piccure+ releases update

[Rajan Parrikar]

FYI: major enhancements are claimed.

http://relaunch.piccureplus.com/update-version-3/

[Mark D Segal]

Does this application do anything better than I can get from Lightroom?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Does this application do anything better than I can get from Lightroom?

Hi Mark,

In principle, all Deconvolution based sharpening applications at least have the potential to do better than Lightroom's implementation (which is pretty mediocre, e.g. in comparison with an old time favorite FocusMagic).

The difference with Piccure is that Piccure is supposed to apply spatially variant restoration of image detail, IOW it treats corners differently compared to the image center, in function of the local amount of blur caused by various aberrations and defocus.

Unfortunately, previous versions also created some dark halo artifacts and it was relatively slow. The latter issue has apparently been addressed (according to their announcement) with the new Version 3. Whether the restoration quality has improved remains to be seen.

At least the upgrade seems to be free for previous owners of a license, which is better than their normal upgrade policy.

Cheers,
Bart

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks for those useful perspectives "in principle" Bart. Now, the key thing I would be interested in hearing about is actual comparative results from user experience.

[picc_pl]

At least the upgrade seems to be free for previous owners of a license, which is better than their normal upgrade policy.

For the past 18 months, all updates were for free. Those were not minor updates, but they were rather significant. It was two major releases: 6 months after v2.0 came out with a 50% speedup and 18 months after v2.0 came out with about 66% speedup for Quality+ and 10-30% for other settings in v3.0. In addition to a refined user interface, Retina support was added and DxO and CaptureOne are now supported. We offered a 75% discount to users of version 1 at the time of the 2.0 release. In software, all costs are incurred months/years prior to a release and accumulate to a "big negative cumulated cashflow". So we essentially did work for free for the past 18 months - because we believe our customers deserved it. You can like the software or not - it's your personal choice. But those "free lifetime update policies" of many other software vendors often turn out to be very mediocre improvements at best. We don't promise these free lifetime updates, we are expensive - but we offer fast support and really develop the software further. Version 3.0 is a lot  better than version 2.0 (at least in our opinion and the customer feedback so far). I don't think there was any update to the software you mentioned in the past 2 years? So at least to that solution we should compare favorably.

As whether one may need a solution like piccure+ ("who needs software if only good glass and technique matter") - we do believe adaptive deconvolution is the way to go (that's why we keep investing). Consider that:

• Most cameras have optical low pass filters deliberately blurring the image irrespective of the lens used
• Most lenses suffer from back-/front-focusing
• There is considerable copy-to-copy variation in lenses
• Fast lenses easily lose 20+% towards the edges at open aperture - coma, spherical aberration and other aberrations are hard to correct with unsharp masking

So you can easily end up with only 50% of "the sharpness you paid for". We hope you enjoy the free update - we put a lot of effort into it. And don't hesitate to shoot us an email if you run into problems: support@piccure.zendesk.com. Please don't forget to update your graphic card drivers (nvidia and on-board) if you run into any problems with the GPU acceleration (and restart the system).

@Mark: there are actually many comparisons on many forums and a lot of bloggers wrote about it (just search). To cut a long story short: if you get good results with unsharp masking and you are happy with it - piccure+ probably won't help you much. If you still think "the image lacks some sharpness - particularly towards the edges" you may give it a try. It complements other software solutions rather than replacing them - because it does something unique. Personally I would recommend anybody to try it with his own images, because the improvements depend a lot on your camera/lens combination and your overall photography preferences. If you do a lot in the studio at f5.6 or if you shoot sports images with 17 MP in JPG or band gigs at ISO 25000 - piccure+ may not be your top choice... If you shoot full frame (or above 20 MP RAW) and fast apertures and know what OLPF, coma and diffraction mean - there could be a chance you may find it useful. It's not made for "kit equipment" - but rather the more expensive one. A lot of medium format photographers use it as well...

Best,
Lui
Co-Founder

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Thanks for those useful perspectives "in principle" Bart. Now, the key thing I would be interested in hearing about is actual comparative results from user experience.

