rf-photography.ca

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.

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.

Geocoding digital photos has become a popular thing to do. It makes sharing of photos in applications like Google Earth very easy. Some suggest that it’s helpful for buyers of stock photos in finding images but I’m not sure I completely see the connection there. Are stock buyers searching based on geo. coordinates? Maybe some folks could weigh in on that one.

Anyway, I began geocoding my photos about a year ago. It’s another step in the workflow but it’s reasonably automated so not terribly onerous. In my case, I used my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx which has route tracking capability and GPicSync. GPicSync uses .gpx track files which is what my eTrex creates. The workflow goes like this – Load images from the CF card to the computer via Lightroom (adding copyright, keywords, etc). Transfer the .gpx track file to the computer. Launch GPicSync, point it at the track file, point it at the folder with the image files, let it do its thing. Easy peasy. I set the eTrex to record a track point every 10 seconds. In GPicSync, I set the threshhold for time difference between track points in the track file and the time code in a particular image file at 10 seconds. GPicSync then writes the long/lat coordinates into the EXIF if the difference between the two is less than 10 seconds.  In order for this to be successful you have to sync the time in your camera with the GPS time in the GPS receiver you’re using, be it something like my eTrex, a smartphone or a small GPS tracker like those from Trackstick.

GPicSync is nice because it integrates fully with Google Earth. And…. it’s free! (my most important criteria).

There are several ways to geocode your digital photos. If you’re a Nikon user (I am) and have lots of money with nothing better to do with it (I don’t) you can get the Nikon GP-1 (~$200). It’s a small GPS receiver that sits in the hotshoe of the camera and connects via the remote release port. It’s expensive. It doesn’t work with all Nikon cameras. If you’re using it, since it sits in the hotshoe, it makes using an accessory flash difficult.  You can clip it to the camera strap or let it just hang freely.  The potential problems with those methods are pretty obvious.  There’s also at least one third party option available, the one I know of is the Phottix Geo One GPS (the Phottix website can be slow, patience is a virtue) which can be found for around $130 on eBay.  The Nikon unit does have a connector in the device to attach a cable release so you don’t lose that functionality.  I believe the Phottix unit does as well.  I’m not sure if the other third party units available offer the same thing so there’s a possibility of losing cable release functionality.  As far as I know Canon has nothing similar in its accessory arsenal. I don’t believe any of the other manufacturers do either. I also don’t believe there’s a DSLR out there (yet) with a built in GPS receiver to geocode files.

A more practical solution is needed. There are several GPS units on the market from various makers that offer route tracking capability. Since I already had the eTrex, it made sense to use it for this as well. I don’t always have it with me though and don’t always want to carry it along just for that purpose. Enter the smart phone. William Neill recently wrote about using his iPhone and PhotoPin on Facebook and that’s what got me thinking about possibilities for the Crackberry.

With the ubiquity of smart phones like the iPhone and Crackberry (aka Blackberry), I knew there were apps. available to do this for the iPhone (like PhotoPin). Being an ABA (Anything But Apple) guy, I wanted to see if there was anything available for the Crackberry. Turns out there are several options. Some, like GPS Tracker, work in conjunction with a web-based service to record your tracks. This uses data and if you don’t have a data plan with unlimited throughput could get expensive. Others don’t natively record the track file in the .gpx format.  It seems several will output in the .kml format.  There are utilities available to convert one format to another.   A quick Google search using ‘convert kml to gpx’ will turn up many options.

A little Googling and I found bbtracker. It records the track to the phone (or an installed MicroSD card) so no data usage, is user configurable and can export the track file in the .gpx format (or .kml, or both). Beautiful! And…. it’s free. (remember that important criterion above)

In short, it works.  I used it recently to create a track while I shot some throw away photos to test it, put it through my normal workflow and it worked.  What else could anyone ask for?

