Chapter 4. Image Processing Architectures

OFX supports a range of image processing architectures. The simpler ones being special cases of the most complex one. Levels of support, in both plug-in and host, are signalled by setting appropriate properties in the plugin and host.

This chapter describes the most general architecture that OFX can support, with simpler cases just being specialisations of the general case.

The Image Plane

At it's most generalised, OFX allows for a complex imaging architecture based around an infinite 2D plane on which we are filling in pixels.

Firstly, there is some subsection of this infinite plane that the user wants to be the end result of their work, call this the project extent. The project extent is always rooted, on its bottom left, at the origin of the image plane. The project extent defines the upper right hand corner of the project window. For example a PAL sized project spans (0, 0) to (768, 576) on the image plane.

We define an image effect as something that can fill in a rectangle of pixels in this infinite plane, possibly using images defined at other locations on this image plane.