No sliders. No presets. Just math that listens to your image. If you've ever used CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization) in OpenCV, you've probably written something like this: clahe = cv2 . createCLAHE ( clipLimit = 2.0 , tileGridSize = ( 8 , 8 )) Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode And then spent the next hour tweaking those two magic numbers until the result looked "good enough." PACE doesn't do that. PACE is a perceptual image enhancement pipeline I've been building that analyses each image's statistical fingerprint and derives its own clipLimit and tileSize — before a single pixel of CLAHE is applied. This post is a deep dive into exactly how that works. The Two Parameters That Define CLAHE Before getting into the adaptive logic, let's establish what these parameters actually control: clipLimit — The clipping threshold applied to each tile's histogram before redistribution. Higher values allow more aggressive contrast stretching. Lower values keep the enhancement conservative.…