. Most packages use it as a standard selection tool, no change from the path that you describe. Thanks and GOOD LUCK!!!
November 15th, 2007 at 2:02 am
Can’t wait to get this tool tbh, looking so nice!
Couldn’t try the beta yet as I’m a PC switcher and my Mac is comming hopefully tomorrow. Will deffo be one of the 1st installed tools on my MacBookPro
November 15th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Things seem much better than v0.0, but I have still to work seriously on new version.
Suggestion: when I move a node from the “chain” I’ve created, the node disappears. Fine, but why not creating a drawer or a “free zone” where I can park a few nodes? Maybe I’m just re-arranging them, or I’m non sure I want to throw away.
Or maybe this thing is already possible and I missed it,..
F
November 15th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Will there be support for RAW images?
November 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
amazing progress! keep it up!
November 15th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
tried a few functions since i installed leopard : slow but promising.
however :
i’d say the icon in the dock are not self explanatory
the dock must definitely not be there : that’s where i have my dock
3.most of the fusion modes of the cover tool are buggy, especially those based on hsv, but also the lighten, darken… A good test is to composite an image on itself…
keep on the good work anyway.
i’ll keep an eye on this project.
glouk
November 15th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Please release this for Windows some day soon. It stinks that i can not beta test this. Is there a way to run this application on a Windows PC? Doubt it though.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
This looks like it will be a really interesting program. I only played with it for a while but I am already impressed!
November 16th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Big improvement! I think it’s very promising.
I’d like to put another voice behind the dock fixed on the right side problem. Maybe it could detect where your dock is and move to the left side if your dock is on the right? Or have a preference to tear off and place somewhere else arbitrary? Like up top under the menu bar?
Good work! Can’t wait to see the final product.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:00 am
I have not being able to try this application yet as I am still running on Tiger, but I would like to ask a question: will it be possible to integrate NakedLight and Aperture in order to have a full set of non destructive editing tools to edit the Master files stored in the Aperture library?
November 19th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Look forward to playing with your app. I was a Live Picture beta tester and enjoy working resolution independent. Nakedlight looks similar to TIFFany. TIFFany had a bad UI. If you nail the UI I think you may end up with something great here. What do yo think about Photoshop competing with Smart Objects? Will install soon on a Macbook and provide feedback. Keep up the good work.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
[...] Naked Light のパブリックベータ 0.1 が、開発者さんの ブログ で数日前から 公開 されていたようです。ダウンロードは、記事下部の “Get It” [...]
November 21st, 2007 at 9:58 am
i’ve try the version 0.0 , now the 0.1 and i’ve the same problem i can open a picture, no library to see something, i just can create a composition but nothing inside … that’s all
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
@Leif: Tiger isn’t old yet! And I’m addicted to use Tiger for two reasons: 1. I don’t have the Money for Leopard 2. I have to publish the Tiger-Version of GIMP ’cause there are still many people how have Tiger or even Panther running on there Macs!
I woud really appreciate it if there could be done a Tiger-Version of Naked Light! :/
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Обозначьте рекомендуемые требования. MacPro 2.0 1gB g7300xt ужасно тормозит.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Looking forward to seeing Naked Light develop, looks really promising!
One thig I can’t figure out is how you remove images from the library?
November 26th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I had the same problem as Rented Mule: images (eg jpgs) didn’t show up in the Library so I dragged the Naked Library folder onto the desktop and imported (drag+drop) from there, and it was ok.
Interesting application … nodes are novel, inspector is nice but RHS docked tools aren’t so good for me (they fan open and closed and are harder to select from - you have to click and drag, yes?) I’ll try again when I have some more time, merci.
November 26th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I would encourage you to start making the betas universal binaries not just because there are still quite a bit of people still running perfectly good G5s, but because you are not getting any feedback or bug reports from PPC people. How is this gonna run on PPC systems when 1.0 comes out?
November 29th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Looks like a realy amazing image editing software. Where can i donload the Public-Beta version?
December 1st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Just downloaded the Stark beta (01) and can’t find any tools. See mentions in the posts of RHS (Right Hand Side?) but not seeing anything there. Are the tools a separate download?
Also, when I add some images to a composition and rotate one, the next time I try to move an image it jumps (usually out of the composition window/port/? and I have to undo to get it back- dragging will usually run out of screen before I can actually get it back in view.
December 1st, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I have a PPC Mac running Leopard and I absolutely agree with Mario (comment #35). I’d love to give you feedback but as long as the betas are Intel-only, I can’t.
Cheers Rick
December 1st, 2007 at 2:31 pm
D’oh! Found the tools- part of the problem is that I am using a second monitor (20″ Core Duo iMac with a 20″ Dell positioned to the left) and when the app is on the 2nd monitor, the tools are about 100 miles away. Might want to rethink where the tool dock lives…
Kept looking in the vicinity of the composition or library windows.
And I hate to start something like this, but the whole “the Dock sucks even more in Leopard” argument can and will be applied to Naked Light’s tool Dock. You’ve got the fanning stack which is so beloved (not) and no way to tell which of the tools you chose- in other words, most of the worst features of the Leopard Dock stacks. And I think someone else already mentioned that it overlays the Finder Dock when that’s positioned on the right.
Sorry to be such a negative nabob.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I’m wondering about your claim that…
“Naked light’s entire compositing engine uses an unprecedented 32 bits per color channel. In an 8-bit (and sometimes even a 16-bit) environment, rounding errors accumulate after every filter you apply, creating posterization, banding, and other visual artifacts. Naked light uses over 590 quintillion colors to achieve flawless, silky results, time after time.”
