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This is a follow up to the previous intro to timelapse photography and will discuss using HDR images as the input. I started a group on Vimeo for HDR timelapse and there’s some absolutely stunning work in the collection from some truly talented artists. I’d suggest checking out if you’re looking for some creative inspiration.  HDR timelapse is a very cool sub-genre of timelapse that I was first introduced to a little over a year ago by Walter Arnold of The Digital Mirage.  I haven’t decided yet whether to thank him or curse him for it.    I would really like to see him do some more of this kind of thing though because the clips I saw that got me interested in the technique were very good.

HDR timelapse isn’t any different from regular timelapse once the shooting and HDR merging/tonemapping is done. Where it ups the complexity level is in the shooting. In addition the regular intervalometer, you need an interval timer that will combine with bracketing to get your input images for HDR merging. Shooting Nikon, I’m fortunate that some Nikons have that functionality built in. Other camera makers don’t and getting it can be a bit tricky. The Promote Control mentioned in the previous tutorial will allow you to combine the two. If you’re a Nikon or Canon shooter, Chris Breeze of Breezebrowser fame has developed some software for shooting tethered to a laptop that allows you to combine interval timing and bracketing. The downside is, of course, that you have to be tethered which limits the usefulness of the application in some situations. Canon’s EOS Utility doesn’t offer the combined functionality, nor does shooting tethered via Lightroom v3.x. It’d be very cool if a smartphone app could be developed that would allow you to control the camera via an iPhone or Blackberry (or other smartphone) but still capture to the onboard memory card (sometimes I really do wish I could do programming…… well, no, not really).  When I used to shoot Canon I tried a couple third party intervalometers and while I could get them to combine with in camera AEB, it was kludgy at best.  Some of them top out at 99 shots before having to be reset so if you’re doing a 3 shot bracket, you only get 33 brackets before having to stop to reset the intervalometer.  I don’t believe something like the Canon TC 80N3 can be used to combined interval timing and AEB.

What mode do I shoot in? This is a matter of a fair bit of debate in timelapse circles.  It’s also a bone of contention in non-HDR timelapse but seems to come more into play when HDR is added to the mix.  There are those who believe full manual is the only way to shoot timelapse and particular HDR timelapse.  Their reasoning is that they don’t trust the ‘automatic’ part of modes like Av and feel there’s too much inconsistency in shutter speeds to be reliable.  Personally, I don’t put a lot of stock in that.  I recognise there can be variations but don’t feel they’re significant enough to cause problems.  In addition, I want the shutter speed to be variable to account for changing light conditions.  If I start shooting in cloudy conditions and over time the sun comes out, if I’m shooting in manual I’m going to be overexposing in the brighter conditions.  Shooting in Av, the shutter speed will adjust automatically and help keep my exposures consistent.  The unwanted side effect of shooting in anything but manual, according to some is a thing called ‘flicker’.  Flicker is a visible variation in light levels in the video clip that, in extreme cases can have an almost stroboscopic effect.  While I recognise flicker can and does happen, I’m not convinced the major cause is shooting in a programmed mode like Av.  Light levels change naturally over time.  In timelapse those changes in light level are sped up and can appear as flicker.  In addition, I think the added post-capture processing of merging and tonemapping HDR sequences can have an impact on flicker.  Tonemapping algorithms, even if the settings are the same from set to set, are going to process each set differently.  There are reasons for this.  Again, changing light levels from set to set will cause the tonemapping operators to be applied differently.  In addition, HDR is still a relatively new technology in photography and tonemapping operators are still being improved and refined.  The newness of the technology I think helps contribute to some of the inconsistencies in tonemapping from set to set.  So while I don’t completely dismiss the concept that shooting in manual will help minimise flicker, I’m not convinced that it’s the major contributor some feel it is.  Bottom line, shoot manual or Av, whichever you’re comfortable with.  In addition, if you want to try to capture what the hardcore timelapsers call the ‘Holy Grail’ – the transition from sunrise to daytime or daytime to sunset – you really have to shoot Av because the light levels are changing so much and so quickly.

What format do I shoot in? The same concepts apply here as with regular timelapse.  RAW gives you more flexibilty but takes up more card space.  JPEG takes up less card space but gives you less flexibility in editing so you need to be more careful in setting up the shoot to be sure you’re not cooking in something like a wonky white balance that will affect the rest of the processing later on.  Keep in mind that HDR merging will exaggerate colours and colour casts in source images so if you’re going to shoot JPEG you want to take extra care in setting WB and in setting up the camera processing settings to give you JPEGs that are tamer in terms of saturation and contrast than if you were doing single shots.

What should the spacing between shots be? This can get a little tricky with HDR timelapse.  Because you’re capturing a bracketed set, you need to make sure that the time between sequences is long enough that you can capture the full bracketed sequence before the counter gets to zero for beginning the next sequence.  The reason for this is that most interval timers start counting down automatically when the shutter is opened the first time; not when the shutter closes the last time.  There are some that don’t start counting till the single shot is done or the seqence of shots is done but most don’t.  You need to build your total shutter speed for the sequence into your spacing between sequences as a result.  So, if the total shutter speed for a 5 shot sequence is 8 seconds, you can’t have the interval timer set for 6 seconds.  It needs to be 9 or longer.  The other thing to consider is if you are going for the Holy Grail and going from light to dark (daylight to sunset) your shutter speeds are going to get longer over time.  You want to build some slack into your timing so that you’re not having to reset the timer all the time.  Use an aperture that’s a stop or two wider than you might normally or an ISO setting that’s higher than you normally would to give you that working time.  Depending on how dark you’re going to go, you may need to stop the camera and reset the sequence but you just don’t want to be doing it all the time.  When you touch the camera to reset the sequence (not a problem if you’re using a remote), there will be some jostling and pronounced shake.  You can use this to your advantage.  You can use it to adjust the focal length or camera position include a transition or two in the sequence which can add visual interest.  That’s what I did in this particular sunset clip.

How long to I need to shoot for? Same methodology applies as in regular timelapse.

How many shots do I need to take? The same math applies as in regular timelapse with one exception.  You need to multiply the number of shots by the number you’re capturing in your bracket.  So if I need 240 shots for a 10 second clip and I’m taking a 5 shot bracket, I need to actually shoot 1200 images.  Card space becomes vital when doing HDR timelapse because of the huge numbers of shots being captured.

OK, I’ve got my shots, now what do I do? The first step, obviously, is to process and tonemap your HDR images.  Ideally you’ll want to use an HDR software application with batching capability.  Also ideally you want to use an application that will allow you to save a preset and apply that preset to tonemap the images in batch mode.  Take one sequence, merge and tonemap it manually.  When you’ve got the settings where you want them for the look you want in the resulting video clip, save those settings as a preset.  In batch mode, have the software save the intermediate 32 bit images – this way if you don’t like the tonemapping results you can come back and reprocess them with different settings – and have it apply your tonemapping preset and save the tonemapped images.  Some HDR apps will let you choose a custom name followed by a numerical suffix.  This will let you get your sequencing done at the same time as you process your HDR images.

From there, the steps are the same as with regular timelapse.  Import the sequence into your software of choice and export the video clip.

In the next instalment, I’ll work through a sequence from start to finish in a free piece of software called Virtualdub (Windows only).  Vdub has some nice plugins that can help you deal with flicker as well as camera movement such as wind buffeting.

This is the last instalment in the series of HDR software reviews. If a new application comes along in the future, I may add it to the set and I’m in the process of looking at some new beta versions of a couple previous applications so will likely update those reviews in the future with new information; but for all intents and purposes this is it. What started out as a list of about 5 applications has grown to a 10 part series. From a purely personal standpoint, if I never see the images that have been used in all these reviews again it’ll be too soon. I hope the thoughts I’ve laid out have been useful for some people and perhaps given some insight from the standpoint of a casual user.

This last instalment will look at Picturenaut. I was initially reluctant to include it because unlike all the other applications in the series, Picturenaut isn’t a commercial product. My feeling is that if someone’s offering a piece of software for sale, it’s open to be reviewed and critiqued but if someone’s offering up a piece of software for free it’s a different matter.

Picturenaut can be downloaded from the HDRLabs website which, as many of you probably know, is owned and maintained by Christian Bloch. Christian is well known in HDR circles and is the author of The HDRI Handbook which is highly recommended as one of the two seminal reads for users of HDR both new and advanced along with Practical HDRI.

In a comment to another one of the reviews in the series, it was mentioned that I should include Picturenaut. I contacted Christian to see if he’d mind (essentially get his permission). He had no problem with it with one caveat. He asked that I relate the story behind Picturenaut. So here goes.

