HDRI News

Happy New Year with sIBL GUI 4!

2012-01-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the future!

Thomas Mansencal updated the universal HDR lighting setup machine sIBL_GUI to version 4. The beta version was prematurely leaked on CGChannel, but now it's considered stable and ready for prime time!

Sexy dark interface with tag cloud and improved search.

Inspector view with large previews and Bing GPS maps.

Integrated editor to customize setup scripts and IBL sets.

It's a really great update!
Here are some feature highlights:

Faster startup (up to 600%)
64-bit architecture on all platforms
Dark interface, matching the 2012 editions of Max and Maya
Inspector view with large previews
Bing maps, that can occasionally dig out great areal photos
Tag cloud and improved search to quickly find the lighting set you need
All-new setup templates for latest editions of Max, Maya and XSI
New API with developer docs
Integrated script editor

Especially the script editor is a huge leap forward. Power users are now able to integrate sIBL-GUI seamlessly into any existing pipeline. It features syntax highlighting for MEL, MAXscript, Python, IBL files - so you can effortlessly tweak a setup script template to do exactly what you want, or permanently change the lighting parameters a sIBL-set.

Download sIBL GUI 4
(Also grab the latest helper scripts!)

This release cost Thomas Mansencal 7 months of coding, gray hairs, and gallons of coffee. I think it's certainly worth a donation. Doesn't matter if you send him a beer ($5), a movie ticket ($15), or a nice dinner for two ($60) - it's the gesture that says Thank you, keep going!

Also, please tell us in this quick survey what version of MAX, MAYA or XSI you're using. This will help us make sure sIBL-GUI actually works for you.

Archive Updated

Along with this big release, we also updated the sIBL Archive. All the monthlies from 2011 are now in there, and everything is remastered with proper preview images. That also includes all the Dutch Skies 360 sets from Bob Groothuis (Thanks!) as well as the LightSmith studio lighting sets.

If you've been an avid collector (I know many of you check in every month), you can just download the Update Pack instead digging through 1.4 GB of downloads again. Saves you time and me server bandwidth.

And according to tradition, there's also a new sIBL-of-the-month.
I'm kicking off the new year a pretty unique one: The makeup mirror in the backstage area of a steampunk circus. It is of course a movie set, that's why it looks more authentic than a real circus ever would. Full-size panorama is here, and I couldn't resist to drag it through Nik HDR Efex to create a surreal image of this twisted place:

HDR Video now open for everbody

2011-12-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

No doubt about it, HDR Video will be the hottest thing in 2012.

It's quite amazing to see all the cog wheels fall into place. This X-Mas we seem to have a neat cuckoo clock together, with all the parts working. It's just waiting for you to wind it up…

MagicLantern puts an HDR Video mode in Canon DSLRs

Your 550D a.k.a. Digital Rebel T2i capturing more dynamic range than a Canon's C300? For free? Hell yeah! That's Magic Lantern for you, Sir.

I expect the real hype to go all bada-boom when this Magic Lantern version comes to the 5D.

And for the next step - tonemapping moving footage - there is now this:

Ginger HDR for After Effects

John Hable made great progress with this new tonemapping plugin. Previously codenamed Natural HDR, its name is now Ginger HDR. The open beta is available now (until Jan. 8) and there are some great video tutorials to get you started.

Finally, it needs a media player that can deal with straight, un-tonemapped HDR video. And here we get even two new options:

goHDR Media Player

The cool part is, that the goHDR Player can also be hooked up to a real HDR displays. That's because Alan Chalmers and his gang at the University of Warwick share the dream of an end-to-end HDR pipeline. They have access to a Spheron HDRv camera, and they seem to have found a way to repurpose current LED-LCD panels to display real HDR content.

XDepth Video Player

Available for public beta testing upon request now. This one has the interesting twist that it works with a variety of codecs. It fuses a Hi- and Low Exposure clip together in a backwards-compatible way. Means - you can play the resulting HDR video stream even without the special player (but will only see the Low exposure).

So there you go! Plenty of things to play with over the Holidays, in case the rest of the family falls into a food coma.

Review: HDR Expose 2 and 32Float v2

2011-12-14T22:24:00.000-08:00

Unified Color has just updated its flagship software HDR Expose, along with the plugin version 32 Float. Big update, lots of ceremony.

Bad news upfront: some of my favorite features are gone. But the good news is: It seems like they are no longer needed, and on the bottom line the program is now much faster, more stable and easier to use. So in the end, it's a good update!

Here is a quick rundown:

Previously, you could stack up any operation in any order. Apparently that got many people confused, so now the order of operation is fixed. Does it take out flexibility? Sure. But it certainly makes the most common workflow fly much faster (i.e. tonemapping). Especially since all operations are preconfigured to deliver a decent natural result by default.

The new Preset system is kind of cool, because you can save presets that only affect certain parts of the processing flow. Just like in Lightroom. Very cool, very versatile.

Previously, there were 4 settings for halo removal. That's gone, replaced with a fully automatic halo removal. Believe me, nobody was more sceptic about this change than me. But it turns out that the new halo removal does not slow you down a bit (as the old one did), and actually performs flawless so far.

Previously, the program was pretty slow, and got slower the more operators you added. Now that's fixed, obviously. It's really fast now. Maybe calling it realtime goes a bit too far - it's not as realtime as SNS-HDR, PhotoEngine, or Picturenaut (meaning the image does not change while you drag a slider - only after you let go). But it's always responsive and by gut feeling a 1000% speed boost from before.

I do miss the Radius setting for local contrast, no idea where that went. Access to medium-sized detail is a little bit harder now and can only be achieved with a delicate balance between Exposure, Highlights, and Shadows settings. Oh well. In exchange there are new Tone Curves and Dodge/Burn brushes. Both rather simplistic, not really worth any further discussion.

What turned out really good, though, is the Batch Processing. It gives useful feedback about the detection of bracketing sequences, and you can have multiple look presets applied in one go. It's similar to Hydra, but better.