Mark, the "in principle" better performance depends on the implementation. LR/ACR's implementation is quick and dirty and produces lots of artifacts when pushed a bit (by shifting 'Detail' closer to maximum).

Almost all decent implementations do better, RawTherapee is free and can apply Deconvolution also on TIFFs, not only on Raws, FocusMagic is very solid, Topas InFocus is very effective (but easy to over-do, i.e. user dependent), Topaz Detail not only offers a Deconvolution "Deblur" control but offers lots of additional detail controls. Franzis Sharpen Projects also does a good job, but I don't like it's Raw conversions. Just my 2 cents.

It would of course be preferable to have such quality in a simpler workflow, not having to use external programs.

Cheers,
Bart

[Mark D Segal]

Thank you both. If sharpening is the key incremental benefit I probably don't need this application, because I obtain very sharp photos from my Sony a6300+Zeiss lenses with moderate capture and output sharpening in LR. Some form of deconvolution is helpful to rescue detail when I mis-focus (i.e. pilot error), but I have never been satisfied with the ultimate quality (from a photographic perspective) of those rescue attempts (using demo versions of such software) and therefore usually trash photos that are out of focus when they should be in focus. Now that too may be pilot error - maybe I need to spend more time focusing on deconvolution technique (pun intended); but that will be for another day :-)

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Thank you both. If sharpening is the key incremental benefit I probably don't need this application, because I obtain very sharp photos from my Sony a6300+Zeiss lenses with moderate capture and output sharpening in LR.

Hi Mark,

The default image capture quality of a good lens, and by using proper technique (e.g. tripod for stationary subjects), produces an image with roughly a Gaussian blur of 0.7 (or worse) after demosaicing.

Only deconvolution can restore the original scene resolution (before lens aberration, diffraction, filterstack with or without OLPF, Bayer CFA, photosite aperture shape, all add some blur), and at the same time as removing micro contrast blur, it removes the "veil of drabness" by lifting the entire MTF response, it's as if you've upgraded the existing lens to a more expensive model. Good implementations improve the signal quality more than the noise, i.e. produce a better S/N ratio, which is more robust to subsequent postprocessing.

In extreme cases it may be able to recover seemingly lost detail, but that usually requires moderate to low ISO captures to start with.

Some form of deconvolution is helpful to rescue detail when I mis-focus (i.e. pilot error), but I have never been satisfied with the ultimate quality (from a photographic perspective) of those rescue attempts (using demo versions of such software) and therefore usually trash photos that are out of focus when they should be in focus.

Mis-focus can cause 2 issues. First it poses a challenge for the deconvolution algorithm to separate amplification-/read- and demosaicing noise from the intended signal which is also noisy (photon shot noise). The defocus blur may have reduced the signal's micro-contrast to the level of the combined noise floor itself. Second, there may be reasonably focused parts of the image that get over-processed if the locally non-existing blur of more blurry parts of the image is removed. Masking or adaptive deconvolution may be able to solve the latter issue.

Cheers,
Bart

[bjanes]

Thank you both. If sharpening is the key incremental benefit I probably don't need this application, because I obtain very sharp photos from my Sony a6300+Zeiss lenses with moderate capture and output sharpening in LR. Some form of deconvolution is helpful to rescue detail when I mis-focus (i.e. pilot error), but I have never been satisfied with the ultimate quality (from a photographic perspective) of those rescue attempts (using demo versions of such software) and therefore usually trash photos that are out of focus when they should be in focus. Now that too may be pilot error - maybe I need to spend more time focusing on deconvolution technique (pun intended); but that will be for another day :-)

Mark,

I too am not impressed with the ability of deconvolution to restore out of focus images. That approach is best limited to when one can not retake the image and for forensic work such as being able to read license plate numbers despite the deconvolution artifact.

Even with the best lenses, sharpening is necessary to reduce the blur incurred during demosaicing of the raw file. With my Nikon D800e and Zeiss 135 Apo Sonnar, I can get very sharp images at f/4 with ACR/LR sharpening, but Focus Magic does a better job and is worth while with one's best images, especially when one must stop down to f/16 or more for depth of field. Even Zeiss lenses are susceptible to diffraction.