Picturenaut ‘fell out of’ The HDRI Handbook. The book is essentially Christian’s diploma thesis. In the early stages of trying to find a publisher, he was turned down so put the thesis onto the web for anyone to download (it was downloaded over 20,000 times). This is back in 2003 when HDRI wasn’t being used anywhere in photography really but only in the motion picture industry (it’s been used there for several years in CGI). A programmer named Marc Mehl contacted Christian with an interest in trying to develop a program for HDRI. Working together, with Christian helping Marc find and refine the process and the ‘under the hood’ algorithms, Picturenaut was produced. Marc continues to update Picturenaut today. Donations for maintenance and development of the program can be made through the HDRLabs website and all donations go to Marc for continued development. Download it, give it a try and if you like it (you probably will), make a donation (and yes, I have). The other thing that’s important to note about Picturenaut is that it’s got an Open SDK which means that anyone with a knowledge of C++ can develop plugins for it. If you know C++ and you want to help improve the software, have at it.  An Open SDK is what allows users to create their own actions and scripts in Photoshop.

Now, with the story behind the software known to all who read, let’s take a look at the application itself. I have to say I’m more than a little nervous about this one because I know Christian’s going to be reading it at some point and no doubt my mistakes will be pointed out when he comments (go easy on my Christian, I’m just a dumb photographer).

The GUI for Picturenaut is about as clean as they come.  A menu bar at the top with both dropdowns and icons to launch actions.

There are no preferences that can be set up so you can pretty much start using the program straight away.  It will open RAW files, it also supports Radiance, TIFF and OpenEXR 32 bit files.  You load TIFF or JPEG images as your source images as well.  There is no batch functionality; which would be a nice future development to see.

To load a bracketed set of images, either click on the icon of the images with the + sign or go to File>Generate HDRI.  A dialogue box opens to select the images.

You’ve got a few options here to consider.  There are the usual Align and Deghost.  Exposure correction is an option that will allow the software to adjust the exposure of the image from the camera as may be necessary to properly compute a gamma curve before averaging the pixel values together.  For example, sometimes you’ll look at the EXIF of your images and your -3 shot might show as -2.97.  Picturenaut will make the necessary correction to properly average the pixel values together if the Exposure Correction option is checked.  The result should be more accurate blending of the source images.  Color Balancing is another option to consider.  Based on the information from the EXIF data, slight differences in colour can occur due to an inexactness in the exposure information as noted above.  Color Balancing will try to correct those errors and match colours in the 32 bit image to the colours in the source files (i.e., prevent false colour or dramatic colour shifts).  If Exposure Compensation is left checked, Color Balancing shouldn’t be necessary.  Next you have a dropdown for Weighting.  This determines how the pixel values in the source images will be used.  Standard uses all the pixel values in each image.  If particular areas of a source image are noisy (i.e., underexposed shadows), noise in the final image could be enhanced.  Mid Emphasis uses primarily the middle-toned values in each image.  This can work well if you’ve fully exposed a bracketed series and have your darkest shadows brought up to a middle tone and your brightest highlights brought down to a middle tone.  If your shadows are darker or highlights brighter, using Mid Emphasis may sacrifice some shadow or highlight detail in the merged image.  The last choice is for Curve.  This is the gamma curve of the source images.  If you’re using RAW files, selecting Linear from the dropdown should be the way to go.  If you’re using TIFF or JPEG images as your source, selecting Computed would be best which will allow the software to reverse engineer the gamma curve and properly correct for it to linearize the data for merging.  Selecting Standard Curve or User Defined should only be used if you know exactly what gamma encoding is used in the source images.

Once you load the source images, you don’t have to wait long to get your merged image on screen.  This is the fastest application of all those tested thus far without question.  To get into the tonemapping, either click the icon at the top with the little sliders on it or go to Image>Tonemapping.  The tonemapping screen is fairly simply laid out as well.

You can make the preview image full screen and drag the tonemap operators to a second display if you have one.  Moving to a second display is not ‘sticky’ so has to be done each time.  More fulsome dual monitor support would be nice.  In the preview window, scrolling with the mouse wheel will zoom in and out within the image.

There are 4 tonemap operators to choose from.  The one that will likely get used the most is Adaptive Logarithmic.  The other that may get used some is Photoreceptor.  The other two won’t be of use to most folks.  Adaptive Logarithmic preserves colour well and applies a soft shoulder and foot to the contrast curve (film photographers will understand the concept).  For more digitally based photographers, think of the PS Curves adjustment with a short, soft curve at the top and bottom with a long straight section in the middle, or with a very shallow S-shape in the middle.  That top and bottom curve are the shoulder and foot.  Photoreceptor applies a more dramatic straight cut off at the top and bottom which will give more contrast and ‘punch’ to shadows and highlights but doesn’t do anything for the midtones which will tend to be flatter.  Colour preservation isn’t as good and I found I’d get a fairly pronounced green/cyan colour cast to images using Photoreceptor.

Sliders for the various adjustments are live (big thumbs up).  In addition to the adjustment sliders, there are options for adjusting the histogram via a Levels type adjustment and the gamma.  Unchecking Automatic Luminance gives you control of the highlight and shadow points on the histogram.  You can adjust overall Luminance or each channel individually.  I’d recomment leaving Automatic Contrast unchecked.  In the Gamma tab, you can adjust the gamma curve of the tonemap function to better suit your needs, your desired look or your source images.  To do this, you can adjust the sliders, select from the dropdown menu or, if you have gamma curves loaded on your system, use one of those (not many users are going to have gamma curve files of their own).  Generally you’ll start with the default 2.2 and adjust from there or stick with the Computed option in the dropdown.  You don’t really want to use Linear here because your output image is no longer longer comprised of linear luminance values like your RAW input files would be.  You want to apply a gamma correction to your output LDR file.  The Rec 709 checkbox is a setting you won’t find in other HDR software.  This one was a mystery to me so I did a little digging.  As far as I can find, it’s a gamma correction function for HDTV that is different from the still image gamma curves we’re used to using.  In general, checking it darkens the image overall, increases colour saturatoin and boots local contrast.  Check it and uncheck it, see if you like what it gives you.  You can choose the bit depth of your output image as 8, 16 or 32.  You can save tonemapping settings as presets so they can be recalled in the future (nice!).  If you switch between tonemap operators, the last settings you used are retained when you return to a previous operator.  The big thing I’d like to see added is the ability to tag the output files with a colour space.  If you use JPEG or TIFF images with a colour space embedded, Picturenaut will honour that colour space through the merging, tonemapping and saving stages.  If you use RAW files; however, your output LDR image will be untagged.  This can result in fairly dramatic differences in colour from what you see in the tonemap preview when the image is opened in an image editor for further post-tonemap tweaking.

How’s it all work?  Let’s take a look.  The first thing to note is that you’re not going to get the really whacked out, hyper-real results with Picturenaut that you can get with other HDR software.  Picturenaut is intended for real world use where realistic results are expected and desired.  Given that, there won’t be any of the surreal looks shown with previous parts in the series.

The image below is the result of tonemapping the default existing 32 bit file.  Overall contrast is good.  Highlights are very well controlled and there’s good shadow contrast.  Picturenaut crunches dynamic range as well as or better than the other applications reviewed previously.  What should be noted is the blue in the water.  This wasn’t present in the tonemapping preview in Picturenaut and is a result of not being able to tag the output LDR with a colour space.  The blue can certainly be removed with further editing and if TIFF files are used as the inputs, the water retains the white colour it had in the tonemapping preview.  It would take very little additional work to get this to where I wanted it.

Let’s take a look at the merge within Picturenaut.

It’s a tad dark but I could have produced a bit lighter version during tonemapping if I’d wanted.  The blue in the windows on the right isn’t as strong as with some other software but that can be enhanced with further editing.  The colour in the floor and walls is good.  The brightness in the windows on the left is well controlled.  Again, the software has crunched the dynamic range very well.  With a little more work in PS and/or LR, a very useable result could be achieved.

Picturenaut also has a deghosting function.  Turning it on doesn’t slow down processing very much at all.  As can be seen from the image below, it works fairly well.  Not as well as CS5 HDR Pro; which at this point has the best deghosting of anything out there, but probably pretty close to Photomatix.

Overall, Picturenaut is a terrific program.  That much better considering the cost.  It’s fast, it compresses dynamic range well, it can generate extremely good, realistic output.  On a commercial interior gig I had earlier this summer, Picturenaut saved my bacon.  I wasn’t getting results I liked with any of the other software at my disposal so decided to try Picturenaut.  Bingo!  Images I could make use of and the client was happy.

Picturenaut definitely goes into the recommended column.  There are a few things that could make it that much better but it’s pretty damn good as it is right now.  As I noted above, if you download it, use it and like it then make a donation which will help keep development going.  We all know there are plenty of photo-related software programs out there that are being sold commercially that are buggy, crash prone and difficult to use that should still be in Alpha development, never mind even Beta.  Picturenaut is the opposite.  It’s a well thought out, well developed piece of software that’s free and should be offered commercially.

As with the others, if you see any glaring or non-glaring errors, let me know and I’ll make the necessary corrections.