Fortunately unchanged are the excellent White Balance tool, Color Tuner, Veiling Glare correction, Noise Removal, and Sharpening. All pretty unique features in the context of an end-to-end floating-point pipeline. If tonemapping in HDR Expose doesn't tickle your fancy, doing all these things to polish and cleanup a 32-bit HDR image certainly should. You can still feed that result to an artistic tonemapper of your choice, and get a much better final with less post work to be done. HDR panoramas that are color corrected in HDR Expose even still qualify for CG lighting, because all the uber-white highlight data is not only retained but properly beautified along with all the rest. For that type of workflow, the full 32-bit round trip, I recommend the "Reset" preset as starting point.

So there you go. The important goods are still there, and everything is now faster and friendlier. Head over to Unified Color and see for yourself.

Let the sunshine in

2011-12-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

Whenever this blog goes quiet like this, you can bet that I'm working like a madman on the second HDRI-Handbook. So, please excuse my brevity.

However, I do keep up with regular site update duties. Picturenaut 3.2 is pretty much ready for prime time and will be covered in a separate announcement later.
Today, let me just present the new sIBL-of-the-month:

Go ahead, take a really close look at the palm leaves! You will not find any ghosting or even deghosting-related artifacts anywhere.

The wind was blowing like it wanted to push sailors over the edge of the world, and I still shot this in 9-exposure bracketing bursts. Any HDR photographer will agree that these are impossible conditions. A little miracle was necessary, and it was delivered by the ghost removal option in Photosphere. That's right - Greg Ward recently updated Photosphere to version 1.8.7U, and now this cute little freeware program has more advanced ghost removal than Photoshop CS5. Fully automatic with pristine results. How awesome is that?

Update Headlines & Dutch Skies 360 Contest

2011-10-31T16:35:00.000-07:00

A glorious lot of HDR programs were updated lately.

Hydra 3 Pro now has a new targeted adjustment mode, that looks like the perfect blend between Nik's U-Points and Lightroom's Adjustment Brush. Plus batch processing, presets, and complete interface makeover.

SNS-HDR Pro 1.4.3 has a mask feature now, allowing you to vary tonemapping parameters in specific areas. Also sports curves, sharpening, vignetting and a 360-pano-safe mode. That pretty much answers all my critique points from last review, so now I have to find something else to mock about.

PhotoEngine also has batch processing and supports a flurry of new RAW formats. Gotta love that trend, there's nothing like a good batch mode to get a first look at a weekend shoot.

ProEXR 1.6 for After Effects is now faster and offers a workflow bridge to Nuke. It can also export all your After Effects layers as unflattened OpenEXR layers (explained here). Way cool!

Picturenaut is coming to OSX! So far the commandline tool for HDR merging is ready: MKHDRI. Useful for automated tasks, for example with SmartShooter (getting integrated as we speak).

And then there's Bob Groothuis.

He just finished the Dutch Skies 360 Vol.4 collection, which turned out to have the most amazing and versatile skies ever. Seriously. Bob packs in so much extra material that Vol.4 fills a Blu-Ray (or 4 DVDs).

To give you a taste of it, Bob sponsors this November's sIBL-of-the-month. It's a 321 MB download (no kidding!). It contains some excellent background plates in RAW format as well as 11k panos of each exposure, even Bob's tonemapping settings. And the clou: if you render something nice with it, you can enter in the Dutch Skies 360 contest and win cool stuff! Participation alone will earn you another Dutch Sky, so there are no losers.

More on the Dutch Skies 360 Render Competition

Hands-free HDR Shooting

2011-10-19T20:37:00.000-07:00

Today, I'd like to talk about tethering. That means, connecting your camera to a laptop and shooting extreme exposure brackets fully automatically.

The cool thing about tethered shooting is that your computer screen becomes your viewfinder. You can have a really close look at sharpness and see exactly what you get, because the images are beamed via USB connection directly to your hard drive. Several remote capture applications even allow direct HDR capture.

Clearly the slickest one is Sofortbild. It's free, but only works for Nikons and Macs. Just my kind of combo! So I made a quick screencast of one-click hands-free automatic HDR capturing:

So this is about as convenient as it gets. But it also demonstrates that shooting speed is a critical factors for HDR bracketing. You can clearly see the clouds move between shots. I might have pushed it by configuring RAW capture in very small EV steps, but nevertheless: No tethering software can shoot as fast as your camera’s built-in autobracketing. This is a fundamental problem, rooted in the USB connection. There is always at least one second delay between frames. So instead of 5 fps (the average DSLR autobracketing rate) you get 1 fps at best.

Here is how that image turns out after toning:

Still, the big advantage is that you have a huge viewfinder. That's why tethering is typical for professional photo shoots. I'm talking about the kind of shoot that can't be distinguished from a movie set; with a trailer full of lighting gear parked aside, an army of grips jumping around, and a make-up girl holding on to a pink purse with mysterious content. For actual field work in one-man-rebel-style, it's much more complicated.

Roger Berry from IndiaVRTours.com custom-built this slick tethering setup.

You certainly don’t want to sit your laptop down in the dirt, so you need an extra stand for it. And once you google for “laptop tripod mount”, an exciting new world of expensive accessories will unfold in front of your eyes: from tether tables over sun shades all the way to cup holders.
If you have the craftsman skills of a Roger Berry, you can also built your own laptop tray by heat-bending a piece of metal, coating it with rubber foam, and then clamping it onto the center column of the tripod.

When it comes to tethering software, the professional solution comes from Breeze Systems and is called DSLR Remote Pro. It’s available for Mac and PC, loaded with features, and allows detailed control of virtually every setting on Canon EOS and some Nikon cameras. After autobracketing it can call up any HDR program and hand the pictures over to make an HDR image right away. It is meant as backdoor link to Photomatix, but it really works just as fine with any other HDR merging utility. It's $129 to $179, depending on your camera model.

More budget-friendly is an app called SmartShooter from Francis Hart. It’s only $50 for any camera model, also works on Mac and PC. The interface is very similar to Breeze’s software, maybe even a bit nicer.