Where does the 590 quintillion figure come from? That would be about 69 bits across all channels… which would certainly be unprecedented, yes, but rather odd.
Assuming three colour channels of 32 bits each, that would be more like 79 octillion, wouldn’t it?
December 6th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Adam, this is explained in the Public Beta FAQ.
Basically, 590 quintillion is a very very rough lowest common denominator estimation. Naked light does in fact use 32 bits per channel—but uses only a quarter of this range (30 bits worth). Additionally, floating point numbers lose just shy of another two bits worth of values—1 bit each to denormalized (redundant) numbers and NaNs (not a number…s). Finally, there’s a little degradation when moving bits between your CPU and GPU because your GPU doesn’t adhere to the same floating point standard your CPU does.
So 590 quintillion is based on an ultra-conservative 23-bits per channel.
December 8th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Am I missing something? downloaded, installed, activated… now what? the library is empty, can’t add images or open or drag them…
December 10th, 2007 at 3:45 am
[...] de tratamiento de imágenes para Mac. De momento sólo hay una beta disponible a través del blog de su desarrollador, pero por lo que he visto y lo que he podido comprobar con mi MacBook, promete [...]
December 11th, 2007 at 2:54 am
I am an absolute beginner with naked light & cannot find how to get na pic from i photo…
December 11th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Ok, i have a photo, I’ve worked on it, FOR HOURS, how do I save or export????
December 15th, 2007 at 8:39 am
I dont’ understand. I ran it on my MacBook Pro and it had no tools to do anything. I created a new composition, but it was just a blank window. There were no tools to create an image. But there was no way to load an image either. No “open” command. The library window was empty.
Strange demo…
December 17th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Is this a still image only compositor or can you also use it for image sequences/movies ala shake or motion? I am currently on PPC, but plan to move to a new ProMac soon when they hopefully come out in January!! Please put me on your mailing list.
December 18th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Brandon, Thanks for allowing a public beta. I like the high color depth concept. Not sure about nodal but it could be cool if it’s going to allow me to use it as a new/easier way to layer/mask. Perhaps it already does and I am just missing it. I tried it with a fairly large dng on a macbookpro and don’t think there’s enough GPU to make it tick. It worked, just not very well. Have to chime in on the dock with fly-out tools - don’t like it the way it is. If you can allow for positioning and contextual icons based on currently selected tool it might work. Otherwise, I’ll keep an eye on your project and wait for the Universal so I can test it better on my PPC PowerMac.
Good Luck!
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Brandon, I am loving this! Any idea when the next alpha/beta/nightly will be out? Not being able to save a file and having to “export” by taking a screen dump is not really practical.
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:43 am
Congratulations this looks fantastic! Finally a break from boring old PS. Looking forward to a final release. Good Luck, All the best
December 28th, 2007 at 5:14 am
What are the minimum requirements for video card?
December 28th, 2007 at 7:44 am
whats with the sudden lack of tiger support for all these great new applications? its happening everywhere
dont desert us please!
honestly though whats the real reason for leopard only? is it you just haven’t got as far as building it for tiger yet or will it never be for tiger?
December 28th, 2007 at 8:03 am
James, read the blog: http://www.naked.la/emperor/2007/11/why-leopard
December 29th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I don’t know if I’m repeating anybody but I didn’t get very far with this.
I wanted to composite 5 images together that were in my Aperture Library, so first I set Naked Light as my external image editor and then tried the “open in external editor” button. This didn’t so to work so I exported them into a folder as JPEGs and then told them to open into Naked Light. Again I drew a blank.
File -> Import to Library was also greyed out.
I know it’s a bit of a way off yet but iLife/Aperture integration with this would be AWESOME! Judging from the tour on this site it looks like a very powerful tool that’s far more up my street than Photoshop or GIMP (I am someone who likes working with photos, but is scared of the shear number of times you have to fill in forms and things).
December 29th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
OK - I’ve figured out how to get stuff into the library now.
I started work on a composite and there was some strange behaviour going on. Basically, when I press the little green + button to expand the window, it sends the window halfway outside of the top of my screen.
The other thing, is that when I was trying to move stuff around, I would click on an image and it would disappear off the bottom of the composite. I had to zoom out, click it and again and it would just go even further down.
Another thing, is that when I was resizing stuff, I would have liked to have the option of maintaining the original images aspect ratio, rather than distorting it.
Though are my main quibbles at the moment.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:04 am
What are the minimum requirements, for video card?
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 am
I’m using a Macbook (i.e. integrated video card) and it seems to work fine - I haven’t tryed a lot of the higher requirement features though.
If you look on the main site there’s a thing saying what is recommended.
January 6th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Bellissimo!!
January 15th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Hi,
I really like your website. I’m looking for someone to design mine. Could you please tell me who designed yours? Thank you and keep up the good work. I have read about your product and it seems really good.
Thanks, Frank
January 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
So. Still no PPC support. Please, it’s just a compile time switch! I’m sure I’m not the only PowerPC user with Leopard that would be glad to tinker with it and politely report any problems.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hello
Is this App Intel-only?
I have a dual 1.25 G4 with GeForce4 Ti 4600 and it alway says that this architecture is not supported!
February 15th, 2008 at 8:45 am
I’m pretty anxious to give the app a test drive and see what it can do… Is the Power PC version of this coming out anytime soon?