I’m likely to slowly migrate most of what’s on my main website to the WordPress format and figured I’d start with this tutorial rather than putting it over there.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of timelapse shooting of late and have had some questions about the process so thought I’d put together a short tutorial. This isn’t going to go into extensive depth on video editing as that’s really beyond the scope of what I’m wanting to outline here.

Timelapse is the opposite of high speed photography. In high speed photography, you capture images at a very fast frame rate and when played back at a normal frame rate, the action appears slowed down. In timelapse, you’re effectively lapsing time or skipping time. You capture at a slower frame rate and when played back at a normal rate, action appears sped up. If you’ve seen, for example, a video of the progression of a flower bud coming into bloom, that’s timelapse.

Let’s get the concept of a ‘normal’ frame rate taken care of first. Many of today’s digital video cameras capture video at 30 fps or 60 fps. Some also capture at 24 fps which is, historically, the rate at which cinema films are captured. When I talk about a ‘normal’ frame rate, I’m talking about 24 fps (also seen as 23.976 fps). This is the rate I use when creating timelapse video clips.

What equipment do you need for timelapse? Well, a camera is a good idea. Pretty much any camera that will allow for full manual or semi-manual (e.g., Av, Tv) operation will work. Fully automated cameras can be used but as with other types of photography, you lose some creative control of the final output. What else? An interval timer is also a useful tool. In an absolute technical sense you could manually release the shutter (with a cable release) and manually count between frames but that gets tedious. An interval timer (intervalometer) allows you to set up the parameters of the shoot in advance, set the timer to start then simply wait till the sequence is complete – no fuss, no muss.  Some cameras have good interval timers built in.  For those that don’t, you’re going to need something external.  Most camera makers offer a cable release/interval timer combination so check available accessories for your particular camera.  There are some third party options as well.  Phottix is a supplier of a variety of third party accessories, including interval timer/cable releases at reasonable prices.  If you’re a Canon or Nikon shooter and want a really slick tool, you can check out the Promote Control from Promote Systems.  It’s not inexpensive but the flexibility it offers is terrific.  For cameras that have minimal bracketing capability, the Promote Control allows you to override the in camera AEB.  It even allows you to combine AEB and interval timing for doing HDR timelapse work.  It’s a very cool piece of kit.  Another important thing for timelapse is memory space. You’re going to be shooting a lot of frames. You want to have enough memory to be able to capture the required number of shots for the clip you want to create. A tripod (or some other form of solid camera support) is also vital. You really can’t handhold for this kind of work, unless you’re doing some sort of moving sequence (i.e., shooting through a subway window or in a moving car). Of course you want enough battery power to keep the camera running for the number of shots and length of time you’ll be shooting.

What format should you shoot it? It’s really up to you. The larger the image size, the more card space is going to be taken up and the more card space you’ll need. Some will suggest shooting anything but RAW is foolish. While I’d agree for general photography, for timelapse it’s probably not as crucial. More important than format, I think, is image size. Full HD is 1920×1080. Shooting at larger file sizes – even JPEG – allows you to add some pan and/or zoom effects after the fact in editing and still be able to fill the screen. This can be desirable particularly if you’re a fan of the ‘Ken Burns Effect‘.  The other reason I’m less fussed about shooting RAW for timelapse work is that due to the nature of the intent – creating a video – when each individual frame is on screen for a split second and the dynamic movement of the video and the small size of the images, the benefits of RAW to still photography aren’t as crucial to timelapse video work.  You do have to be more careful with getting the white balance right and ensuring you take a more measured approach to editing if you shoot JPEG but shooting JPEG for timelapse you can create very high quality results.  If you’ve got the card space and like the enhanced flexibility then by all means shoot RAW.

What should be the spacing between shots? This will depend on a few things.  It’ll depend on how fluid you want the end video to be.  It’ll depend on how fast the action you’re shooting is.  It’ll depend on how long you want your video clip to be.  It’ll depend on how much card space you have.  It’ll depend on how much flexibility your interval timer gives you.  In general for more fluid motion in the video and if there’s a fair bit of action in the scene you’re shooting, a faster frame rate (narrower spacing) between shots is advisable.  If the scene is fairly static and/or you’re not as concerned about fluid motion, a slower frame rate (longer spacing) can be used.  Typically I’ll use anywhere from 1 fps to about 1 frame every 12 seconds.  More often than not, I’ll shoot at 1 frame every 3 or 6 seconds.

How many frames do I need to shoot? That’ll depend on the frame rate you shoot at, the playback frame rate (e.g., 24 fps) and how long you want the clip to be.  The simple math is clip length x playback rate = number of images.  So if I wanted a clip of 10 seconds playing back at 24 fps, I need 240 images.  The shoot duration math is # images/shots per minute = duration.  If I capture at a rate of 1 frame every 6 seconds that’s 10 frames/minute so I need to shoot for 24 minutes.  That assumes you import the images at the same frame rate you’re going to use as your playback rate.  For simplicity sake, that’s the basis we’ll work on.  If you want to get creative and use different import and playback rates, the math will change.  It also assumes you don’t do any stretching or compression of the clips in your video editing software.

OK, so you’ve gone out to shoot, now what do you do? Once you’ve got the images from the shoot onto your computer, you do whatever normal editing you’d do for any other image.  I use Lightroom for the bulk of my editing so making a change to one then syncing that change across all the others in the sequence is easy.  I’m not a Bridge user but I believe something similar can be done in Bridge.  If you’re working with another image editor, you’ll have to check the documentation for it specifically to see if you can sync edit changes across a series of images.  It certainly makes the work simpler and quicker.  The one place where you’ll need to work on a frame by frame basis is if you have to heal/clone any dust spots or other unwanted items.  This is particularly true in something like a sky where there can be light/cloud movement.  Doing a clone/heal on the first image and carrying it across all the others isn’t always going to work too well.  Keeping your lenses, any filters used and your camera sensor scrupulously clean is key to being able to avoid this time consuming and tedious chore (ask me how I know how tedious and time consuming it is ).  Once you’ve made all your edits the last step is to create a set of images in numerical seqence.  If you’ve shot RAW, you’ll need to export them to JPEG.  Using Lightroom makes this task very simple.  In Bridge, I think the Tools>Batch Rename utility will do this for you.  If your images are still in numbered sequence as they came off the memory card and you’ve shot JPEG, you can use the camera numbering as your sequence.  If you’ve deleted any images in the sequence, you’ll either have to import multiple sequences or do a batch export/rename to create a new sequence.

Photoshop, since CS2 or Cs3 has included some video editing functionality.  To import your image sequence in PS, you go to File>Open, select the first file in the sequence, make sure Image Sequence is checked at the bottom and click Open.  See the screen capture below.  Note:  The video editing features are available in the Extended version of Photoshop, not the standard version.

Once you click Open, you’ll be presented with a dialogue box to select your frame rate.  Choose 23.976, 24 or 30 (whatever you’ve determined will be your default frame rate and what you used to calculate your shooting duration and number of frames required) from the dropdown menu and click OK.

The image sequence will then open and it’ll look like any other image  you open in PS.  The indication that it’s a video sequence will be on the image thumbnail which will show a small set of film frames in the lower right corner as in the screen capture below.

In the screen shot below, you’ll see I’ve turned on the Animation timeline via Window>Animation.  This allows you to see the timeline of your clip in the bottom of the screen.

With the sequence open in PS, you can make global edits via layers or directly on the video sequence just as you would with any other image.  These global edits will be applied to the entire video clip.  There are some more advanced editing capabilities for video in PS but those are beyond the scope of this introductory tutorial.  I may do future tutorials to cover some of those functionalities.  The last step in editing is to crop to your desired aspect ratio.  For HD that will be either 1920×1080 or 1280×720.  For SD it could be 640×480 for normal screen or 720×480 for widescreen.  If you lose too much real estate because your file size is too large, you can rez down the sequence the same as you would for a still image using Image>Image Size.  To save this step at the end of the editing process, you can batch crop/resize to the desired size in the batch export/rename step noted above.  Either one works.

I’ve done my edits, what next? Now you need to render out your video.  To do this, go to File>Export>Render Video.  You’ll be presented with a dialogue box that looks like the one below.

At the top you’ll select the destination for saving your video file.  In the File Options section, select MPEG-4 from the Quick Time Export dropdown menu.  MP4 is a good general purpose file type.  MP4 renders quickly and produces high quality clips at reasonably small file sizes compared to, for example, AVI.  It’s a preferred file type for video sharings sites like Vimeo and YouTube.  If you’re looking to make a DVD of your video, that’s a different issue and not within the scope of this introductory tutorial.  Click on the Settings button to bring up the screen below where you’ll configure your video.

Choose the settings as they’re done in the screen capture above.  Lastly click on Video Options to bring up the screen below.