SmartShooter doesn’t have a dedicated autobracketing mode, but it has something better instead: a versatile scripting interface. It comes with over 15 pre-made scripts, including HDR timelapse, focus stacking, and automatic FTP upload. The scripting language is very simple and well documented, and it’s not hard to modify one of the many example scripts to exactly whet you need. That means endless configurability in an affordable package.

Breaking Update News

Another great free app is HDRcapOSX. Coincidentally, it was just updated to work with OSX Lion and the latest Canon cameras. HDRcapOSX is all commandline, but that means you can hook up a Mac Mini (sans screen) and let it snap timelapse HDR all by itself. Saved directly as OpenEXR sequence. Yay!

New Beta: Smart IBL for Lightwave

2011-10-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

Finally, the wait is over for Mac users: the new Smart IBL loader and the OSX version of Lightwave 10.1 are friends again. Part of that fix must be credited to Newtek, who actually changed a few things in 10.1 especially for me. Thanks, guys!

There are so many changes and new features in this release, that I really can't tell for sure if I accidentally broke something somewhere else. That's why I decided to call it a beta for now; I need your input for this. It's also not entirely feature complete, but should be stable and is definitely a big improvement over the previous version.

For example, the new Inspector tab will make it a breeze to find just the right environment in a large library. And yes, it totally works on the Mac now. Yay!

Pick up the beta in this forum thread, and let me know what you think about it.

New sIBL-of-the-month

I don't always announce them, maybe I should. Why not? This one I'm particularly proud of: it's the staircase of the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

My photographer friends might appreciate some insight of why I like this one so much. Just check out the source files for this panorama:

These are all JPEG brackets with the white balance completely off. Yet, after they were merged and stitched to an HDR panorama, it was a matter of two clicks to perfectly correct white balance in Unified Color's 32Float. The result still has more than 20 f-stops of dynamic range, which is partly due to the fact that the initial exposure range was aligned to the brightest detail, capturing at least one unclipped image of the skylight and the fluorescent lamp.

So, against the conventional wisdom of "RAW is always better", the HDR workflow somewhat redeems the JPEG format for capturing the source files. It helps of course that Nikon's firmware has very effective correction for chromatic aberration, otherwise CA would have been one of the last remaining reasons to stick to RAW capture...

Also, there was no way to shoot this panorama leveled. Instead, I had to lean my tripod against the handrail and spin the Nodal Ninja on a ca. 30 degree tilted plane. PTGui had no problem straightening the horizon automatically after I set a few vertical control points on the door frames.

So there you go, enjoy this new set and happy testing of the new Smart IBL 2.4 beta for Lightwave!

Assorted news from the HDR-Video corner

2011-09-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

The puzzle pieces are starting to come together. Right now HDR-Video is still a very tight niche, but it's soon to become just as common as HDR images.

AMP prototype, second generation

Mike Tocci and his gang at Contrast Optical have designed a new slick housing for their AMP HDR video camera. It's now is a modular system, with a sturdy lens/sensor box separated from the actual recording unit. And it looks damn sexy too. Here's an exclusive sneak peek:

Here the camera is outfitted with a Nikon lens, but the word is that any lens mount is possible. The new housing is actually much smaller than it appears in the picture. It fits in the palm of a hand; the soft groove on the back is actually a very ergonomic thumb grip.

NaturalHDR for video tonemapping

Tonemapping moving HDR footage is a challenge. Photomatix and other local tonemappers tend to introduce flickering, because they adapt to the image content and treat every frame as individual photo.

To change this, John Hable set out to create a tonemapping plugin for After Effects, that is optimized for video footage. It's called NaturalHDR, was announced at SIGGRAPH, and is now in private beta phase. Here is a sneak peek trailer:

John previously worked out the filmic tonemapping for the award-winning look of the video game Uncharted (here's his GDC presentation), so he knows exactly what he's doing. He also started a new blog with some really good articles on human vision and natural/painterly tonemapping. Check it out at 19lights.com.

Shooting HDR Timelapse with Jay Burlage

You're probably wondering how these HDR clips were shot, as HDR video cameras are still in prototype stage. Jay Burlage did that, and has all the answers for you. He's the master of HDR timelapse and recently built his own business (and open source community) around awesome robotic DSLR dolly sliders.

Check out this video tutorial, where Jay goes into detail about planning and setting up HDR Timelapse shots:

Pretty slick dolly, isn't it? The only thing I can't get too excited about is the user interface of the controller unit. I'd much rather prefer an iPod/Android connector or NintendoDS, so there is a rich user interface for more intuitive interaction.

Upcoming HDR Video player

XDepth, formerly known for its excellent HDR image compression technology, is currently working on a high-performance HDR video player for both Windows and Mac. It will have elaborate exposure and toning controls, run GPU-accelerated, and use a backward-compatible AVI compression scheme.

extreme HDR Video camera developed at Q5Innovations

Another player enters the race, or rather sidesteps into it.
Q5Innovation has a history in building polarization imaging technology for medical, underwater and security/defense applications. Now they signed up Dr. James Plant, who is on his way to create a monster HDR camera. Preliminary performance specs are targeted for up to 160 db (equals about 26 stops of dynamic range!!), 120 fps at 6x HDTV, and incorporating the option for both OpenEXR data format as well as in-camera tonemapping ability.

Time to talk freely

So yeah, HDR Video is definitely evolving fast. My only fear is that we will end up with a lot of isolated solutions. To make sure all the puzzle pieces will fit together to form a smooth workflow some day, I think all involved parties should talk things out.

For that reason I created a new forum section dedicated to HDR Video:

So, register or log in, and let's get the open discussions started! If you've made an HDR video before (via timelapse or other means), post it! If you have a wish list of how you want HDR video to work for you, post that too! And if you have some HDR video technology in the making, get in touch with prospective users and listen carefully!

