Parametric adjustments in Photoshop and Lightroom

[pnodrog]

Though I appreciate that whatever method Adobe does or does not use to implement adjustment layers might be of interest as one way of enjoying a hobby in photography, does making an attempt to understand that proprietary information help us make better photos? If so, how?

Understanding or attempting to understand proprietary information is highly unlikely to make us better photographers. However the more insight we have into how adjustments are made may assist us in making best use of the software we are using.

In fact experienced programmers do not need any knowledge of proprietary information to make a reasonably informed estimate at the maximum size that the data array(s) must be for most adjustment layers. There is no point in holding editable curve information at a resolution higher than the best pointing or display device. The mask array will probably have to be as large as the image pixel dimensions in case a user does fine edits at 100% and be a maximum of 16 bits per pixel for mask density. Such estimates could be easily checked by monitoring the change in file sizes as they were implemented. If I was going to write an editing programme it certainly an exercise I would undertake. I doubt that little if any of the information is held as floating point values but mostly as unsigned 16 bit integers.

P.S. I said maximum above as with proprietary software it should be possible to compress adjustment layers for saving and in particular the mask (jpeg? lossless?) without any noticeable loss in performance.