In this screen, change Faster Encode to Best Quality.  This will slow down the render process somewhat but the resulting video will be of higher quality.  Click OK to get back to the main render screen.  Click Render and wait for the clip to complete.  Once that’s done you’re ready to upload it to a video sharing site like Vimeo or YouTube.  If you want to view your video on your computer, you may need to download a video player that’s capable of decoding mp4 video.  The free VLC Media Player will allow you to view your mp4 videos.

That’s it.  You’ve shot, edited and complied your timelapse video.  There are numerous other editing packages out there for video such as Sony Vegas, iMovie, Final Cut, Pinnacle, Adobe Premier and others.  Cost of these packages varies from about $100 for a very basic, bare bones option to well into 4 figures for a high end, very robust, professional video editor.  You can also do basic compiling and global correction with the free (Windows only) Virtualdub software.  The biggest downside of Virtualdub is that you can only save out files in AVI format.

I’ll do another part on timelapse video to encompass a cool sub-genre of timelapse known as HDR timelapse where HDR stills are used as the input files.  On the homepage of my main site, you can see a sample timelapse clip that also includes HDR in the last 5 seconds.

HDRSoft have announced that the beta of Photomatix v4.0 is now available to the public. If you’re interested, it can be downloaded here.

I received an email from a representative of the New York State Museum about an upcoming exhibit they’re hosting of landscape photos of New York State asking if I’d help spread the word.  The text of the presser is copied below.  My only caveat would be; if you want to, to verify what rights you may be signing away by submitting images.  There’s a Terms of Use on the submission link but you may want to check that there is nothing additional that you may be granting them.

State Education Department/University of the State of New York/Office of Cultural Education

New York State Museum   News

MADISON AVENUE, ALBANY, NY  12230

FAX:  518/486-3696

Contact:

Joanne Guilmette

518/474-8730

Jguilmet@mail.nysed.gov

NYS MUSEUM INVITES PHOTO SUBMISSIONS FOR UPCOMING EXHIBIT

ALBANY, NY — The New York State Museum is inviting the public to submit their digital photographs of scenic New York State landscapes, the best of which will be showcased in an upcoming Museum exhibition and displayed on the Museum website and Flickr page.

Scenic landscapes exist in every corner of New York State and are often found on picture perfect postcards that read “wish you were here.” The State Museum’s exhibition, Wish You Were Here! New York State Photographed by You will open in the State Museum’s West Hall Corridor on September 3, featuring a selection of the best landscape photographs submitted by the public. These can be photographs of a beloved vacation spot or even the backyard, neighborhood street or other favorite place. Images chosen for the exhibition, as well as others that are submitted, will also appear on the Museum’s website. Photographs will still be accepted after September 3, since new ones will continually be added to both the gallery and website.

Wish You Were Here will complement another exhibition in the Museum’s adjacent West

Gallery –   Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York. Also opening on September 3, this will be the first exhibition of landscape art to be culled from the Museum’s vast collections.

Those wishing to submit photos for Wish You Were Here will find further information at

www.nysm.nysed.gov/wishyouwerehere.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Founded in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the U.S. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

UPDATE:  August 19/10

HDR Expose won’t be reviewed as a part of this series.  I’ve asked for, and the folks at Unified Color have granted, a refund of my purchase price.

I received an email from the folks behind Photo Engine a few weeks ago telling me they were going to be launching a new software package that did HDR and a whole lot more and asking if I’d be interested in being part of the beta group. Sure, I said.

I’ve been playing with the software now for a couple weeks. What follows is essentially a review like others in the series but keep in mind that things could change since this is only the first beta of the program.

I’ll say upfront that Photo Engine is a very complex piece of software. It takes a bit of time to get a feel for it. There’s some terrifically complex coding in the background related to the HDR Relight feature to be sure. In general, while what I’ve seen so far is looking like it’s going to be a very good program, there some complexities and features that are superfluous and attention could have been paid elsewhere. More on that as we progress.  I also think that some of what’s in this software is geared toward CG artists and may not be a lot of use to photographers.

There’s a particular feature of Photo Engine that I haven’t tried yet and that won’t be covered in this preview.  It’s the HDR Relight feature.  I’ll state upfront that I’m a bit skeptical as to the applicability of this for photographers – it may be one of those aspects of the software that CG artists will use more – but will keep an open mind and reserve final judgement till I’ve had the chance to try it out.

On opening the software, you’ll see a GUI that has a screen with a lot going on.  There are three basic components of the app. as shows in the upper right corner – Browse, Edit and Help.  Browse is the default window.  This is where you select your files to work on.  A screenshot is below.

For file types the application can make use of, you’ll see a picture thumbnail.  For others, you’ll get a text thumbnail.  Down in the bottom section are a list of recent Photo Engine projects (using the proprietary .rcd file type) which have been worked on.

You’ll see in the screenshot above that .hdr files don’t have a picture thumbnail.  While the program can read Radiance file types, it can’t display the thumbnail.  OpenEXR files won’t be listed at all because the program can’t work with those.  32 bit TIFF will have a thumbnail with an exclamation point because while it can read and open ‘normal’ 8 or 16 bit TIFFs, it can’t work with 32 bit TIFFs.  Nor can it work with PSD files at all.  I’d suggest the lack of support for a wider range of 32 bit files is a negative for Photo Engine.  While we’re at it, while Photo Engine can read 32 bit Radiance files, it can only write 32 bit files in its proprietary .rcd format.  This makes Photo Engine essentially incompatible with other HDR or image editing applications on the market.  While I understand that the folks at Oloneo are trying to produce a ‘one stop shop’ software application, not building in cross-platform functionality is a big negative.

Opening a single file to work on is as simple as double clicking.  Opening a bracketed series to merge and tonemap is a bit different.  First you select the respective files in the browser using Shift + click or CTRL + click.  Next, in the window on the upper right titled Project Image Selection you click Add.  This moves all the selected files into the project window where you can work with them further.  To begin creating a high dynamic range document, move down into the HDR Tonemap window, select Auto Align or not, then click Create HDR Tonemap Project.  If you’ve added only the images you need for a single merge, there’s no need to highlight the images in the Project window.  If you’ve added images for more than one merge, you’ll need to highlight the ones you want to include before clicking the Create HDR Tonemap Project button otherwise all the images in the Project window will be used.

You’ll notice in the top of the Browse screen in the middle is the typical … icon to open a location and select files.  You can also use the dropdown menu and select by file or by folder.  As you open and work with various folder locations, these will be stored in this dropdown menu and you can select from a recent location quickly without having to go through the folder hierarchy again.  If you’re working with RAW files, the program will give you thumbnail previews, but these do take a bit of time to appear.

Once the files begin to merge, you’re taken to the Edit window.  You can switch back and forth between Edit and Browse without affecting the current merge.  In the Edit window, your tonemapping controls are on the right and your edit history is on the left as seen in the screenshot below.

There is no multiple monitor support.  While the image on screen is fairly large if you’re using a larger monitor, it would become relatively smaller on a smaller monitor.  Adding multiple monitor support so that the edit and history windows could be moved to a second screen would be beneficial.  Similarly, in the Browse screen, having all the supporting windows on a second monitor would be a good idea.

Based on my work thus far with Photo Engine, I’d suggest the Advanced Local Tonemapper is the way to go.  The difference between it and the regular Local Tonemapper is the addition of the Detail controls which can prove useful.  There are also Auto Tonemapper and Globabl Tonemapper options but these provide little user control and less than pleasing results generally.

The variety of controls available in the Edit window is quite extensive.  At the top are the usual tonemapping controls.  Moving down there are LDR adjustments, a white balance panel, print toning and below that very fulsom colour controls.

In addition to the white balance panel on the right, at the top there is an eyedropper which can also be used to select white balance.  I find the eyedropper to be quick and effective.  Activate it then click in the image on a white, black or neutral tone to set your WB.

The Photographic Print Toning panel is one of those aspects of the software that, to me, seems superfluous.  While I understand Oloneo is trying to give users a one-stop shop for image editing, I think it highly unlikely that advanced users are going to do print toning in this application.  Particularly when there’s no print module in the app.  If I want to tone an image for printing, I’m going to do it in Photoshop where I have significantly more control over the final outcome.

Below the print toning, there’s an Advanced section.  Here are where the colour controls are.  Two curve adjustments are available – Brightness and Saturation.  If you right click on the curve in either panel you’ll be presented with 3 options.  Bezier Spline, Catmull-Rom Spline and Linear.  What the ……?!?!  Here again, is where the developers may have gone a bit overboard.  None of these, on first blush, looks like the curve adjustment we’re used to in PS.  Ignore Linear.  It produces a non-smooth curve that is nothing like what we’re used to.  Catmull-Rom looks more like the standard PS curve adjustment but the interpolation between points is different.  That leaves us with Bezier Spline.  And this is the one that will work like the PS curve photographers are used to.  You can add points by clicking on the line and dragging.  What about the tangents on the curve?  These will adjust the slope of the curve locally.  Might be useful from time to time.  If all you want to do is get the ‘standard’ S-curve, click on the tangent arrow of the top point and drag it up.  Next click on the tangent arrow of the lower point and drag it down.  Voila, your standard S-curve contrast adjustment.  If you click to add points on the upper and lower sections of the curve and drag these, you’ll get something similar to the standard PS curve but not quite the same.  In this case you’ll probably want to move the upper and lower tangent points as well to make the curve smoother.  Lengthening or shortening the tangent lines will change the inflection point of the curve.

