Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Adobe and others have long provided provided software solutions to parameters in simple digital photography. Now we are seeing hardware that might cause programmers to be repurposed!
We routinely correct limitations in perspective, focus, resolution, dynamic range, DR, and even change backgrounds. Often, each need has spawned specialized software.
The number of competing hardware solutions has increased: dynamic range, resolution, better color have been obvious problems to tackle. Fuji, with special array including luminance only sensels aimed to deal with DR and one gains a stop or so, great for wedding photographers especially.
Credit-Fuji The increased dynamic range from the Super CCD SR Pro double pixel technology (6.17 million S-pixels and 6.17 million R-pixels) became popular in the FinePix S3 Pro with portrait and wedding photographers. The new FinePix S5 Pro continues these advancements by coupling the proven Super CCD SR Pro with the companies new RP (Real Photo) Processor Pro for even more outstanding film-like results. The two technologies will be married together in a fully digital and durable metal alloy body frame.
Now, however, there's practical competition for Fuji's offerings. The first to appear above the horizon is from a well-known name. The electronics giant Panasonic now has shown a new sensor that takes several images and so resolves the shadows and highlights as never before.
Credit-Panasonic This image, from a Panasonic paper at the ISSCC computer-chip show, shows a sensor with a better ability to span bright and dark areas in a photo. It works by combining three shots into a single high-dynamic range image using a new Panasonic image sensor
Recently Adobe surprised us by their gross solution, a multicomponent lens with software to do this mapping in one camera. This must have been a massive investment.
"Why don't we have a 3D healing brush and, say, get rid of everything behind his head?", Says Story. What story?
Dave Story Showing the Multicomponent lens (Credit: Audioblog.fr)
Dave Story is none other than vice president of digital imaging product development at Adobe, showed off aspects of how the technology worked. First comes a lens which, like an insect's compound eye, transmits several smaller images to the camera. The result is a photograph with multiple sub-views, each taken from a slightly different vantage point at exactly the same time.
He didn't demonstrate that idea, but he showed another application of the 3D technology. "If we know the 3D nature of every pixel, what if we could make a focus brush? What if I had a three-dimensional brush where I could reach into the scene and adjust the focus?"
He then showed what he said this focus brush--along with a corresponding defocus brush--might look like. (To my jaundiced eye he could have just been copying from one focus layer to another, but creating the multiple focal planes from a single image is impressive.)
Surce
Surprise, surprise! Now a Stanford University group has announced a novel sensor which divided the chip surface into overlapping sets of sensels which in effect form cameras looking at the image scene from slightly different angles. With special software, all the component image structures and even textural components are resolved.
Credit-Keith Fife/Stanford University
Source
Such a chip, (named "The MA Imager"), unlike the Adobe solution, is an obvious advantage for mass production. Having each image component potentially separated into file layers, it's easy to automatically replace backgrounds or alter the sharpness or color of each layer with ease.
We are now seeing such a rapid rate of advances, that what we took for granted as needing significant Photoshop resources and our hard-wonexpertise, now will be simply part of mass produced digicams by HP and Kodak and the possessions of the kids and young that already rule the game market. Built-in capabilities will increasingly force software companies to push their own capabilities even further.
Asher
We routinely correct limitations in perspective, focus, resolution, dynamic range, DR, and even change backgrounds. Often, each need has spawned specialized software.
The number of competing hardware solutions has increased: dynamic range, resolution, better color have been obvious problems to tackle. Fuji, with special array including luminance only sensels aimed to deal with DR and one gains a stop or so, great for wedding photographers especially.
Credit-Fuji The increased dynamic range from the Super CCD SR Pro double pixel technology (6.17 million S-pixels and 6.17 million R-pixels) became popular in the FinePix S3 Pro with portrait and wedding photographers. The new FinePix S5 Pro continues these advancements by coupling the proven Super CCD SR Pro with the companies new RP (Real Photo) Processor Pro for even more outstanding film-like results. The two technologies will be married together in a fully digital and durable metal alloy body frame.
Now, however, there's practical competition for Fuji's offerings. The first to appear above the horizon is from a well-known name. The electronics giant Panasonic now has shown a new sensor that takes several images and so resolves the shadows and highlights as never before.
Credit-Panasonic This image, from a Panasonic paper at the ISSCC computer-chip show, shows a sensor with a better ability to span bright and dark areas in a photo. It works by combining three shots into a single high-dynamic range image using a new Panasonic image sensor
Recently Adobe surprised us by their gross solution, a multicomponent lens with software to do this mapping in one camera. This must have been a massive investment.
"Why don't we have a 3D healing brush and, say, get rid of everything behind his head?", Says Story. What story?
Dave Story Showing the Multicomponent lens (Credit: Audioblog.fr)
Dave Story is none other than vice president of digital imaging product development at Adobe, showed off aspects of how the technology worked. First comes a lens which, like an insect's compound eye, transmits several smaller images to the camera. The result is a photograph with multiple sub-views, each taken from a slightly different vantage point at exactly the same time.
He didn't demonstrate that idea, but he showed another application of the 3D technology. "If we know the 3D nature of every pixel, what if we could make a focus brush? What if I had a three-dimensional brush where I could reach into the scene and adjust the focus?"
He then showed what he said this focus brush--along with a corresponding defocus brush--might look like. (To my jaundiced eye he could have just been copying from one focus layer to another, but creating the multiple focal planes from a single image is impressive.)
Surce
Surprise, surprise! Now a Stanford University group has announced a novel sensor which divided the chip surface into overlapping sets of sensels which in effect form cameras looking at the image scene from slightly different angles. With special software, all the component image structures and even textural components are resolved.
Credit-Keith Fife/Stanford University
Source
Such a chip, (named "The MA Imager"), unlike the Adobe solution, is an obvious advantage for mass production. Having each image component potentially separated into file layers, it's easy to automatically replace backgrounds or alter the sharpness or color of each layer with ease.
We are now seeing such a rapid rate of advances, that what we took for granted as needing significant Photoshop resources and our hard-wonexpertise, now will be simply part of mass produced digicams by HP and Kodak and the possessions of the kids and young that already rule the game market. Built-in capabilities will increasingly force software companies to push their own capabilities even further.
Asher
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