Wavelet Decompose Script-Fu

christoph.traxler — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:12:58 +0100

This is a Script-Fu script for losslessly decomposing an image into different detail scales. This should be useful for photo post processing (for instance reapairing skin in portraits).

I first saw this function on the plugin "Wavelet Decompose" by marcor. (http://registry.gimp.org/node/11742 - This is also a good description on how image manipulation can benefit from wavelet decompositing.) I believe the Script-Fu script produces very similar results to marcor's plugin. (I did not use marcor's plugin for myself, so I can't really tell. But the description on the plugin is very good and I used it as a reference.)

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with installing plugins on a Windows system. But I wanted to use a wavelet decompose function on my Windows system. As I also wanted to learn Script-Fu, I thought it would be a cool idea to write a wavelet decompositing script by myself. It would also be a good reason to practice Script-Fu.

So this is my first Script-Fu script and I hope also useful submission to the GIMP registry. (At least for those who are not able to install Plugins on their Windows systems ;-P)

After installing this script (copy to your scripts-directory), you should find a new entry "Wavelet Decompose ..." in your Image-menu.

Maybe this script also runs on GIMP 2.4 or older versions. But I was testing it only on version 2.6. Please write a comment, if you ran the script on 2.4 or older without errors. Thank you!

Description on the parameters:

Minimum Scale:
Enter the pixel size of the smallest Scale (Scale 1). For instance the default value "1" shows only the sharpes available details on the Scale 1 layer. Enter higher values if you work on higher resolution photos.

Scale Count:
Enter how many layers of detail scales you want.

Scale Increase Factor:
This tells the script how many times the next scale should be larger (showing rougher details) than the previous.

Scale Constant Increase:
How many pixels should the details on the next scale be rougher than the previous scale.

Work on Copy:
This option creates a new image. If you disable this option the original image will be flattened and then the decomposition is done on the original image.