As noted above, this level of adjustability is more than most photographers are going to want.  Keeping in mind my earlier thought that this software is meant for both photographers and CG artists and doing some research into these various curve types, it does seem that these curves will be more familiar to those working in the CG world.

The Brightness curve works like the PS curve in the Luminance blend mode; affecting brightness without colour.  The Saturation curve below that begins making colour adjustments.  The bottom section of the curve works on areas of lower saturation while the upper section of the curve works on areas of higher saturation.  Dragging down or up will reduce or increase relative saturation levels respectively.

Below that are individual adjustments for Hue, Saturation and Brightness (Luminance).  The spectrum for each is split with a line for each colour/hue.  Clicking and dragging the point on the line adjusts saturation, brightness or hue for that particular colour, isolated from the rest.  Right clicking on a point and selecting ‘Free Mode’ allows you to move the position of the colour line left or right along the spectrum, effectively changing the relative relationships between the various colours.  Perhaps another bit of superfluousness.  While an interesting adjustment to have available, I’m not sure how much photographers are going to use it.  The adjustments that these controls make are precise; however, so the controls are effective.

The last thing to mention is the history panel on the left.  Like the history panel in PS or LR, a record is kept of each adjustment you make.  You can undo one thing at a time or several.  Like in LR (unlike in PS), if you save the file in the proprietary .rcd format, the edit history is stored as well so when you open the file in the future, you have access to everything you did previously.  This is only true if you save in the .rcd file format; however. Right clicking on a history point will allow you to add a comment or edit an existing comment.  Perhaps useful if you want to recall why you used a certain setting in the past.  You can also create an edit version (similar to the LR Snapshot) which you can come back to in the future.  If you create an edit version, then back up in the history to change something, you lose your version.  This makes the version feature less useful.  Versions should be retained so they can be brought back at any time (like the LR Snapshot).  The Play button steps through all the edit history from start to finish automatically.  This would be useful for creating tutorials.  You can have the playback stop each time a comment is found as well so the comments can be used to explain certain steps or processes.

Photo Engine is a colour managed application.  When you save a file you’ll be presented with a dialogue to tag it with a colour space (sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB), a bit depth (if saving as a TIFF), a compression type for TIFF and quality level for JPEG and a resolution.  If you want, you can also add copyright information into the file. The program defaults to the .rcd file type for saving.

There are no text help files installed with the program, nor are there any on the Oloneo website.  The help comes in the form of video tutorials.  While a nice supplementary form of help, a text help file where people could search and get quick assistance would be beneficial.

There are no preferences to be set in Photo Engine.  Rather than having to choose what file type, bit depth, colour profile, etc, each time a file is saved, it would be preferable to have these established as user defaults which can be overridden if desired.  This would speed the workflow process.  In addition, there is no possibility; that I can find, to save tonemap settings as presets.  Particularly given the varied and complex adjustments available, the ability to establish presets would be beneficial.

How’s it all work?  Examples are below but generally, pretty well.  Overall, speed is good and comparable with the other top programs on the market.

First the realistic result of the existing HDR image.

Colour and contrast are good.  The blue in the water is well controlled.  Overall, a very good result and one that wouldn’t need a lot of additional work.

Next the surreal result on the existing HDR image.

It’s clear that Photo Engine can go from mild to wild.  This is actually one of the more appealing results on this image of all the ones tried thus far.

Now, how does Photo Engine do with files merged inside the application?

The realistic version.

The blue colour in the windows on the right is good.  Overall colour is good.  The result is a bit dark overall but this can be corrected with some more work in PS post-tonemap.

Next the surreal result.

Once again, we’ve gone from mild to wild.  Unlike in some other applications, the blue in the right side windows has been retained to a large degree.  The windows on the left are blown out, as in other software but in a different way and a good deal of the dirt on the windows has been retained.

In both cases, Photo Engine has handled the dynamic range in the images very well.  The surreal/grunge results are different from others and in a lot of respects better.

Overall, Photo Engine shows a great deal of promise.  There are some user-functionality issues that would make it better and easier to use.  The fact that, I think, they’re targeting both photographers and CG artists means there are aspects of the software that aren’t as relevant to photographers but that can be dealth with.  There is no version, at this point, for the Mac OS; however, Oloneo states that the software works well with Parallels Desktop 5 (which I believe is the current version at the time of writing).  There’s no deghosting function which is why that wasn’t tested.  The one other thing that Photo Engine doesn’t have that would be nice to see is a batch function.

Once I try the HDR Relight functionality, I’ll come back and provide an update.  If  you’ve been trying out Photo Engine and find an area where I’ve made a mistake in my commentary, please let me know, I’ll take another look and upate as required.

HDR Darkroom is another relative newcomer to the HDR software scene. I say relative newcomer because it came to market after many of the well known apps like Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR and FDRTools.  I only became aware of it in the last couple months and decided to add it to the growing list of software apps in this series.

I should state upfront that after sending some questions to the folks who produce HDR Darkroom, they’ve provided me with a full version (sans watermark) and in return, I’m going to provide them with some samples to use on their web gallery at no cost.

Unlike many of the other applications coming out on the market, HDRDR is ‘just’ an HDR application.  It’s not trying to be all things to all people, which is a plus in my book.  They’re concentrating on one thing with HDRDR and concentrating on doing it well.  32 bit files can be saved either as Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr).  When saving JPEG files, there are no quality options.  The file is saved at full size and full quality.  Personally, I prefer this.

On opening the program, the GUI is clean and simple with a menu bar at the top and menu icons down the left.  This allows you to use whatever method you’re comfortable with to work.  Positioning your mouse over an icon brings up a description of what it is so you’re not working blind if you use the icons.

There are no preferences available to be set so you can simply start working.  There is a batch function (thumbs up) but no colour management implementation (thumbs down).  Under the Process menu is an interesting item labeled ‘Export to Photoshop’.  Upon further inspection, it’s not quite as interesting as first thought as it only will export a BMP version of the file you’re working on.  If it could be reprogrammed to export a JPEG or TIFF, that’d be cool.  As it is, the standard workflow of tonemapping, saving the tonemapped image out as a JPEG or TIFF then opening that file in PS for any further work is the way to go.  There is no deghosting function so that won’t be tested.

How’s it all work?  Opening an existing 32 bit file is pretty quick.  The program goes through an initial ‘tonemapping’ step in order to display the image on screen for a first visual representation.  If you like what you see, you can save out the file from here.  Additional work is probably going to be needed.  A screen capture of the intial preview of our default existing image is below.

It’s actually not too bad, but it does need more work.  Into the tonemapping functions we go.  Going into the tonemapping functions opens up a new screen, but it’s not a double screen so you can’t flip back and forth – there’s no need to really so it doesn’t matter than you can’t.  In the tonemap screen, the tonemapping controls are on the right side of the screen and the image in the middle.  You can adjust the size of the preview between Small, Medium and Large.  The default is Medium.  Even selecting Large, the entire image fits in screen so you can see everything that’s happeningn with the tonemapping.  There is no multiple monitor support so you can’t pull the tonemapping bar to a second screen and get a bigger image on the primary.  Unless you’re working with a very small screen this should be alright because the tonemap bar doesn’t take up a lot of screen real estate and the workspace is clean otherwise so there’s nothing else to keep you from getting a good idea of what’s happening as you adjust the tonemapping operators.  Multiple monitor support is always a nice thing, but in this case – unlike with some of the other apps we’ve looked at – it’s not vital.

There are three tonemapping operators:  Local Tone Balancer (LTB); Local Tone Enhancer (LTE); and Fast Tone Compressor (FTC).  The first two are local tonemappers, the last is a global operator.  Based on what I’ve experienced in using the software, LTE is going to be the operator of choice in most cases.  It has the most flexibility and produces the best results on a consistent basis.  Unless noted otherwise, LTE is the one I’m using in this commentary.  There is also the ability to save tonemapping presets via the dropdown menu at the top.  A screen shot of the tonemapping GUI is below.