Here’s how I configured bbtracker on my Blackberry.  After downloading and installing the app, I inserted a MicroSD card into the slot.  Opening bbtracker and going into Options, I set the ‘Sample Interval in Seconds’ to 10.  This causes a track point to be recorded every 10 seconds.  Scrolling down to ‘Track Directory’ I opened the menu and selected ‘Browse’ and from here selected the ‘Blackberry’ folder on the MicroSD card.  By default the exported track is sent to the same location so I left that as is.  Next I selected GPX as the ‘Export to’ file type.  That’s all you need to do to configure bbtracker.  When you want to start tracking, go into the menu and select Start Track.  From here, I just choose the default track name, click on Menu and OK.  Your track is now started.  The word ‘Tracking’ will appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  To stop the track click Menu>Stop Track and the words ‘Static Track’ will appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  You can do Menu>Pause Track which will simply pause the tracking but not stop the track so you can continue without having to start a new track (i.e., if you stop for lunch and don’t need to have track points accumulated while you’re sitting in one place taking a break).  If you click the End Call/Power button while in bbtracker, you’ll be taken to the desktop so you can do other tasks but bbtracker will keep running in the background.  To export the track, click Menu>Export Track and the track will be exported to the default location.  If you get warnings about permitting bbtracker to access local content click OK.

Next you need to access the GPX track file to bring it onto your computer.  There are a couple ways to do this.  You could remove the memory card and use a card reader.  Alternatively, you can access the track file on the device with the memory card installed.  To do this you need to have Mass Storage turned on in the Blackberry and Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected either turned on or to Prompt.  To make sure you have these set up go to Options on the device desktop (the wrench icon) and select Memory.  Ensure ‘Media Card Support’ is On, ‘Mass Storage Mode Support’ is On and ‘Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected’ is either set to Yes or Prompt (I like it turned on, set to Yes).  Now when you connect your device with a USB cable, it will show up in your drive hierarchy and you can simply drag and drop the track file onto your computer.  A third way to use the file would just be to access it on the device.  Since you only have to point GPicSync to the track file and since you have Mass Storage and Enable Mass Storage When Connected turned on, you can simply point GPicSync to the removable drive on the Blackberry where the GPX track file is located.  You could also store the track file and exported GPX file directly into the onboard memory of the Blackberry but I like to keep the onboard memory for Blackberry functions like email, contacts and the like.  Accessing the track file on the device will slow the process down because the USB connection will be slower than if both the track file and your image files are on your computer.

So, if you’re thinking of adding geocoding to your workflow, are looking for easy and inexpensive options for doing it, are an ABA person and haven’t been captured by the mind-altering Jobsian Cult, check out bbtracker.  If you use it, let me know what you think of it and how it works for you.

I’ve enjoyed using Lightroom since v1.  With the improvements and new editing tools introduced in v2, it’s vastly improved.   And now with v3 on the horizon, the story should only get better.  Lightroom is now my main editing application and I typically only use PS for things that can’t be done in LR (e.g., perspective correction, more complex layer work).

As good a tool as it is for organising your photography database, I think there are a good number of people using LR who still don’t know how powerful an editing tool it is. Everything I did with the photos below can be done in PS and probably PSE and other editing applications. In most cases I find the result is better with the tools in LR and the workflow is faster and more natural. In addition, to do the same things in PS would require, in most cases, using layers to maintain the integrity of the original image which increases file sizes and chews up hard drive space.  First I’m going to show 4 images in a before and after comparison.  You may not like the photos, you may not like how I approached the editing.  That’s all fine.  I think they do show the power of the tools in LR for editing; however.  In all but one case, the only tools used were the Adjustment Brushes, Spot Removal and the Clarity slider.  In one, a slight Tone Curve adjustment was made and in the last a crop was applied.  I wanted to do a couple things with these.  I wanted to highlight the bits of colour in the surrounding evergreen trees.  Second, I wanted to bring out the texture of the Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield.  Beyond that, I wanted to enhance contrast by darkening certain parts of the water and existing shadow areas without completely losing texture or detail.  In the last, I also wanted to brighten the waterfall itself which was hidden in fairly deep shadow and crop to create a near perfect mirrored symmetry with the reflection.

Primarily the Brightness adjustment brush was used as a Dodge/Burn tool and the Sharpening brush was used to selectively sharpen or de-sharpen specific areas of the photos.  The Saturation brush was used to ‘pop’ the bits of fall colour from the surrounding evergreens.  The Saturation brush was also used to desaturate some colour in parts of the water and in the last image to reduce saturation of parts of the cloud reflection.  The Brightness brush as a Dodge/Burn tool is superior to any method I’ve tried in PS, including the use of a separate Dodge/Burn layer (which is a very good method).  The ability to selectively sharpen (or de-sharpen) areas with the Sharpening adjustment brush is simpler than doing it in PS – although I still like the High Pass method in PS for global sharpening quite a lot.  The Spot Removal tool (Clone/Heal) is terrific and particularly with respect to healing, is superior to the Healing Brush in Photoshop.  The ability to very finely match the source and destination with both the Clone and Healing features of the Spot Removal tool is terrific.