Burning Man and Picturenaut Beta

2011-09-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

I spent the other week in Black Rock City. It was a truly mind-blowing experience. Burning Man is something between a party marathon, a spiritual journey, and a civilizatory utopia. Maybe a bit of hippie convention and survival camp mixed in. You're surrounded 24/7 by an explosion of creative insanity. It's surreal - yet it feels so much more natural than the real world. Instead of commerce there's joyful sharing, instead of cars there are bikes, instead of rigid laws there is common sense. Black Rock City very quickly feels like home.

So this month's sIBL is for all you burners out there.

There is also a new Picturenaut 3.2 beta version.

Highlight feature is the simple export of an HDR-HTML web widget like the one above. It's pretty stable, so grab the beta from the forum and post any bug reports or comments. And if you find it flawless, just leave a thank you.

Review: SNS-HDR Pro. It rocks!

2011-08-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

I'm just coming from a review marathon of 20 HDR programs for the upcoming book revision. Turned out that one application really stood out from the crowd. I figured it would be mean to not share this with you right away, because you can most certainly use it for some great photography in the meantime.

This software with the somewhat cryptic name is written by the Sebastian Nibisz, a photo enthusiast from Poland. Without big company backing he put together a very impressive tonemapper, that deserves my personal newcomer award. It’s super-intuitive due to full-on realtime feedback and extremely halo-resistant.

The classic KitchenWindow example from the DVD has never been handled so gracefully. No halos, but full color control instead.

Parameters like Microcontrast and Microdetails mimic the classic settings in Photomatix, but in addition there are separate controls for Highlights Protection and Midtone Contrast. These two sliders really make a difference, in other programs these can only be affected indirectly by getting a bunch of conflicting sliders in a delicate balance.

SNS-HDR also includes excellent hue/saturation equalizers. These color tools are not completely unique by themselves, but are rarely implemented with such a simple interface and so much flexibility. No other tool will let you fine tune the color range affected by each equalizer control point, or setup a separate equalizer curve that affects only the highlights. In fact, most parameters can have a separate value for highlights, indicated by a little H button. This extra bit of highlight control is super-useful in practice and is very easy to use. Thumbnail presets, history, white balance tool with color picker, color management with monitor profiles—all the important features are there and implemented with excellence.

A unique treat is the Series Processing function, which is exclusive to the Pro version. Series is just like Batch Processing, except that it stops for each set and lets you adjust the toning parameters. Makes it faster than manually digging through an entire folder of brackets, but puts you back in control of the result. Very cool.

So what’s missing? Well, there is no HDR or EXR output. Which might be fine considering this is a purely photographic tonemapping software. The HDR merge function is very good, but can’t be top of the class without more RAW options and manual control over alignment and ghost removal. Sharpen, noise removal and chromatic aberration correction would be nice to have as well. But this is really just nitpicking, it’s actually hard to find a serious flaw in this fine program.

There are three editions: a free command-line version, which is just a fire-and-forget tonemapper and may be interesting for setting up an automated workflow. The Home and Pro edition are really what I was talking about here, priced at $42 and $120. Both are largely identical, except the Pro edition includes batch processing and is licensed for commercial work. For the casual hobby HDR shooter I would recommend the $40 Home edition in a heartbeat. Sebastian is nice enough to grant my readers an exclusive 30% discount,so you can pick up your Pro edition for $85 here.

If you’re a former Photomatix user, and want to ramp up your game in the tonemapping department, SNS-HDR is an excellent companion app. The separate highlight treatment and tendency to produce a natural appearance makes it the real estate photographer’s best friend. In fact, it was my good friend Michael James who turned me on to it, another victim was Jay Burlage who used it for many of his HDR timelapse videos. For a full-on introduction check out Michael's video tutorial (on a slightly older version).

Probably the only thing that keeps SNS-HDR from overtaking the world is that the website is only available in Polish. And Google's auto-translation looks a bit scary. Have no fear, head straight to the download button on www.sns-hdr.com

PS: Please - won't some volunteer jump in and properly translate that website for Sebastian? I really don't want him to get distracted from adding selective ghost removal or other awesome stuff to SNS-HDR, so please somebody keep this monkey off his back…

HDR video for Visual FX

2011-07-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

Another day, another revolution!

This time it’s a real-world application of HDR video, brought to you by some smart Swedes. More precisely, a research group headed by Jonas Unger at the Linköping University. Together with Spheron-VR they created this insanely awesome HDR video camera. I’ve blogged about it before, but recently I had the opportunity to play with some footage and contribute this demo video:

HDRv sequences used for image based lighting in VFX on Vimeo.

So far the Teaser, stay tuned for a full Making-Of where I will show you a few things that I learned in the process. In the meantime, check out the new home of HDR video on the web:

www.hdrv.org

If you're heading to Siggraph, make sure circle the talk on Next-Generation IBL using HDR Video in your must-see calendar. There will be even more exciting things shown regarding 3D reconstruction (sneak peek here). And if your ticket is only good for the exhibition floor, drop by Spheron-VR at booth 254 (floorplan here).

4 Million

2011-07-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Looks like it's time to crack a bottle of champagne! Check out the website stats:

Thank you all for coming here, I know a lot of you are regular visitors. And that number even excludes the community forum, otherwise it would be completely overwhelming. I really appreciate the continual support.

For the future, let's make a deal: I keep delivering original HDR news content, and you post a comment every once in a while. Because it feels weird when I'm the only one talking.

Cheers!

Everything changes in the new Photomatix

2011-07-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

The reigning king of all HDR utilities is getting a facelift.

New, darker interface colors are not a big surprise. It's the new standard, and for a reason: it lets the interface visually take a step back and helps you concentrate on your image. The real surprise is that all the really important sliders have been renamed and regrouped.

Here is an overview:

Otherwise, all sliders behave pretty much the same, even your old presets will still work. There are many more improvements in Photomatix 4.1, among them thumbnails in the selective ghost reduction module and a brand-new selection mode in the tonemapper. Super-useful for replacing an area with one of the source images (i.e. sky or crowds).

