There are three transforms for which this heuristic is somewhat awkward and all for the same reason:

• ToDtype
• PermuteDimensions
• TransposeDimensions

They all take an input argument that can be a dictionary and the transform selects the appropriate value based on the input type. For example:

import torch
from torchvision.prototype import datapoints, transforms

sample = dict(
    image=datapoints.Image(torch.randint(0, 256, (3, 32, 32), dtype=torch.uint8)),
    boxes=datapoints.BoundingBox(torch.randint(0, 32, (5,)), format="xyxy", spatial_size=(32, 32)),
)

dtype = {
    datapoints.Image: torch.float32,
    datapoints.BoundingBox: torch.float64,
}
transform = transforms.ToDtype(dtype)

transformed_sample = transform(sample)

assert transformed_sample["image"].dtype is torch.float32
assert transformed_sample["boxes"].dtype is torch.float64

sample["tensor"] = torch.rand((3, 16, 16), dtype=torch.float16)
dtype[torch.Tensor] = torch.int32

transform = transforms.ToDtype(dtype)
transformed_sample = transform(sample)

assert transformed_sample["image"].dtype is torch.float32
assert transformed_sample["boxes"].dtype is torch.float64
assert transformed_sample["tensor"].dtype is torch.int32  # boom

As shown above, the transform is not applied to the plain tensor according to the heuristic above. That is somewhat awkward since we specified it explicitly in parameter. The example above works on main.

I guess one way to fix this is to disallow torch.Tensor in the parameter dictionary. Better yet, only allow datapoints. Meaning, if someone wants to use this fine-grained control, they'll have to wrap their inputs.

Thoughts?

Sorry I had missed your comment above before I approved.

This is unrelated to this issue, but I'm tempted to keep PermuteDimensions and TransposeDimensions in the prototype area for now, because they break a lot of assumptions; so I'll just focus on ToDtype here.

I guess one way to fix this is to disallow torch.Tensor in the parameter dictionary. Better yet, only allow datapoints. Meaning, if someone wants to use this fine-grained control, they'll have to wrap their inputs.

Can we just raise a warning specific to ToDtype() if the Tensor key is specified along Image and Video saying

Hey, you passed Tensors and Images (or Videos), but we won't be transforming the tensors

and still support the Tensor key if neither Image or Video are specified?