When you use any Adjustment brush in LR it puts a control point on the image.  The screen captures below show the various control points for these 4 images.

These control points make it very simple to go back and change prior edits without affecting the edit history on the left.  If you hover your cursor over a control point, a mask will be placed in the image to show the area that has been affected by the specific adjustment (image below is an example).

Hover over different control points till you see the mask covering the area you want to go back and work on.  If you then click on that control point, it will become active, the specific adjustment you made (e.g., Brightness, Sharpening, Contrast, etc.) will become active and you can edit the adjustment to your liking – all without having to backtrack in the History.  If you do go back in the History and make a change, you then lose all of the subsequent adjustments (unless you save a Snapshot).  By activating individual control points, the integrity of the History is maintained yet you can still change previous edit adjustments.  It’s somewhat like using the non-linear editing feature in PS (only better and easier).

Using the tools available in Lightroom entails a different workflow than using Photoshop.  But I think taking some time to become comfortable with Lightroom and the editing tools it offers would be time well spent.  Happy editing!

I recently decided to try using HDR for some, what might be considered, less conventional applications. I was doing some shooting for a local café before Christmas. In one session, I was actually working in the café while it was open. This was kind of cool; customers could see what was going on, people were asking questions and it was a nice interactive environment. In the other session I was shooting in the kitchen in the back of the shop. In both cases space was quite limited and bringing in accessory lighting wasn’t on. What do I do? How do I work around this? How do I get more control of the lighting? HDR? Maybe.  I also thought the detail enhancing aspects of HDR would be beneficial too.

I decided to try shooting the project using HDR. My rationale was that by shooting in HDR and tonemapping with a very light hand I could generate fairly flat, low contrast starting point images that would then allow me to have a bit more control of shadows and light/dark contrast via the digital darkroom.

The bracketed sequences were 7 shots at 1 stop intervals for a -3 to +3 bracket. RAW files were imported into Lightroom. I use Photomatix and the Lightroom plugin for most of my HDR work. I like most of what PM offers and how it works.  One thing I’d like to see the folks at HDRSoft do is add the ability to tag multi-shot, tonemapped HDRs with a colour space.  (They allow it for single-shot, pseudo-HDR conversions but not multi-shot.  Depending on how you have your preferences set up in Lightroom/Photoshop you may end up with your tonemapped TIFFs tagged with a colour space you don’t want.)  Photomatix works faster if you create your 32 bit files from TIFFs rather than RAW files.  The conversion to RAW, particularly out of the LR plugin just takes a little longer.  So after importing my RAW files, the only thing I might adjust is the white balance – nothing else.  The RAW files then get batch exported to 16 bit TIFF files and these TIFF files are what get exported to Photomatix.  You can also use the PM batch function to import the files and process them to 32 bit files or to fully tonemapped LDR files.  Since we’re discussing an HDR workflow I’m not going to go into a discussion of backing up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer.  But you do back up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer, right?  Don’t you?  30 lashes with a wet noodle if you don’t.

[Some HDR applications work better/faster with RAW files.  HDR PhotoStudio is one of those.  So if you're using something other than PM, find out what file types work best and adjust your workflow accordingly.]

Once the tonemapping is done, the files get imported back into LR where additional work is done as needed.  If more complex work is needed such as perspective correction, I’ll right-click and choose the Edit In>Photoshop, Edit a Copy and Render using LR to open the image in PS for additional editing that can’t be done in LR.  This way I still have my original TIFF file if I want to go back to it for some reason.  This approach does chew up hard drive space but storage is pretty inexpensive these days so leaving that added flexibility is, I think,  a positive.  Once the work in PS is done, the file gets saved and LR updates the image automatically.

Once all the editing is done, I’ll output for specific purposes.  In most cases this is going to be smaller JPEG files for web use or full rez JPEG files for printing.

How’d the HDR experiment work out?  Well, not badly I think.  The owner of the café is happy with the results, which is the most important thing.

Now, I’m no food stylist (yeah, I know, some would say I’m no photographer either) but I think the end results weren’t too bad.  These small JPEGs don’t show the full detail that is captured in the full size files, unfortunately.  Higher quality versions can be seen on my Facebook Page or my Flickr portfolio.