Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: jrp on October 25, 2013, 05:53:44 pm

Title: Camera shake correction
Post by: jrp on October 25, 2013, 05:53:44 pm
At 12MPx camera shake was less of an issue than for today's 24MPx cameras, where 1/(3-4xfocal length) is often required to produce pin-sharp images.

Are there any viable solutions for eliminating the effects of hand shake blur?  I've tried Topaz Infocus, with mixed results (too easy to generate artefacts), Focus Magic (a bit heavy for my taste), DeBlurMyImage (can't recall why I could not get this to work), Nik Sharpener Pro (OK for small shakes, better than Focus Magic).  I have not tried Adobe CC.

I suspect not, but thought I'd ask what others do.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: LesPalenik on October 26, 2013, 02:01:43 am
I tried DeblurMyImage on a couple of images, but maybe the images had a combination of OOF and camera motion, so I didn't get good results.
I suspect that these programs will perform satisfactorily only on rare images (properly focused close-ups and a slight camera motion just in one direction).
 
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: David Sutton on October 26, 2013, 02:58:20 am
I've heard some good reports about Piccure but haven't got round to trying myself yet:
http://intelligentimagingsolutions.com/index.php/en/home-enus
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on October 26, 2013, 04:19:10 am
At 12MPx camera shake was less of an issue than for today's 24MPx cameras, where 1/(3-4xfocal length) is often required to produce pin-sharp images.

Hi,

Only if you enlarge the 24Mpx image more than the 12Mpx image. The absolute shake is no different (unless you shook more), you just use more pixels to quantize it.

Quote
Are there any viable solutions for eliminating the effects of hand shake blur?  I've tried Topaz Infocus, with mixed results (too easy to generate artefacts), Focus Magic (a bit heavy for my taste), DeBlurMyImage (can't recall why I could not get this to work), Nik Sharpener Pro (OK for small shakes, better than Focus Magic).  I have not tried Adobe CC.

Sometimes they work better than at other times. It also depends a lot on the ability to detect which type/form of shake was applied (linear/jerky/rotational or a combination of all of those). That detection will usually find different solutions for different parts of the image.

Defocus can also complicate the operation, so it usually only works for either shake, or defocus, or you'd have to apply multiple passes, which really requires floating point calculations to reduce noise issues and ringing artifacts.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: jrp on October 26, 2013, 06:11:28 am
I've heard some good reports about Piccure but haven't got round to trying myself yet:
http://intelligentimagingsolutions.com/index.php/en/home-enus

This http://sceeephotography.com/blog/2013/5/piccure-beta-review (http://sceeephotography.com/blog/2013/5/piccure-beta-review) illustrates the typical difficulties encountered when using such plug-ins.  I don't know whether CC does any better.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: PhotoEcosse on October 26, 2013, 08:53:30 am
At 12MPx camera shake was less of an issue than for today's 24MPx cameras, where 1/(3-4xfocal length) is often required to produce pin-sharp images.

I think this is maybe a wee bit of a misapprehension.

It only becomes an issue if you are using the additional megapixelage to try to produce what you call "pin sharp" images at larger degrees of magnification than was possible with the earlier sensor.

Like for like, there is no added problem arising from 24Mp (or, indeed, the 36Mp of my D800 and D800E).
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: Benny Profane on October 28, 2013, 12:44:40 pm
Best rule of thumb is that it's much easier to repair noise than camera shake. Up the ISO so that you can shoot at a higher shutter speed.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: sniper on October 28, 2013, 12:59:56 pm
I've heard some good reports about Piccure but haven't got round to trying myself yet:
http://intelligentimagingsolutions.com/index.php/en/home-enus
It worked reasonably well on the two pics I tried it on (slight OOF) better than the results I got with focus magic.  Handy to have around IMHO.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: Steffen_GE on November 09, 2013, 04:52:18 pm
I would say that Adobe Photoshop CC's and piccure are state of the art in terms of camera shake reduction. There are some other solutions are around - but most (or all) of them require you to MANUALLY figure out the camera movement. Which is iterative and can be tedious. There is a review on Rangefinder about piccure (latest issue: http://digitalmag.rangefinderonline.com/rangefinder)

However, these technologies may not always be perfect... Camera shake reduction works for camera shake reduction - not out of focus or lens aberration. So you in some cases the blur is just not because of the shake... Micro shake reduction works pretty decent for me in piccure... Success rate is about 50-60% fully automatic and about 80% with SmartSpot. Adobe Photoshop CC is quite comparable - but I don't like the interface that much.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: jrp on November 09, 2013, 06:25:34 pm
Thanks for the link and your experiences.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: PeterAit on November 10, 2013, 08:43:21 am
At 12MPx camera shake was less of an issue than for today's 24MPx cameras, where 1/(3-4xfocal length) is often required to produce pin-sharp images.

Are there any viable solutions for eliminating the effects of hand shake blur?  I've tried Topaz Infocus, with mixed results (too easy to generate artefacts), Focus Magic (a bit heavy for my taste), DeBlurMyImage (can't recall why I could not get this to work), Nik Sharpener Pro (OK for small shakes, better than Focus Magic).  I have not tried Adobe CC.

I suspect not, but thought I'd ask what others do.

I am puzzled that you find Focus Magic to be heavy. It has settings that you can preview before applying, and in my experience you can adjust to anywhere from an imperceptible effect all the way to truly weird. You might try experimenting with the angle setting and seeing how that helps.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: wmchauncey on November 10, 2013, 10:28:58 am
As an FYI thingy, I use PS CC and have found their "anti-shake sharpening tool" somewhat less than stellar.     ;)
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: jrp on November 10, 2013, 11:15:14 am
I am puzzled that you find Focus Magic to be heavy. It has settings that you can preview before applying, and in my experience you can adjust to anywhere from an imperceptible effect all the way to truly weird. You might try experimenting with the angle setting and seeing how that helps.

I will give it another go.  I am trying Piccure and find that it over accentuates blacks, which is what I remember seeing with focus magic. In the case of Piccure it even manages to create black halos in some areas.

I suspect that these filters are optimized for car number plates and the like, where there is contrasty, sharp detail in the original that they seek to recover. Anything organic seems to be too hard to do with current technology.  Perhaps the best that can be done is to apply the likes of Nik Sharpener to give an impression of sharpness in such cases, rather than hoping to get the real thing back.

Another issue is the accentuating of noise. I am experimenting with DXO 9's PRIME, which is vg, before feeding these anti-shakers. It seems to give better results.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: artobest on November 18, 2013, 08:45:48 am
If the blacks are overemphasised (I find that as well) you can sharpen on a layer and apply a custom split blend at the shadow end.
Title: Re: Camera shake correction
Post by: hjulenissen on November 18, 2013, 09:39:31 am
In this day of (presumably) cheap and (hopefully) accurate sensors in every smartphone, I am kind of surprised that no camera manufacturer include the hw/sw to log camera movement during an exposure. If sub pixel camera shift/rotation along the image plane was known, it should be a lot easier to do deconvolution/super-resolution (even in-camera). Lens/sensor stabilisation might have more potential, but this comes at significant hardware cost, and there are still excellent lenses out there without IS.

-h