CS V9

jjs wrote:

Holy Cow. There is a lot more new in CS 9 than I thought. HDR, for example, which I’ve been using as a separate program. Then there is lens correction which one can hope is a good as the standalone, the data-driven variables apparently from IR, and warping. I’ll be in this program all day today.

Have fun jjs, you are like a child at Christmas 🙂

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 08:18:20 -0500, "jjs" wrote:

Holy Cow. There is a lot more new in CS 9 than I thought. HDR, for example, which I’ve been using as a separate program. Then there is lens correction which one can hope is a good as the standalone, the data-driven variables apparently from IR, and warping. I’ll be in this program all day today.

I read one of the first review of it a couple of weeks ago and it has a helluva a lot of useful stuff in it. I’ll upgrade when I see what the bugs are. 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

"Hecate" wrote in message

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 08:18:20 -0500, "jjs" wrote:
[…]
I read one of the first review of it a couple of weeks ago and it has a helluva a lot of useful stuff in it. I’ll upgrade when I see what the bugs are. 😉

I used it for six straight hours today, and once with an RGB file of 1.24G. (psb mode). No problem. It loads fast, runs fast. Tomorrow afternoon I will look into the new scripting manager features.

This day of Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:14:48 -0500, "jjs" saw fit to scribe:

"Hecate" wrote in message

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 08:18:20 -0500, "jjs" wrote:
[…]
I read one of the first review of it a couple of weeks ago and it has a helluva a lot of useful stuff in it. I’ll upgrade when I see what the bugs are. 😉

I used it for six straight hours today, and once with an RGB file of 1.24G. (psb mode). No problem. It loads fast, runs fast

Out of curiosity do you mean ‘as fast’ or ‘faster’ than the older version? Thanks.

—
~david-haley

(no unmunging necessary)
—————————

"David Haley" wrote in message

This day of Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:14:48 -0500, "jjs" saw fit to

Out of curiosity do you mean ‘as fast’ or ‘faster’ than the older version?

Can’t tell, really because V8 (CS) took friggin forever to load on my computer. Something was just plain wrong with my system. When editing
1.24Gig file under V9, the first save of that huge file to the ‘slow’ format
took quite some time, but subsequent, iterative saves were snappy. So far I am a happy puppy. When my new grant comes in after June 1 I’ll be going for the full licensed upgrade – for certain. (Jeeze, that means I have to revert to V8 for a while. Damn.)

what is HDR? please

"jjs" wrote in message

Holy Cow. There is a lot more new in CS 9 than I thought. HDR, for example, which I’ve been using as a separate program. Then there is lens correction which one can hope is a good as the standalone, the data-driven variables apparently from IR, and warping. I’ll be in this program all day today.

"KatWoman" wrote in message

what is HDR? please

High Dynamic Range. It is a technique in which you take several photographs of a subject at varying exposures to get the shadows in one, then middle tones in the next, high tones in the next. More than three exposures are typical. Then using an HDR algorithm you can merge the images. The range shown in the images is beyond film, single-digital imaging and even the human eye. Quite interesting.

I’ve been using this: http://www.ict.usc.edu/graphics/HDRShop/, and you might like to explore places like this: http://www.debevec.org/Research/HDR/

You don’t really need Photoshop to do it, but it is very interesting how CS put it all together in a very simple interface.

The one thing I like is that you can now drag your image windows out of the Photoshop aplication window and over to the second monitor without having to extend the Photoshop application window.

thanks for informing me. very interesting but not something I would likely use much.

"jjs" wrote in message

"KatWoman" wrote in message

what is HDR? please

High Dynamic Range. It is a technique in which you take several photographs of a subject at varying exposures to get the shadows in one, then middle tones in the next, high tones in the next. More than three exposures are typical. Then using an HDR algorithm you can merge the images. The range shown in the images is beyond film, single-digital imaging and even the human eye. Quite interesting.

I’ve been using this: http://www.ict.usc.edu/graphics/HDRShop/, and you might like to explore places like this:
http://www.debevec.org/Research/HDR/

You don’t really need Photoshop to do it, but it is very interesting how CS put it all together in a very simple interface.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 20:59:45 -0500, "jjs"
wrote:

I’ve been using this: http://www.ict.usc.edu/graphics/HDRShop/, and you might like to explore places like this: http://www.debevec.org/Research/HDR/

As someone who’s been trying to squeeze out as much dynamic range as possible out of my scanner by twin scanning, this is very interesting.

Thinking laterally, this may be a way to "archive dynamic range" in a single file, rather than saving low and high exposures as separate files.

But there’s a catch. I use 16-bit files which I fed to HDRShop and it’s perfectly happy with them.

However, trying to recover these component files is a problem (in order to establish the amount of "lossiness", if any). The only way to save non-HDR files is as LDR i.e. 8-bit. My version of PS doesn’t speak floating point TIFF or any of the other HDR variants so the question is:

Any idea how to recover individual, component, 16-bit files?

I guess, I could export as HDR raw and then write a converter, but before I do that…

You don’t really need Photoshop to do it, but it is very interesting how CS put it all together in a very simple interface.

I only have version 6 here. What does CS do differently?