The sliders don’t offer a live preview but the update speed is quick.  Switching from one tonemapping operator to another, then back brings you back to the last settings you used in that operator – nice.  Keeping the Strength setting in the range under 50 is generally where you’re going to want to be for a more naturalistic/realistic look.  Fill Light is one that’ll be used sparingly in most cases.  It does do a good job though of working on the darker/shadow areas yet not brightening the lighter/highlight areas.  The Brightness slider does a nice job of making adjustments to the overall exposure and helping retain/regain shadow/highlight contrast.  Below the Tonemapping Parameters is a section for Post Processing tools.  There are two tabs – Color Balance and B/W Point Clipping.  The Color Balance sliders act like the colour balance tool in Photoshop and can be useful for adjusting the white balance in the image.  The B/W Point Clipping sliders on the second tab are where you’re going to set your white and black points.  Both work well and the B/W sliders provide enough fine control that you can get the overall contrast where you want it.  Eyedroppers for setting white balance as well as white/black points would be nice additions to make adjusting those settings slightly quicker.  Once done, click OK to apply the settings and you’re taken back to the original screen after the settings are applied which is pretty quick.  Tonemapped files can be saved as 8 bit JPEGs, 8 bit TIFFs or 16 bit TIFFs (noted in the dropdown as 48 bit – 16 per channel).  It can also save as PNG and BMP but these will be less useful for photographers.  The realistic version of our default existing file is below.

This is pretty darn good as it stands right now.  The blue in the water is a little too intense but that’s easily fixed after tonemapping.  Without question this is on par with the best apps out there for generating a realistic result on this particular image.  Getting to this result took very little time and required not a lot of playing with the sliders.  There are Undo and Redo icons on the left side of the screen.

An interesting part of the way HDRDR works is that after you tonemap and go back to the main screen, you see the results of the tonemapping on screen but your 32 bit image is still there in the background.  When you save the file out as a JPEG or TIFF, it saves a copy so what you see on screen is still the 32 bit image.  If you then go back into the tonemapping operators, it opens the original 32 bit image back up with the previous tonemapping settings applied but clicking Reset takes you back to the original.  This is a nice workflow process if you want to try different tonemapping adjustments.

Now let’s look at the other end of the tonemapping spectrum.  Two files are below.  The first is a surreal/grunge look with the LTE operator, the second is a surreal/grunge look with the LTB operator.  They’re different.  In both cases the Strength slider is pushed well up past 50, which is where you’re going to want to go if you’re working for the less realistic look and in the LTB version, the Local Lighting slider is also pushed up toward the top end.  My only quibble with the LTB version is what it’s done to the waterfall pools.

HDRDR can swim in both ends of the tonemapping pool.  Getting from a realistic result to a less realistic is as simple as moving the Strength slider.  You’ll likely want to tweak some of the other settings as well but the Strength slider really does control a lot in this software.  Simple is good.  And the speed is very good througout.  As fast or faster than the other applications tested thus far.  Another important thing to note is that the program has handled the full drange of this scene very well.  Recall from the introductory article that I chose this particular scene because of the range of brightness it contained.  There are no presets other than the default settings but creating your own is easily done and with the simplicity of making adjustments to create different looks/versions, creating different presets takes little time.

We’ll move on to see how HDRDR does merging and tonemapping a set of files.  The screen for setting up the merge is very simple.  You can choose to align or not and you can choose to have the exposure information taken from the EXIF data or by guessing.  If you were using film scans or other images that didn’t have exposure information in the EXIF, you could use Guess as a starting point.  Once you choose your images and set the software to work the loading, aligning, merging and initial preview tonemapping happens in a pretty snappy fashion.  Perhaps not quite as fast in this case as Photomatix or CS5 HDR Pro but still quite quickly and faster than many of the other apps. tested thus far.

Once again, the intial preview is a very good starting point as seen in the image below.

The colour in the windows on the right is good.  The brightness in the windows on the left is well controlled.  Not quite the best we’ve seen so far but still very good.  Colours throughout are accurate, if a tad cool which is easily addressed.

Making the tonemapping adjustments and applying the tonemapping settings was a slightly slower with this 32 bit file than the existing one from above.  I’m not sure why that might be.  It could simply be a combination of the settings needed to get the result required more time to process than previously.  The Strength slider for this was a bit higher than on the first image so which would mean more processing behind the scenes so that could explain the slight time difference.  The difference was small enough that it could also have been due to other processes going on in my system at the same time.  More testing would be needed to know for sure.  Either way, it’s still quite quick.  Below is the natural/realistic version.

Here again, the colour in the windows on the right is good.  Brightness in the windows on the left is better than in the preview version.  Good shadow/highlight detail is retained throughout.  The colour from the dirt in the left windows shows up well.  It’s a very nice result and one that I’d only have to do a little extra tweaking to after the fact via a Curves/Levels type adjustment and/or perhaps a slight Shadow/Highlight adjustment.

The grunge/surrealistic version is below.

As with the realistic version, colour is good, detail is good in the highlights.  What’s interesting about this version compared to surrealistic versions from the other applications is the way HDRDR has rendered the highlight areas in the room itself.  The highlights areound the ticket windows, the old newsstand on the left and on the large pillar in the back corner add enhanced visual interest to this version that the others haven’t had to the same extent.  The mapping of the light in HDRDR, in this case anyway, has created a very appealing result.  As with the other images, the Strength slider is the one that largely controls the realistic or surrealistic look and in this case it was all the way at 100%.  In some other apps., moving the equivalent of the HDRDR Strength slider to 100% would cause the windows to become completely blown out but highlights are still well controlled here at the same time an interesting ‘grunge’ result has been generated.

After getting the fully unlocked version, I have to admit that I cheated and used it for more than just this review.  I wanted to see how it would handle some night scenes with wildly varying light levels and light colours.  I used it to shoot a timelapse segment in Toronto.  The last 5 seconds of this clip are images merged and tonemapped in HDRDR.  Tried the same files in Photomatix and liked the HDRDR results better so used them.

A Summer Night in Dundas Square from Robert Fisher on Vimeo.

Support for HDRDR is decent.  There are no Help files installed with the program.  There are some video tutorials on the HDR Darkroom website as well as some FAQ sections.  I emailed some questions to their general support email address and got responses within a business day.  The HDRDR offices are in Europe and I’m in North America so considering the time difference, that response turnaround is very good.  The responses I got were helpful.  My understanding from trading emails with them is that they’re working on revamping the website and I expect it’ll have enhanced information on it when the new site is brought onstream.

I did run into a few bugs when working with the software.  Two are minor and not worth going into detail on.  The third involves a difference in tonemapping when working in Batch mode vs. doing individual merge/tonemap operations.  Again, based on emails I’ve traded with their support group, they have a handle on the problem and expect to have a fix in the near future.

To discuss the Batch mode a bit more for a second, like everything else with HDRDR, the interface is simple and the process is quick.  Running the same set of files through both HDRDR and Photomatix, HDRDR completed the batch process slightly faster than PM.  You can choose to save either the 32 bit file, a tonemapped JPEG file or both.  The 32 bit file is saved in the Radiance format.  Since the software can save individually merged files in both Radiance and OpenEXR formats, giving that flexibility in Batch mode would be preferable.  Being able to save the tonemapped file as either an 8 or 16 bit TIFF file would also be preferable to just offering JPEG.  You have access to the same tonemapping operators in Batch as in standard mode.  You cannot; however, invoke a preset in Batch mode.  If you test out a merge to get your tonemap settings  figured out, you’ll have to write down the settings  and input them manually in Batch.  Being able to use presets here would also be a good enhancement.  You can merge up to 10 images in Batch mode which should be enough.  Nikon offers the widest bracketing at up to 9 in some of its models so unless you’re doing manual bracketing at 1/3 or 1/2 stops and capturing huge numbers of images per sequence (which really isn’t necessary), the ability to merge up to 10 images should suffice.

There is a noise reduction feature in the software which I didn’t try.

All in all, HDRDR is a very nice piece of software that does one thing and does it quite well.  The software is on sale right now for $79.  There are both Mac and Windows versions.  At that price it’s definitely a good deal.  Even at the full price of $99 it’s the same price as Photomatix Pro and in terms of the quality of the software and support, it’s pretty much on par with PM.

As with previous reviews, if you see any errors please let me know and I’ll work to make the corrections.  Thanks for reading and I’m happy to recieve your feedback.

The latest beta of PM 4, b2, came out a few days ago. It’s got some new features and a few tweaks so I’m going to give a bit of a preview-review of some of the new functionality. The folks at HDRSoft know I’m doing this and are fine with it. They’ve asked me not to show any screen shots of the GUI and I won’t. That’s unfortunate though because some of the biggest changes involve the GUI. I will try to describe some of them as best I can.

Part II of this review series discussed the current version of Photomatix.  As I noted there, it’s a terrific piece of software and, until PS CS5 HDR Pro was introduced, has been arguably the ‘gold standard’ of HDR software apps.  With the introduction of the new features in CS5 HDR Pro, there’s (arguably) a bit of a tussle for that title of ‘gold standard’.  Does any of that change with what’s coming in the new version of Photomatix?  Let’s take a look.

