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.
Picturenaut GUI (click for larger version)
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.
Image Loading Dialogue (click for larger version)
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.
Picturenaut Tonemap GUI (click for larger version)
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.
Picturenaut Existing (click for larger version)
Let’s take a look at the merge within Picturenaut.
Picturenaut Merge (click for larger version)
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.
Picturenaut Deghosting (click for larger version)
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 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.
Oloneo Photo Engine GUI (click for larger version)
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.
Photo Engine Edit GUI (click for larger version)
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.
Photo Engine Existing Realistic (click for larger version)
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.
Photo Engine Existing Surreal (click for larger version)
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.
Photo Engine Merge Realistic
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.
Photo Engine Merge Surreal
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.
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.
Handmade chocolates
Lunch