~~4.1 is currently in public beta, if you want to give it a whirl just download it here.~~

Update: Photomatix 4.1 is officially released. Once again a free update. Hurray!
Just go ahead and grab the Mac version or PC version.

New HDR video camera: AMP HDR

2011-06-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

There's a new playa in town, or rather put, in the field of HDR cameras: Contrast Optical.

Check out this hip trailer for the hipsters:
[ AMP Digital Video from Mike Tocci on Vimeo ]
All the funky music and toning choices aside, this is video actually shows a seriously powerful device. It's based on a beamsplitter, means semi-transparent mirrors redirect the light from the lens to 3 sensors. A little bit like the 3-chip CCD cameras we used to have in the nineties, except it has 3 CMOS chips with roughly 3.5 EVs between each other.

The clips they show would be tough to do with most other HDR video systems.

For example, HDRx on the RED Epic struggles with fast motion, just like any other short+long shutter speed method. But since AMP HDR splits the light optically, all 3 sensors all have the same exposure time, the same motion blur, in perfect sync. The other method, repurposing a stereoscopic 3D-rig as beamsplitter (like this or this or many others), makes it a real challenge to shoot a focus-pull or push-in shot. As cool it may be to shoot two exposures with two Canon 5D's, keeping them synchronized gets tricky in such real life situations. Putting the beamsplitter behind the lens makes much more sense.

Bottom line: So far this is really the closest contender to the Spheron HDRv I've seen... See more examples on the official AMP HDR website.

It is, however, still a bit of a prototype with no real connectivity for cine-standards. That would be the next prototype. Personally, I'd raise my hand for direct EXR frames pushed down a P2 RAID, but internal tone-mapping to an HDMI stream was also in the talks. Hopefully that would be at least HDMI 1.3 with DeepColor. Guess, technically there would even be room for a Mac mini in that box. Or let me pop an iPhone in as programmable controller, like the fancy new CLAUSS Rodeon panohead. Anyway, it would be interesting to see that AMP tech show up in a real product. Contrast Optical have no ambition to become camera manufacturers for things you could pick up at Best Buy, so let's hope they find some big partners/licensees.

Mike Tocci, the inventor of the AMP camera, has a great Siggraph paper on his method. Totally recommended read! You'll learn that each sensor is aligned with sub-pixel accuracy, which gives him a chance to merge the pure RAWs to HDR, even before demosaicing. Which turns out much much better, because saturated pixels in individual color channels are discarded before they even get a chance to mush up the colors of their neighbors. This really sounds like the right way to go from RAW to HDR.

Update: Here is the serious version of the video. Without the tekkno music, instead with more explanations of the camera and the technology.
[ AMP HDR - SIGGRAPH 2011 from Mike Tocci on Vimeo. ]

If you go to Siggraph in Vancouver, don't miss Mike's Paper Session. Maybe you can elbow your way through the crowd and get some hands-on time!

Oloneo PhotoEngine out in the wild

2011-06-09T17:51:00.001-07:00

After all these pre-announcements it should not come as a surprise that PhotoEngine v1.0 is out. Flickr is currently getting swamped with interesting shots, and the Oloneo Flickr group doubles as official support forum.

If I had to pick out just one innovative feature, that would be the ingenious use of the main tone-mapping slider, simply called Strength. Instead of changing only a single parameter from low to high, it cycles through a whole variety of look adjustments. From 0 to 100 it reduces the global contrast, from 100 to 200 it additionally enhances local detail, and beyond 200 it aggressively boosts every contrast it can find.

Combined with live feedback, that single slider alone can already lead to instant satisfaction. In fact, when you work in Auto mode that Strength slider is all you have. Local mode gives you more control over exposure, detail, and contrast. And Advanced Local finally drills the detail setting further down, so you can tweak every individual aspect of the tonemapping engine. Really clever.

Here's a quick summary of what I like most about PhotoEngine:

The main tone mapping slider goes through a wide variety of adjustments
Realtime feedback all the way
Advanced Local Tone Mapper mode exposes tons of detail controls to fight halos
360 Panorama mode
Lots of color controls for creative styling
BIG tone curve window
Automatic DeGhosting that is rather capable (see my previous test)
History Replay shows a timelapse of all the adjustment steps
Display with Color Management

It pays off to right-click in the Curves interface. You'll see that the curve type is freely configurable. Although the Bezier curves are implemented exceptionally well, you can also change it to Linear or Catmull Rom Splines (a.k.a. Photoshop-style, without the extra Bezier handles, shown here below).

In the color equalizers, which pack a lot of power in a compact interface, choose Free Mode to target your adjustment to a very specific color.

Not so awesome in my book:

No OpenEXR support, not even loading.
Can't save any 32-bit files, so it's only useful as end of the HDR pipeline
ReLight mode doesn't work with 32-bit HDRs
No noise reduction, neither in RAW development nor in post
A mysterious tendency to add dark color fringes around bright highlights
PC only

It’s a great start, however. If PhotoEngine manages to stick around it definitely has what it takes to rise to the top.

www.oloneo.com

PS: Meet me at the RED user group meeting this Saturday

June 11 has approached quickly. If you're in the Burbank area, come and say Hi.

There will be breakfast buffet. And possibly cookies. And i'll be giving a presentation on the Foundations of HDR Imaging, every 30 minutes from 9:00 AM to 12:00. First time I'm giving 6 shows in a row, we'll see how that goes...

Avid reader of this blog might not learn much new in my talk. But the event has now turned into some sort of Mini-HDR-Convention; there will be several RED EPIC cameras to play with, some totally sweet door prizes, and a very interesting lineup of presenters.

www.REDusergroupLA.com / Kappa Studios, 3619 W Magnolia Blvd. (Map)

See you there.

Rapid Prototyping, 3D reference cube, 5 free sIBL sets

2011-06-02T12:17:00.001-07:00

Here comes another blogging experiment: a guest article.

Bob Groothuis is a longtime member of the HDRLabs family, known for shooting the most stunning HDR panoramas and sharing them as Smart IBL sets with the 3D community. Today, he's got an exciting story to tell...

