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name: targets-and-formats description: "Apply Albumentations pipelines safely to images, masks, bboxes, keypoints, multiple images, volumes, 3D masks, and labels without corrupting geometry or data formats." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: MIT

Targets and Formats

Use this sub-skill when a task involves Albumentations input/output keys, bbox or keypoint formats, label fields, additional targets, or 3D volume/mask targets. The central rule is: declare every geometric annotation contract in A.Compose(...) before calling the pipeline, then keep the data arrays and label arrays length-aligned after filtering.

Route First

• Use references/data-formats.md to choose BboxParams, KeypointParams, bbox/keypoint formats, label fields, shape rules, and 3D target keys.
• Use references/target-recipes.md for copy-adaptable recipes covering detection, keypoints, segmentation, additional targets, multi-image inputs, and volumes.
• Use references/troubleshooting.md when a pipeline drops boxes/keypoints, rejects shapes, misreads YOLO boxes, or loses labels.
• Use scripts/validate_targets.py for a small local preflight of bbox/keypoint JSON fixtures and optional volume/mask3d shapes before debugging a full training dataset.

Required Composition Contracts

• Bboxes require bbox_params=A.BboxParams(...) whenever the call includes bboxes; keypoints require keypoint_params=A.KeypointParams(...) whenever the call includes keypoints.
• BboxParams(format=...) accepts "coco", "pascal_voc", "albumentations", or "yolo"; Albumentations internally transforms bboxes as normalized [x_min, y_min, x_max, y_max].
• KeypointParams(format=...) accepts "xy", "yx", "xya", "xys", "xyas", "xysa", or "xyz"; Albumentations internally transforms keypoints as [x, y, z, angle, scale].
• Labels that must be filtered with bboxes/keypoints belong in label_fields, for example label_fields=["class_labels"] or label_fields=["keypoint_labels"].
• 3D volumes use volume or volumes; 3D masks use mask3d or masks3d; shape checking expects D,H,W[,C] for single volumes and N,D,H,W[,C] for batches.

Safe Defaults

• Use strict=True while developing to catch unknown input keys and invalid transform arguments early; route general Compose behavior to ../pipeline-composition/.
• Keep is_check_shapes=True unless a dataset intentionally supplies nonmatching spatial targets and the code handles that explicitly.
• For detection data with messy boxes, prefer clip=True, filter_invalid_bboxes=True and a conservative min_visibility or min_area rather than silently trusting source annotations.
• For keypoints near crop borders, set remove_invisible=False only if downstream code can handle off-image coordinates; otherwise preserve label alignment via label_fields and accept filtering.
• For tensor conversion and channel-order decisions, route to ../framework-integration/; for transform family selection, route to ../transform-catalog/; for save/load/replay, route to ../serialization-and-reproducibility/.