A personal journal

Field notes.

Photographs, places, and things I’m building.
A place for the details along the way.

Start here

I have this problem…

Choose what’s getting in the way. Follow the notes on how Chiado tackles it, and the checks behind the result.

My RAW files open, but I can’t really edit them.Get beyond the embedded preview.
What I see while editing doesn’t match the export.Keep zoom, detail and output in agreement.
My colors don’t look the way I expect.Start with white balance, then the grade.
I want more detail without unwanted color changes.Look closely at Texture and haze removal.
Small adjustments cause surprisingly big changes.Understand what happens when controls interact.
How do I know this will work on my photographs?See how the fixes are tested.
Or browse all the notes below ↓

From the workbench / October 2026

How Chiado keeps zoomed edits aligned with the final image

Shared coordinates, scale-aware controls and region tests keep zooming and exporting tied to the same photograph.

Read the note
Analytical illustration: image-relative radius and a crop retaining or restarting whole-frame coordinates. These curves explain the geometry; they are not measured renderer outputs.Scale & coordinates · An analytical illustration

The notebook

17 notes & counting

October 2026

Keeping photographs safe

Protecting the photo library behind Chiado’s tests

A verified, add-only import preserved existing edits and source files while expanding the library used to test Chiado.

Testing an editor

Testing Chiado’s sliders before accepting a rendering change

Baseline-relative measurements, native crops and unchanged-control checks separate useful edits from misleading improvements.

Color & light

Keeping white highlights white during color grading

Chiado’s grading revision preserves black and white endpoints, with synthetic probes that catch interactions ordinary averages can miss.

Color & light

Improving Chiado’s color grading without a patch for every hue

A working-space change strengthened green and cyan response and reduced grading regressions while preserving tested white endpoints.

Color & light

Calibrating Chiado’s white balance for the X2D II

A camera-specific correction improved measured color agreement while preserving the as-shot setting and exposing an unfinished slider response.

Detail & atmosphere

How Chiado removes haze using a guide to the photograph

An image-derived veil estimate improved Dehaze response while leaving 66 baseline and unrelated-control renders unchanged.

Color & light

Testing which colors a Chiado edit will affect

Selection probes caught a mismatch that a stronger color adjustment would have amplified. The replacement model remains unfinished.

Testing an editor

Making tiny curve adjustments behave like tiny edits

Chiado’s neutral-curve fix reduced a discontinuity from two or three output levels to at most one in the photographic probe.

Detail & atmosphere

Preserving color when Chiado adds Texture

A channel-wise detail calculation preserves blue in a traced pixel, with 360 improved Texture increments in the follow-up check.

Testing an editor

Fixing the measurements that guide Chiado’s color work

A circular, chroma-weighted hue diagnostic stopped an almost gray case from dominating the wrong part of the improvement work.

Testing an editor

Testing Chiado beyond the photographs used to tune it

Scene grouping, reserved photographs and transition probes keep a familiar test set from becoming the whole definition of a good editor.

Testing an editor

A preview gain that failed on native crops

A plausible grain-rounding change improved most preview comparisons, then failed the native-crop acceptance gate.

Testing an editor

An exact-gray test can miss a near-gray failure

A Point Color candidate passed its numerical port checks but made a large brightness jump beside neutral gray.

Testing an editor

A consistent editor can still differ from its reference

What full-mask tests prove, and what a rendered Lightroom comparison can overturn.

Testing an editor

Less clipping is not always a closer match

A white-vignette experiment fixed one visible problem and still failed to earn its place in Chiado.

September 2026