Intro

This is my first article on the HDRLabs website and hope it's not too much of a chaotic ratatouille of information (and poorly written english ;) ). I wanted to publish it sooner but had too little time last year. In this article I will talk about 3D, HDRI, Rapid prototyping & 3d tracking / measuring, and how all that comes together. And you even get 5 free sIBL sets.

Rapid Prototyping

Most of you already know about that great technology. It's an ideal tool for artists, industrial designers, architects etc. It can be used for uncountable different kind of projects. Just use your imagination and it turns into reality!

Rapid Prototyping has grown very quickly in the last years. Wait a bit longer and everyone has her/his own 3D printer at home. There are pre-build printers like the MakerBot or you can build a RepRap for a few bucks yourself. One of the things that we can see in the future is that you can print your own skin when you had an accident, so the healing process is going much quicker (these are not my own thoughts, it has been mentioned somewhere else, but think its nice to mention).

"Be Your Own Souvenir!" is a perfect very creative example of Rapid prototyping. Check out this video...

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

This is the kind of creativity I'm really keen on.

I will not go too deep into the overall process. What I want to show you is that you can use Rapid Prototyping to building your own 3D Reference Cube, that will be helpful for tracking and measuring. Only give you some hints on how to start, the rest its up to you.

Rapid prototyping companies | online printing services

There are several online companies where you can upload your 3D model and they will build a Rapid Prototype of it.

One of the most known is Shapeways.com. Another one is Ponoko.com. There are off course more, see a complete list here (not sure if this list is still up to date).

Such facilities are commonly called "Fablab", and the technology is now cheap enough that they don't have to be giant corporations anymore. There are probably some mom-and-pop Fablabs in your corner of the world (just google the word or visit Wikipedia's Fablab page for more info).

Rapid prototyping process

I asked Shapeways & Protospace Utrecht if they could send me some images of the rapid prototyping process. The images from Protospace will be shown below in the tracking / measuring device subject. On the right you can see the Shapeways images.

Protospace Fablab Utrecht

In the Netherlands we have several Fablabs and the number is still growing. In Utrecht there is a very interesting collaboration between a Fablab and the Dutch inventors association Novu. Its called Protospace Fablab Utrecht (english translation here). I'm also a member of the Novu, but just for fun. Do not expect break through inventions from me, I like to "invent" almost useless "inventions" haha! If you are interested in a few of them just see my product page. I have much more and will publish them in the future.

Shot for the Novu / Protospace several HDRI panoramas that can be downloaded for free below.

So what's a 3D Reference Cube?

It's a device that assists in 3D tracking and measuring. If you photograph it along with your background plate, you'll have the perfect placeholder for your CG objects. Let me show you some examples:

See at 04:29 at the following seminar Happy Finish: Photography Isn't Dead Event. The complete tutorial is absolutely worth watching.

[ YouTube ]

A more in-depth tutorial, that explains the process in 3D, can be found on the Luxology's Modo tutorial website: HDRI environments with matching back plate. Skip to 02:21 to see the alternative measuring device. Note, that the tutorial is made for Modo but can be used as example for other 3D applications off course.

Another very interesting tutorial is a bit off topic but worth watching: Happy Finish: Using CG Elements on Location

My own 3D Reference Cube

I wanted to build my own piece for a while, and combine it with Rapid Prototyping. The first prototypes I build are way to ridiculous to show you here. Finally came up with a very simple form: just a cube with 3 holes in it.

Protospace made the first cubes for me in wood due to complete mis-communication, but eventually they made one true Rapid Prototyped version.

The process can be seen in this image:

I used aluminum tubes to connect the cubes into the tracking device:

So the device you see is not completely rapid-prototyped, but think you will understand that its the new goal to make a device that's 100% Rapid Prototyped.

Note: there are off course cheaper and simpler methods of building your own tracking device. Also, the shape of this example is probably not completely optimized for transport and quick deployment. But I think you get my point; its so much fun to design and rapid prototype your own (maybe foldable?) version!

Final thoughts

If you can build a better, more effective Rapid Prototyped tracking device and you want to share it here, just mail me at mail att bobgroothuis dott com.

Originally I planned to shoot HDRI panoramas complete with the device but it turns out that this takes too long. I have limited time in that moment.

Free sIBL sets

Rapid Prototyping is an open source technique so think these sIBL-sets should be free too. Protospace gave the permission to put them online for free (thanks Siert & Joris!)

Download all 5 free sIBL- sets!

These HDRI panoramas were shot in April 2010 at Protospace Fablab Utrecht.
Have fun with them!

Thanks

Specially want to thank Protospace (Siert & Joris) and also Shapeways who provided some images of the Rapid Prototyping process. The cool interior color scheme was designed by Joris van Tubergen from Protospace Utrecht.

Bob Groothuis

PS: Bob is giving us a real treasure here. This location is ideal for WIP renders of character models; they will look just like real figurines! Here's a quick render I did last night, using the "Protospace E" set.

May's Mashup of Noteworthy News

2011-05-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Even after more than 3 years of weekly blogging, I'm still experimenting with this format. In contrast to all the long elaborate posts, let's try an aggregation of two-liners:

AKVIS HDRFactory enters the scene. Apparently includes ghost removal brush. Not sure if its toning capabilities differ much from AKVIS Enhancer. First (hurried) review came up here.

Oloneo PhotoEngine v1.0 launches on Tuesday. This is your last call to sign up for a 25% rebate. Last minute addition is a Lightroom plugin and export to Photoshop. Great review here.

Good bye Space Shuttle! While my friend Trey Ratcliff's beautiful photo went viral, NASA published an entire gallery of close-up panoramas. By the looks of it, all shot in HDR.

HDR Light Studio live in Maxwell. If you previously questioned the usefulness of this standalone HDR panorama creator, the new Live Integration Plugins will swing your opinion.

The Art of HDR photography. My former co-author Uwe Steinmüller published a very cool HDR guide on dpreview. I comply with everything he said, except that bracketing order (-,0,+) is essential for keeping your sanity when looking at day's worth of HDR brackets.

