5.6.0 - feature freeze

[TurboGit]

The current plan is to feature freeze on May 15th. Please let me know what are the features cooking that you'd like in 5.6.0.

[jenshannoschwalm]

Proposal to accept neg rgb data while interpolating

[TurboGit]

@wpferguson @andriiryzhkov @zisoft @kofa73 @dtorop @ralfbrown @masterpiga @kmilos @LebedevRI

Just pinging you to ensure you see this announce. Nothing more.

[zisoft]

#18468 is marked for 5.6 and ready from my side

[TurboGit]

@zisoft : Good I asked because I thought I had already merged this. Will do that right away.

[andriiryzhkov]

On my side, two big pieces left:

1. One important piece is left on GPU acceleration installation in PR [AI] Add ONNX Runtime GPU acceleration install flow to AI preferences #20963.
2. Also Lua AI API in PR [AI] Add Lua AI API with model inference, tensor ops, and raw CFA support #20716. @wpferguson I am waiting on your review and opinion on if this is ready to be included in release.

Also two issues I am working right now (not new features):

1. On object mask. I am trying to find a way to improve mask accuracy on edges. Model itself is limited on lower resolution of image encoding and mask generation, so I am looking on reasonable way to improving it during post-processing step using full-res image.
2. On RAW denoise model. It's current architecture is challenging for some GPU execution providers to compile graph effectively. But it works pretty fast even on CPU. Quick fix is just to force CPU execution on problematic EPs. More sustainable fix will require small change in the model itself. I am discussing it with Benoit Brummer.

[wpferguson]

I have one more addition to the Lua API, #20968.

I also have a question about the lua-scripts. Since they are now bundled with the release do they need to "freeze" with the release? At this point the only changes I still want to do are adding the ability to use internal metadata for the scripts that currently spawn exiv2 or exiftool to get metadata. The only other changes would be adding any AI example scripts for #20716. I'll plan on doing another submodule update before the freeze date.