And thanks for sharing an interesting link!!

Don.

"Don" wrote in message

But there’s a catch. I use 16-bit files which I fed to HDRShop and it’s perfectly happy with them.

Photoshop V9 does 16-bit for HDR. You might consider downloading the trial verson.

jjs wrote:

"Don" wrote in message

But there’s a catch. I use 16-bit files which I fed to HDRShop and it’s perfectly happy with them.

Photoshop V9 does 16-bit for HDR. You might consider downloading the trial verson.

If you watch carefully, you will notice that Photoshop CS2 does *not* use 16 bits images to create a HDR image. Yes, it can *open* 16 bits images for this purpose, but you will see that those images are converted to 8 bits before the HDR file is constructed.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 11:43:28 +0200, (Johan W.
Elzenga) wrote:

jjs wrote:

"Don" wrote in message

But there’s a catch. I use 16-bit files which I fed to HDRShop and it’s perfectly happy with them.

Photoshop V9 does 16-bit for HDR. You might consider downloading the trial verson.

If you watch carefully, you will notice that Photoshop CS2 does *not* use 16 bits images to create a HDR image. Yes, it can *open* 16 bits images for this purpose, but you will see that those images are converted to 8 bits before the HDR file is constructed.

Ah, that’s interesting! I wonder if "HDR Shop" does the same? Time for some testing…

Strictly speaking, it’s not such a big deal when the images are created. All it means is that more exposures are needed to compensate for each 8-bit image’s narrower dynamic range band it covers.

But it’s a problem when getting the images out. I’d still like 16-bit output because it has sufficient dynamic range. Namely, I’ve been doing twin scans and combining them manually (including "histogram sync" for a clean, seamless join without using Gaussian blur, feather or other kludges) but it’s a very time consuming process.

BTW, to save me downloading the V9 trial version, in a few words, what support does it have for HDR? Specifically, does it output in 16-bit? Also, is the output a "DR window" or is the HDR dynamic range compressed into desired output DR?

Don.

Don wrote:

BTW, to save me downloading the V9 trial version, in a few words, what support does it have for HDR? Specifically, does it output in 16-bit? Also, is the output a "DR window" or is the HDR dynamic range compressed into desired output DR?

The HDR image is 32 bits/color. At that time you have very few possibilities. You can change the exposure, but that’s about it. The trick is that when you choose to convert back to 16 bits (or 8 bits), you get a special conversion window where you have quite a few choices how you want to convert.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 22:01:49 +0200, (Johan W.
Elzenga) wrote:

Don wrote:

BTW, to save me downloading the V9 trial version, in a few words, what support does it have for HDR? Specifically, does it output in 16-bit? Also, is the output a "DR window" or is the HDR dynamic range compressed into desired output DR?

The HDR image is 32 bits/color. At that time you have very few possibilities. You can change the exposure, but that’s about it. The trick is that when you choose to convert back to 16 bits (or 8 bits), you get a special conversion window where you have quite a few choices how you want to convert.

Thanks Johan!

I’ve since done some more googling on "Tone Mapping" which is the process of converting an HDR image to a lower bit count. Apparently, this is all still very new and there are a number of different algorithms still vying for dominance. So, I’ll probably end up just archiving my scans in HDR format.

I did find a few programs to do tone mapping but they all seem to run on Linux. Time to get that old RedHat installation out… ;o)

Don.

Don wrote:

I’ve since done some more googling on "Tone Mapping" which is the process of converting an HDR image to a lower bit count. Apparently, this is all still very new and there are a number of different algorithms still vying for dominance. So, I’ll probably end up just archiving my scans in HDR format.

I did find a few programs to do tone mapping but they all seem to run on Linux. Time to get that old RedHat installation out… ;o)

There is one program for the Macintosh that I know; it’s called PhotoMatix. I heard people talk about ‘HDRShop’. Isn’t that for Windows?

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

On Sun, 1 May 2005 11:10:01 +0200, (Johan W.
Elzenga) wrote:

Don wrote:

I’ve since done some more googling on "Tone Mapping" which is the process of converting an HDR image to a lower bit count. Apparently, this is all still very new and there are a number of different algorithms still vying for dominance. So, I’ll probably end up just archiving my scans in HDR format.

I did find a few programs to do tone mapping but they all seem to run on Linux. Time to get that old RedHat installation out… ;o)

There is one program for the Macintosh that I know; it’s called PhotoMatix. I heard people talk about ‘HDRShop’. Isn’t that for Windows?

Yes, HDRShop is how I got into this, but it only exports to 8-bit. There is a 3rd party tone mapping plug-in, but it doesn’t export to TIF only to pfm. BTW, there is a Windows version of PhotoMatix but I find HDRShop far superiour.

Anyway, I’ll probably just write something myself. HDRShop can export files as RAW. Theoretically, all I have to do is convert each 32-bit floating point value into a 16-bit integer. Either compressing the whole range into 16-bits or by scaling and providing a 16-bit "window" which can be moved around the HDR image’s full dynamic range.

Well, that’s the theory… ;o) But I’m sure there is a catch or two down the road once I learn more about all this.

Don.