I love my new 85mm f/1.4 lens.
Snatched this baby from a virtual yard sale my friend Michael James is having right now. Instantly took it on an evening hike to the Yamashiro in the Hollywood Hills, for some shallow-depth-of-field HDR photo action in low light. Fun stuff.

If you're quick you may be able to pick up some goodies, before the leftovers go on ebay:

a Canon G12
a Nikon 35mm f/2 lens
a complete Pentax K-x Kit
a pair of Canon 530ex II Speedlite Flashes

Let me know in the comments how you like this new blog style. Should l send more of these concise posts through the tubes?

New paper: Enhancing LDR video with HDR stills

2011-05-25T21:13:00.001-07:00

Ok, we had a few exciting posts about HDR video here. Current approaches are either complicated, time-consuming, or just plain expensive.

In the meantime Francesco Banterle, researcher at the official Visual Computing Lab of Italy and most known for his free Picturenaut plugins, has figured out a technique that is easy, fast and cheap. And it seems like he had quite some fun in the process:

Read the research paper and see more examples on the project page.

In quick summary, he's extracting an alpha mask for the over-exposed areas, and then layers the video on top of an HDR image. A simple and efficient approach. In the VFX world this is know as "Sky Replacement" and has been practiced forever. Especially given the premise that the camera is perfectly locked on a tripod, a shot like this would typically be a job for the intern. If you want to try it for yourself in After Effects, I recommend checking out this tutorial from videocopilot.net.

Still, Francesco's paper is a really good read: definitely an inspiration for your own experiments, and with a good summary of existing HDR video technologies. And the actual prospect is that this could be done via fully automatic processing in webcams. Which would classify as awesome.

Philip Bloom's HDR timelapse: 24 hours of Neon

2011-05-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

British cinematographer Philip Bloom has already made himself a name in the DSLR filmmaker scene. When confronted with the absurd orchestra of light and color that is called Las Vegas, he picked HDR timelapse as the weapon of choice. Check it out:

24 Hours of Neon from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

There is an abundance of making-of material and commentary on Philip Bloom's blog.

In short, he used Photomatix's batch processing and manhandled flickering problems by simply omitting the worst shots. Flickering is indeed a common problem when abusing Photomatix as image sequencer, because Photomatix does not have a concept of temporal consistency. There are better ways to tone video in After Effects, working directly on the 32-bit HDR footage with the Atlas plugin and manual exposure adjustments based on roto masks. But then again, this is more labor-intensive than just running it through Photomatix...

Now that the RED Epic camera has an HDRx mode, you can expect options for toning HDR footage to open up soon. Which actually brings me to an announcement:

RED Los Angeles User Group meeting

If you're in the LA area, come to the RED User Group meeting on June 11, 9:00 am-noon!

You'll get to see the high-end Nucoda color grading system with full OpenEXR capabilities, the amazing Dolby reference monitor, and I will teach a class on the fundamentals of HDR imaging. The event is free, your only investment is a Saturday morning.

Full program and sign-up here.

Easter Egg #2: Group control points in Nik HDR Efex

2011-04-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is a mini-series of undocumented features.
In part 2 we will have a closer look at Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro.

Especially for grungy/artistic styles HDR Efex is fantastic, because of one killer feature: U-Point. It allows you to set control points for targeted adjustments in specific areas. Each point acts as a soft circular selection of similar colors. To see exactly what part of the image is being affected, turn on the mask view in the control point list.

The mask view is a pretty helpful insight into in the way Nik’s U-Point system works, indispensable for double-checking the effectiveness of a control point. We can change the size of the circular area, but unfortunately we can neither change the range of selected colors, nor the shape of the soft selection.

In practice, however, you will often want a larger, non-circular area affected. The trick is to

hold the ALT key,
click on a control point,
and drag to tear off a copy.

Clone a control point multiple times and
select them all with the SHIFT key held down.

Now they will all be in sync. You can change a slider on either one of the control points, and the setting will apply to the entire group.

But this is all public knowledge.
The easter egg is an undocumented feature, that will permanently link control points together:
After shift-selecting them, press Command + G (or Ctrl + G on PC) to form a group. Now only the first point will have the controller fishbone, the rest of the group is represented by tiny dots. Power users might find this mode helpful to nail down the selection to a complex shape or manage large amounts of control points.

Personally, I don’t really like it as much as the plain old Shift-selection, because these secondary dots are so easily overlooked. It's also pretty hard to remember the antidote:
To explode the group again, press Command + Shift + G (or Ctrl + Shift + G on PC).

Happy Easter!

Easter Egg #1: Unlock all file formats in HDR Express

2011-04-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

HDR Express is a refreshingly simple tonemapper, powered by the same high-quality engine like its big brothers HDR Expose and 32Float.

But it also shares their lame HDR merger, inferior to Photoshop CS5, Photomatix, and a dozen other alternatives out there. If you want better alignment, clean ghost reduction, or batch processing you're better off baking EXR files elsewhere. But wait - you can't load these EXR files in HDR Express, or can you?

Yes, you can! It's all in there: OpenEXR, Radiance HDR, 32-bit TIFF. You just have to unlock it.

The super-secret unlock code goes like this:

Start HDR Express while holding the Command key (CTRL on Windows).
Keep it held until the start screen comes up, then press the F key in addition.
HDR Express will now kindly offer to enable extended file formats, hit OK and voila!

From now on HDR Express will load and save all common HDR file formats. Nifty trick, eh? You'll only have to do it once, and it also works with the the 30-day demo.

By the way, this will also enable saving in standard HDR formats. Which is the reason why it's locked away in the first place: it may confuse HDR beginners (the main target audience of this program). However, if you know what you're doing, this is a great way to boost details in an HDR image, change white balance or saturation - without actually converting it down to 16 bits. For using it in this manner, I do recommend starting out with all settings on zero, though. Here's a handy preset for that.