There are quite a few changes in the works for the new version vs. v3.x.  Some of the key ones are:

- semi-manual deghosting feature by drawing around area to be deghosted

- showing thumbnails for tonemapping presets at the bottom of the screen when in tonemapping mode

- combined panel for tonemapping and exposure fusion (no need to select one or the other when loading images, no multiple tabs for Details Enhancer & Tone Compressor)

- ability to zoom via the mouse scroll wheel when the cursor is inside the image in tonemapping mode

- improved multi-threading support for RAW demosaicing and fusion/adjustment

- ability to adjust tonemapping sliders with the mouse scroll wheel

- transfer of image metadata to merged/tonemapped image

- improved functionality of alignment based on ‘matching features’

These aren’t all of the proposed changes.  There may be new ones added, some may be discarded as the beta process moves forward to a final release of v4.  Many of the changes are cosmetic.  Some deal with background processing which should improve results and improve speed.

The new preview thumbnails for tonemapping presets show up in a sort of film strip type of panel at the bottom of the screen.  This strip can be moved around but it always seems to be ‘in the way’.  In order to have the image on screen large enough to get a sense of what’s happening with the tonemapping, this preset strip blocks part of the image.  The thumbnails are ‘live’ in that clicking on one will invoke that preset on the main image.  There’s a tab for Built In presets and a tab for My Presets so if you have any favourite tonemapping settings saved, these will be available as well.  The thumbnails are small.  You can get a bit of a sense of what the result will be not a really good sense.  You can also close this strip.  It’ll re-open the next time you open an image for tonemapping.  You can drag it to a second monitor but it’ll come back to the main monitor next time.  I can see how this would be positive for some users.  It strikes me as a less useful feature addition.  Other aspects of the GUI can be turned on or off in Preferences (e.g., Workflow Shortcuts).  This should also be able to be turned on or off as the user wishes.

Perhaps the biggest change to the front end is the addition of the semi-manual deghosting feature.  When loading a set of bracketed files, the Processing Options give you two choices for removing ghosts, the old, fully automated method or the new semi-manual method.  Choosing semi-manual then brings up another screen called Ghosting Selection where you determine the area to be deghosted.  The instructions indicate to drag your mouse over the area to be deghosted.  Almost sounds like it creates a box or selection automatically, right?  It doesn’t though.  It’s like the Lasso tool in Photoshop.  You drag your mouse around the area you want selected.  You don’t have to join the ends.  If you only go part way around, the ends will be joined automatically.  Next you right-click in the area and have the option to select for deghosting or remove selection.  Remove selection is greyed out if you haven’t got the selection finalised yet.  You can make multiple selections using this process.  Once the areas are selected you can click on Preview Deghosting or simply click OK.  There’s a slider at the bottom of the Ghosting Selection screen that has no description.  This adjusts the brightness inside the image to help seeing ghosted areas.  Right-clicking also allows you to select a different image from the bracketed set to use for making the selection.  Choosing the 0, or +1 probably makes the most sense from the standpoint of ability to view areas within the image in most cases.  Make your selection based on your own image sets.  Click OK and wait.  Wait a long time.  It took so long, I wondered whether the program had frozen.  This semi-manual deghosting feature is very slow.  Significantly slower than the fully automated deghosting process.  How well does it work?  See the image below for a comparison of the new semi-manual method, the PM fully automated method from the current version and HDR Pro.

It works pretty well.  There’s a small bit at the edge of the left side that didn’t get taken care of but that did in the automated process of the current version.  Other than that, it’s about on par with the old method.  Given the time it takes to process using this new method I’d suggest that there’s not much of a benefit to it.

The ability to adjust the sliders with the mouse scroll wheel is a nice feature.  Click on the adjustment point of any of the tonemapping operators then scroll with the mouse and the adjustment is effected.  There’s a downside though.  With all of the tonemapping operators open, the tonemapping panel is longer than my screen is high.  My screen is 1050 pixels.  I’m guessing the tonemapping panel when fully open is about 1200 pixels or a bit less.  Activating a tonemapping adjustment doesn’t decouple the scroll wheel from the tonemapping panel so as you’re adjusting a particular tonemapping operator you’re also scrolling in the panel and can’t see what you’re adjusting because the operators keep moving up and down.  I’m hoping this is merely a bug and gets fixed before the final version.

I’ve not done a comparison of the change to the alignment based on matching features between the current version and the new version.  I’ve not found the current alignment process to be lacking.  In terms of speed, the converting of RAW files is much quicker than in the current version.  Excluding the semi-manual deghosting, other aspects of the application – loading a 32 bit image, alignment, saving images, tonemapping adjustments, are also quicker.  The tonemapping adjustment sliders are live in the new version where they aren’t in the current version.  Increasing speed is a positive.

I also took a look at the tonemapping to see if there were any differences between the current version and the new version.  There’s one difference in the Default tonemapping settings in Details Enhancer.  The White Point is at .175% in the current version and .25% in the new version.  Adjusting the WP back to .175% shows no difference in the two images after processing the tonemapping settings.

That’s a quick overview of some of the new features and comparison with the current version.  Will it be worth the cost to upgrade?  That’s a decision each user will have to make on their own.  For me, as it sits right now, probably not.  Many of the enhancements are cosmetic.  The functional changes that matter to me are an uptick in speed but that speed increase isn’t significant enough in itself to justify the upgrade.  The new semi-manual deghosting isn’t something I could find myself using given the slowness and that there’s no benefit over the automated approach – at least in the one image set I used.  Even if there were a better result in other images, the slowness is still a factor.

Based on this beta, I’d have to say that HDRSoft hasn’t definitively regained it’s spot as the ‘gold standard’ in HDR software.

EDIT:  In the 3rd beta of v4, the option was included to close the tonemapping preview thumbnails panel.  Definitely a welcome change.

UPDATE:  August 9, 2010 – SNS-HDR continues to be improved.  The latest (v1.2) has improved speed over previous versions.  While still not quite as fast as some others, it’s now fast enough that speed isn’t a concern.  Also, something I had overlooked previously is that at the bottom of the tonemapping panel, to the right of the colour profile dropdown is a small monitor icon.  Clicking on this brings up a dialogue box to select the appropriate display profile.  This is only necessary in WinXP due to limitations on colour management support in that OS.  Later versions of Windows don’t need to do this.

SNS-HDR is a relative newcomer to the game. Since writing the introductory piece for this review series, checking the search stats for my site, SNS has been the single most searched for term that brought people to my blog. It’s obviously getting a fair bit of attention. Based on what I can see tracking a few IP addresses, most of the attention is coming from Europe but it’s likely that the buzz will move across the pond in due course.  The website is in Polish but there’s a Google Translate dropdown in the upper right that will convert to English (or other languages).

I should state upfront that, after writing an email to Sebastian Nibisz with a question, he looked at my blog, saw the review series and sent me a license key to unlock a few features that aren’t availabe in the demo version. Those features are full access to the batch processing mode and the ability to save files at full size and bit depth.

There are 3 versions of the software:  Pro; Home; and Lite.  Pro is the full featured version.  Home has the GUI of Pro but without the batch function.  Lite has no GUI or other editing functions and you drag and drop files onto the icon to activate the merging/tonemapping functions which are fully automated.

I became aware of SNS via a board posting on The Luminous Landscape forums.  Downloaded it, checked it out and decided to add it to the review series.

SNS works differently from other applications.  It’s more automated for one.  It’s not true HDR in that it doesn’t create a 32 bit file; but rather is an exposure fusion tool.  It loads a set of images, merges then goes through an automated step called tonemapping.  It’s a process to blend and distribute brightness for an optimal result.  There’s no menu bar at the top of the screen either, which takes a bit of getting used to.  The GUI is simple and clean, as the screen shot below shows.

While it doesn’t create 32 bit files in it’s exposure merging process, it can read and tonemap 32 bit HDR and EXR files.  Once the program is open, all your options are contained in the panel on the right of the screen.  This is fixed in place and the program doesn’t support multiple monitors.  The three icons at the left of the Image panel allow you to open a single or multiple files, save an image or open batch processing.  Below that you have a histogram.  Next you get into your tonemapping adjustment operators.  There are 4 presets – Dramatic, Natural, Night and Portrait.  We’ll get into these a little later.  Below that you have some of the usual suspects for tonemapping operators.  In addition to the Brightness slider which is a global adjustment, you can adjust the brightness of any individual colour by clicking on the line in the color swatch and dragging upward or downward.  Each click creates a control point which can be dragged.  To delete a control point, simply right-click on it.  Next are Contrast, Highlights, Highlight Details, Shadows, Midtone Contrast and Microcontrast.  Below this is the Color panel with Saturation and Hue controls.  Like with Brightness, there are global sliders as well as colour boxes that allow you to more finely adjust individual colours.  Click and drag to adjust.  Right-click to delete a control point.  Next is Warmth, which is a white balance adjustment.  At the very bottom is a dropdown menu for Profiles.  This allows you to tag your file with one of 4 colour profiles – sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB or Wide Gamut RGB.  SNS is colour managed.  Big thumbs up!  Personally, I’d like to see this higher up in the hierarchy of options because it may get missed at the bottom.  But having it anywhere is much better than not having it at all.

