Piccure+ lens correction software

Found a useful program you'd like to share with others? Commercial announcements are fine, but please keep it brief.
artmar
Posts: 809
Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:34 pm

Postby artmar » Fri Apr 17, 2015 3:16 pm

Martin,

I agree that for correcting lens blur there's not much difference between PC+ and FM. I haven't used PC+ for motion blur, and probably won't, because I don't tend to photograph moving objects, animate or inanimate. It's not something I have much of an eye for. I also agree that Topaz InFocus is a stinker of a program. Unusual for Topaz -- it seems to have no effect or makes things worse. Well, we'll have to move on to another piece of software to long for.... I've heard of one called "Curvemeister". Funny name...not sure. :-)

Have a great weekend.

Art

Ganna
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Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 5:31 am
Location: Estcourt South Africa

Postby Ganna » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:38 am

Art, the ice-test for PC+ would be to try and stop the movement in that B&W image of yours in Flickr, the moving grass :-o
Been playing a bit more; I'm not very patient and doing it first in Lightroom affects the EXIF data, so Lr does not recognize settings, lens, camera etc.
Seems that I have to do my Lr editing first, then run PC+ and in some cases FM on top of that. One fact of life, when an image is not good, you can only resurrect it to "less bad" We start seeing autumn (Fall?) colours in SA and felt the first bit of the coming winter this morning (almost like UK summer)

artmar
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Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:34 pm

Postby artmar » Sat Apr 18, 2015 6:54 am

Martin,

Many thanks for your idea to apply PC+ to Marsh Grass in the Wind. The final result (after several subsequent transformations -- I can't blame this entirely on PC+) is attached. I think of it now as Oxidized Wall, something you might notice while just walking around. (You should be careful what you suggest!)

Ah, so you're going to find a way to combine LR, PC+, and FM too. I like that train of thought. Interesting that you mention images that are not good to begin with. I've been going through my photos looking specifically for such images. Sometimes they can spur you on to do something you never thought of before. Sometimes not :-)

I forgot that we're in retrograde (if that's the word) season zones. We're coming into summer now. And you're right -- if it goes above 77 degrees here it's a heat-wave. No kidding!

Best,
Art

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artmar
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Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:34 pm

Postby artmar » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:01 am

Martin,
I responded to your post, but my response seems to have disappeared. Are you seeing anything by any chance?

Art

gregmeister_admin
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Postby gregmeister_admin » Mon Apr 20, 2015 8:18 am

Test note to see if the forum is acting wrong.

Greg
Seeing is more than meets the eye.

Greg Groess
Curvemeister Instructor

Ganna
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Location: Estcourt South Africa

Postby Ganna » Mon Apr 20, 2015 8:34 am

Greg, I can"t turn to page 2.
Regards
Martin

julie
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Location: tasmania

Postby julie » Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:09 am

Hi
I've been quietly following this thread while I have been playing with my camera.
So I have a question. Why do you sharpen at the beginning of your workflow?
I think that's what I am reading, but maybe not?

Secondly and more importantly your image is wonderful Art.
Is it the whole image or a crop?
I love the colours and the sense that something will begin to make sense (it doesn't of course) but it keeps your attention focused for a very long time.
Its beautiful

Its back to the basics for me - so far I have managed to get along ok without a really strong understanding of the basics.
I know its getting in the way now.
So a new camera seems like a good place to make a new start.

Julie

artmar
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Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:34 pm

Postby artmar » Tue Apr 21, 2015 5:08 am

Hi Julie,

I think of Piccure+ as part of "pre-sharpening" in which you undo or correct the effects of various sources of blurring such as the anti-aliasing or low-pass filter (which the Nikon d7200 doesn't have, but it is subject to other artifacts, including), lens aberrations, and other blurring resulting from, e.g., shutter actuation, mirror flipping, and hand movement. Although it can also be used as "output sharpening", which is sharpening at the end of your workflow for the particular medium in which the image will be displayed, such as monitor or print, and if print, the particular size. (I'm sure that Greg, Martin, and Boyd will have their opinions about this, so I'll be interested in what they have to say.) As I see it, Piccure+ turns my $250 Canon kit lens into a $5000 Leica lens (perhaps an exaggeration, but less than you might think). It's recommended that Piccure+ should be used at the beginning of the workflow because in that case it's analyzing image data closer to what came out of the camera (after Raw conversion) than would be case after processing, which may change of efface some of the data it uses to compute corrections, although I've had good results with it on already completed images (with sharpening set to 0, so there's only lens correction).

Thanks for your comments about my image. Much appreciated. This version is not a crop. There's another version of it which is cropped and in which the colors are intensified which has quite a different feel I think:

http://some-images.smugmug.com/England/i-6PBmffR/A

Your comments raise some interesting issues about how one makes sense of or understands abstract images. I've been thinking about how to formulate some responses -- still working on it. (Although I must say that how we make sense of even "realistic" images is not entirely clear)

I'm inspired by, among others, Turner's late work. Considering that he painted before 1850, I'd say he was quite a bit ahead of his time; his colleagues said -- he's mad! One of my favorites is Sun Setting over a Lake.

http://www.artwallpaper.eu/Paintings/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/17/8031/Joseph-Mallord-William-Turner-Paintings-Sun-Setting-over-a-Lake-1840.jpg

I'm looking forward to hearing about how you're coming along with your new camera on Friday (which is also Saturday, hmmm). Have you thought about starting a new topic with questions you might have, or about your experiences learning about the camera? I'm sure we'd all benefit. It doesn't take long before a seemingly "simple" question gets into deep territory; for example, someone asked on DPReview, does setting the color space in the camera to sRGB or Adobe RGB affect Raw files? The answer -- no it doesn't, those settings are only for JPEGS, the color space for Raw files is determined by the user after Raw conversion. This was followed by someone linking, in another site, to an intense discussion of whether Raw images are in a color space, and whether the sensor has a color space, which I certainly had never thought about or even known was something to think about.

Best,
Art


julie
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Location: tasmania

Postby julie » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:03 am

I have always loved Turners paintings 'impressionist paintings'.
The light and colour are fascinating for me, especially living in a country with a such harsh light.

I will definitely look more at PC + as I'm never going to own a $5000 dollar lens.

I like the cropped version as well. Somehow it gains a lot of depth. It almost looks like something is emerging from a landscape I don't recognise. Once again it holds my attention while I try to make sense of it. Some abstract art is obviously just that -abstract. But some is evocative in a way that I am unable to articulate. For me anyway.

Julie

Ganna
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Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 5:31 am
Location: Estcourt South Africa

Postby Ganna » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:30 am

Julie and Art, if I may lay a little egg here, There's a difference between sharpening and what pc+ and/or Focus Magic does. Sharpening just work on adjacent light and dark pixels to fool our eyes... looking sharper. It does not move pixels like these programs. I learned this new english word deconvulution which means to un-blur (I think). So I "focus" my image right in the beginning and last step is still sharpening.
Art, I really am unfamiliar with abstract images but see a gap to learn.
Wonderful to have a page 2 here, thanks to Greg and Mike


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