Artifact-free Ghost Removal algorithms? Yes, please!

2011-04-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I pointed out some interesting white papers. Time to catch up.

Let's start out with the centerpiece of last blog post: Ghost Removal. How does that work under the hood, and why is Photoshop CS5 so much better at it?

As general rule of thumb: However tempting, you should not get into the habit to leave Ghost Removal checked “just in case”. That’s because this option will tell a software to use as little information from as few source images as possible. It will operate under the assumption that blending pixel values from different exposures is a bad thing. Instead it will try to establish a single exposure as the dominant source of information, and use the rest of the exposures as supplemental sources only. The result is more noise and less color fidelity, most noticeable in the extreme ends of the dynamic range. For that reason, ghost removal should only be used when an exorcism is really necessary.

But when we really have a ghost at hand, then the things that set good ghost removal apart from lousy ghost removal, are these:

How well can it detect a moving object?
How successful is it in masking the moving part out of all the other images?
How much information can it still use from the non-ghosted, clean areas?

Photoshop CS5 excels in these key areas, and that's why it delivers so well. If you care about the exact formulas used in Photoshop's algorithm, have a peek at the HDR tech bible / 2nd revision. But it's definitely inspired by this very readable paper:

Artifact-free High Dynamic Range Imaging

by Orazio Gallo and some folks from Nokia Research.

All examples in this post are taken from this paper. What they do is to cleverly isolate the treatment only to the ghosted areas, otherwise they just proceed with averaging as many good pixels as possible.

The funky colormap on the right shows how many source images actually contribute to the final HDR image, for each area. As you see, the algorithm gathers plenty of detail on the ground, but uses one image less for the spot where people walk through.

The result comes out pretty clean.

Gallo's paper explains how they do it. Read it!
Read it twice and very thoroughly if you're an HDR software developer, please!

PS: Hui, another one of those long blog posts. Tipped by David in the Forum. Thanks!
Guess it would be easier if I'd just post a pretty image every now and then, like everybody else does. But I promised you hard facts in the title of this blog, and so I'll just stay on course...

Aprils Updates: Nik HDR Efex, Oloneo & Gigapan

2011-04-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Another month, another flood of updates in the ever-spinning world of HDR imaging.

Nik HDR Efex Pro 1.2

HDR Efex is finally supposed to be rock stable on 32-bit operating systems. I can neither confirm nor deny, never actually witnessed any crashes, but that's because I'm in the warm embracement of 64-bit WinXP / Mac OS for a while. As a bonus, Nik also threw a new ghostbuster in the mix. Heard nice things about it, but I can hardly see a difference myself.

Here is a little deghosting test with a tough example:

Bottom line: Can't beat Photoshop CS5's Automatic Ghost Removal! But that's no wonder, since Adobe had this feature done by El Maestro Greg Ward himself. HDR Efex seems pretty much on par with Photomatix's automatic mode, but that's actually their lame option. Photomatix's user-guided Selective Deghosting is the good one, it comes in second-best overall. Although in this case it requires a lot of extra work, and still ends up clipping the blacks on the palm leaves. Or the whitecaps on the waves, that's your selective choice, basically.

Oloneo PhotoEngine 1.04

PhotoEngine goes into the next beta round, merrily inviting everybody. This is one of the most raved about new-school tonemappers, providing excellent speed, a fistful of great color tools, and an innovative ReLight mode. The new beta includes:

Look Presets, ranging from "Natural Soft" all the way to "I love Halos!"
Natural Mode, that doesn't seem to do anything (but sure sounds good)
Batch Processing, that allows in-between image reviews (awesome)
Panorama-safe mode, which I still have to test. (please please work!)
and several bug fixes.

Still, no Mac version in sight, and no word on the final pricing yet. For now, it's free and fully functional until June 1st. Grab it!

Gigapan Firmware Updater:

Our good friend Googlebot has snooped out the secret download page of the new Gigapan EPIC firmware. As mentioned last month, this update adds the highly anticipated HDR bracketing option. For some strange reason it's not linked anywhere on the Gigapan homepage, but when you google for "Gigapan Firmware Upgrade" it will happily take you there.

PS: Atlas, the freeware tone-mapping plugin for After Effects, now works on 64-bit Windows. Hurray for Open Source!

Lightsmith lets you craft your own studio light

2011-03-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Thomas Mansencal, restless author of sIBL-GUI, has landed another hit with Lightsmith. That's a new class of presets, that will unfold into individual HDR-mapped lights.

Lightsmith is a great companion to the classic, all-encompassing sIBL-environments. It enables you to art direct the lighting, even create a studio lighting from scratch, and still benefit from the richness in color and dynamic range that only HDR images can provide.

Watch this trailer, it's pretty spectacular:

If sIBL-GUI hasn't auto-updated itself already, get the new version here. And you can find the downloads to all the new Lightsmith-sets in the sIBL-Archive. Note, that this is still in the early stages, currently only supported in sIBL-GUI, and only for a limited list of renders:

More setup templates are to come. If you have a clever idea for a setup in one of the unsupported renderers, we would love to hear from you in the forum.

Special sIBL-set released for Artists Help Japan

2011-03-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

Ever since the launch of this site, almost 4 years ago, I'm giving away a new sIBL-set every month. Today, for the first time, it is not free.

For this special edition sIBL I want you to donate to the Artists Help Japan fund. Seriously. Do it now.

See, many of the most popular sIBL-sets in the Archive are from Tokyo, and while shooting these I fell deeply in love with this town. I find it a personal offense from mother nature to mess with the wonderful people there. So I picked out the nicest of the Tokyo panoramas for this special occasion. It will not appear in the sIBL Archive, and it will disappear from the web when the fundraiser is over.

Get the Tokyo Tower Special sIBL here.

By the way, this sIBL-set is not only useful for 3D artists. The fullsize panorama included in the set can also be used in 2D compositing. With After Effects and the awesome Trapcode Horizon plugin you can create virtual camera moves like this one:

Trapcode Horizon Test from Christian Bloch on Vimeo.