On most screens, this adjustment panel is longer than the screen is high.  You can scroll up and down in the panel with your mouse.  Be careful though because positioning the mouse on or near any of the adjustment sliders will cause that slider to be affected by the scrolling of the mouse wheel.  If you want to scroll the adjustment bar up and down, make sure your mouse is positioned on the scroll bar at the right.  In the very bottom, lower right of the screen is a small button with a menu triangle.  This allows you to switch the language between English and Polish.  Just to the left of that is a small envelope icon.  This is an email link to the program’s creator, Sebastian Nibisz, to enable users to easily send an email with questions.  Nice touch.

To make and adjustment, you can click and move the slider, position your mouse over the slider and use the scroll wheel or input a number into the box.  There is a reset button at the right of each adjustment.  Right-clicking on the slider will also reset it to its default position.  There is no ‘Undo’ to take you back one step at a time. The sliders are live.  Moving the sliders with the mouse is a bit choppy; however, and getting it to move in fine, 1 point increments can be difficult.  Improving the slider function would be beneficial.

To load a set of images for merging, click on the Open Image icon and select the multiple images.  You can only have one image open at a time.  If you try to open a second or new set, you’ll be asked if you want to save the current image.  Loading a set of images brings up a dialogue for Size Reduction for onscreen viewing (leaving it at 1X is fine, you can always zoom in and out later if needed) and a checkbox for Auto Alignment.  The program does support RAW files using dcraw which is a well known RAW conversion utility used by other software applications.  Loading/converting of the RAW files and even alignment if checked doesn’t take an inordinate amount of time.  It’s a bit slower than other applications but not by a significant amount.  Where SNS-HDR has issues is with the initial tonemapping.  This process is quite slow.  This is an automated process that can’t be bypassed.  The change history on the SNS website indicates that speed has been improved a number of times over various version iterations.  I’d suggest that this may be the single most important thing to be addressed in future versions.  Even with the batch processing option, the tonemapping stage is slow enough that it renders the software basically not usable in a setting where time and turnaround are important.  Which is really a shame because the results are pretty darned good.

The image below is straight out of the merge/tonemap process with no additional adjustments.  Excellent starting point.

The key things to note are the windows.  There is extremely good detail in the windows, particularly on the left.  The histogram shows that there are zero blown pixels.  Colour is excellent.  The blue in the windows on the right is exactly what it should be.  This is the same set of images that have been used for all the other apps tested to see how well they handle a very wide brightness range.  I decided to throw another set of somewhat difficult images at SNS to see how it handled those.  This set doesn’t have a hugely wide d-range but it does have some strong, specular highlights on metal which can be difficult for some software to deal with.

According to the histogram there are no blown pixels.  Placing the picker over the specular highlights shows they’re well below blown at about a 228 value.  Again this is the default image with no additional adjustments.  Once again, a very good starting point.

Let’s get into the guts and see how SNS works when we use the available editing tools.  As usual, we’ll start with an exisiting HDR image.  Opening the image and the program working through its automated tonemapping process is also a slow undertaking.  Below is the default upon opening this image in SNS.

It’s quite washed out, lacking in colour saturation but not lacking in contrast.  Overall it’s on the dark side.  It’s not quite as good a starting point as what you get from merging a bracketed set of files right in SNS.  But we can work with it.  Once the file is open in SNS, positioning the mouse cursor inside the image and using the scroll wheel will zoom the image in and out.  Right-clicking inside the image will show the ‘untonemapped’ version so you can get a sense of the difference if you want.  One thing to note about this existing image is the colour balance.  It’s very good and very neutral.  Photomatix and other HDR applications tend to exaggerate some colours and can introduce colour casts.  In the case of this particular image, the water can be very cool/blue.  Not here.  No colour cast, no cool hue.  Very neutral.  This makes the editing easier.

Working with the adjustment tools available in SNS from the Default tonemapping we can generate a pretty good, realistic result as shown below.

It’s got good contrast, much better colour.  There are a few pixels on the verge of full saturation (blown out) in the waterfall pools, but that’s OK.  The reds/oranges are still a little weak but that can be adjusted with further editing in PS.  This is a very usable result.

How does SNS do at moving into the more surreal end of the scale?  For this approach, I started with the Dramatic preset and worked from there.  This result almost has a bit of a post-apocalyptic look.  It’s kind of cool and different from the less realistic images other applications generate.  Strong colour saturation in some colours, less in others.  Strong contrast.  And we’ve introduced that cool, blue hue to the water.  Overall a bit dark but that can be adjusted if desired.

Anytime you make a change from a preset the preset dropdown menu changes to +Custom.  Clicking on the + sign allows you to save those settings as a custom preset.

Let’s work on the image from the bracketed set merged in SNS.  The result below is the ‘realistic’ image.

The colours are very good and very accurate.  Other HDR apps tend to either make the scene too cool or too warm.  SNS keeps it very neutral.  As with the earlier images it may be overall a bit dark but that’s easily fixed.  Very good detail and colour is retained in the windows even after adjustment.  Again, a very usable image.  Getting to this point didn’t take a lot of work.  It would take a bit less work if the action of the sliders and colour bars were a bit smoother in the fine adjustment.

At the other end of the spectrum, the image below shows the more surreal result out of SNS.

It’s a bit more extreme than the realistic version but definitely not the wild result you can get with other HDR applications.  That kind of wild result may not be achievable with SNS.  And that’s OK.  There’s nothing wrong with an application that keeps things in the more conservative end of the pool since there are plenty of folks who don’t want to go near the wild end.

Loading TIFF files rather than RAW does speed the process up somewhat.  There’s no RAW conversion so that step is bypassed.  The alignment step is no quicker.  The merging step appears to be faster.  The tonemapping stage is no quicker.  So a bit of time can be saved by loading TIFF files but not a significant amount.  Loading TIFFs vs RAW images seems to make no difference to the merged result.

As noted above, there are 4 tonemapping adjustment presets – Natural, Dramatic, Night and Portrait.  The set of images below show each of the presets and the default setting for comparison.

The Default setting is going to be a good, general purpose starting point.  Natural increases colour saturation and contrast slightly.  Dramatic increases overal brightness, contrast and detail and would be a good starting point for moving into the more surreal look.  Night increases brightness, contrast and detail a bit more than Dramatic and would also be a good starting point for a more surreal approach.  Portait is the softest of the presets.  As the name suggests it’s best use is likely for images where people play a strong role in the composition and in images where a softer look is desired.  I can’t see using this one much.

Invoking the Batch mode in SNS brings up a simple dialogue box that allows you to point to the source folder, choose how many images in each set to merge (from 1 to 12 or All), whether you want to apply alignment.  Below that in the Destination you choose your saving location and file type.  The options are JPEG with quality settings, 8 bit TIFF, 16 bit TIFF and 16 bit TIFF+SNS.  This last one is interesting.  It allows you to save the tonemapping parameters into the image file so that you can re-open the file in SNS without having to make any recalcuations.  This would speed the process up.  Click on Run to start the batch.  The Batch icon will turn green and a Batch progress bar appears at the bottom of the screen.  Click the Batch icon again and you have the option to Stop the batch process.  I didn’t actually test the batch process but expect the same speed issues would be present.  If you want to use it and are processing a large number of bracketed sets, running it overnight is probably advisable.

There’s no deghosting function in SNS so that can’t be tested.

At this point there’s no Help menu within SNS and no user manual or other documentation on the website.  Sebastian told me that is in the works.  Hopefully it’ll be ready soon.  Sebastian did respond very quickly to the couple of emails I sent him with questions.  And very quickly particularly considering the time difference.  His answers were complete and helpful.  As more people learn about SNS and start using it, I think it’ll be important for that documentation to be available otherwise he may end up being flooded with questions via email  Perhaps a user forum or wiki would help in that regard as well.

Overall, SNS-HDR Pro is a very good piece of software.  As I’ve noted, the only real downfall I’ve found thus far is the speed.  At $85 Euros for the full version (Home is $30 Euros, Lite is free) which is about $105 USD at the time of writing it’s in the ballpark with the other applications available.  Given how well it works at exposure fusion, if the speed could be addressed, I’d definitely consider buying it and using it in my work.  The quality of the exposure fusion is excellent.  It’s better than the Exposure Fusion function in Photomatix and better than Enfuse which are two others I’ve used.  From a personal standpoint, I’d love to see this exposure fusion technology implemented into Kolor’s AutoPano software.  HDR or blended panoramics has become pretty popular and having this kind of exposure fusion technology built into a pretty decent pano app like AutoPano would be great combination.  While not truly HDR since there’s no 32 bit file created, SNS would fit into what JP Caponigro calls XDR (Xtended Dynamic Range).

As usual, if you note any glaring (or non-glaring) errors or I’ve missed something, let me know and I’ll make the necessary correction.