Does your A6300 have a low pass (blur) filter? If so, I would expect deconvolution to be superior to LR/ACR.

Regards,

Bill

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Bill,

It probably does have an AA filter, being 24 MP on an APS-C sensor; but technology is everything and from what I can see on some 13*19s I printed last night in my 4900 on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, sharpened in LR, you wouldn't know it. The detail is all one wants or needs. Doubtless I could go to 17*25 (as I did on another photo last week) and it would be just fine. My main interest is what the prints look like viewed in normal viewing conditions, and my optometrist "certified" my vision as 20/20 the other day :-).

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Mark,

The default image capture quality of a good lens, and by using proper technique (e.g. tripod for stationary subjects), produces an image with roughly a Gaussian blur of 0.7 (or worse) after demosaicing.

Only deconvolution can restore the original scene resolution (before lens aberration, diffraction, filterstack with or without OLPF, Bayer CFA, photosite aperture shape, all add some blur), and at the same time as removing micro contrast blur, it removes the "veil of drabness" by lifting the entire MTF response, it's as if you've upgraded the existing lens to a more expensive model. Good implementations improve the signal quality more than the noise, i.e. produce a better S/N ratio, which is more robust to subsequent postprocessing.

In extreme cases it may be able to recover seemingly lost detail, but that usually requires moderate to low ISO captures to start with.

Mis-focus can cause 2 issues. First it poses a challenge for the deconvolution algorithm to separate amplification-/read- and demosaicing noise from the intended signal which is also noisy (photon shot noise). The defocus blur may have reduced the signal's micro-contrast to the level of the combined noise floor itself. Second, there may be reasonably focused parts of the image that get over-processed if the locally non-existing blur of more blurry parts of the image is removed. Masking or adaptive deconvolution may be able to solve the latter issue.

Cheers,
Bart

Thanks for those insights Bart.

Mark

[stormyboy]

Just thought I'd post this information.  To get the second speed boost from Piccure+ version 3 your Nvidia graphics board needs to have a CUDA "Compute Capability" of at least 3.0.  My current board Nvidia Gtx 580 comes in at a 2.0, but the Piccure+ version 3 still runs faster than Piccure+ version 2 did. 

I just purchased a new graphics card so will see if that really kicks up the speed of Piccure + version 3, or back to Best Buy it goes.

Here's a list of Nvidia boards and their compute capability:

Tom

https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

[Paul2660]

Just a few words. Yes the upgrade is very dependent on Nvidia card and levels.

On my GTX970 the results are impressive cutting down the processing by 8/10ths at least. On my GTX960 open CL fails but even without the processing time is cut in half.  The GTX960 seems to have a lot of issues with various software and it's going to be replaced soon.

Does Piccure +, work that is subjective to the user but I love the results and have pretty much replaced Focus Magic with Piccure + for all my cameras especially Fuji and Phase One. 

Paul C

[earlybird]

I test drove the previous version of Piccure+ and the new improvements seem like a good thing. I liked the effect of Piccure+ on some stuff but on some stuff the dark edge synthesis was a no go.

Never the less, I would already own a license to Piccure+, and use it when it showed its strengths, but $79 for only one install caused me to choose not to make a purchase. I need two installs but will not pay the $119 for that luxury. I hope that someday Piccure will allow for a second install and only cost $79.

The idea that the relatively high cost reflects the fact that it has received a lot of upgrades seems valid until I consider that the history has seemed, to me, to have started as an unusable curiosity, then it was maybe good or maybe unusable, and now it may be better than that. It seems like it may just now be evolving to where it should have been at the onset.

I am going to wait to see if Piccure wants to expand its customer base by offering $79 for two installs.

[Mark D Segal]

Two vague sentences on quality and all the rest on commercial conditions. It could be helpful if you would expand and enhance your views of the application's strengths and weaknesses, say compared with Lightroom, in respect of image quality. That would provide a more useful context for evaluating the commercial issues.

[earlybird]

Spending a few minutes with the free trial demo will explain more than I will.

[Mark D Segal]

Spending a few minutes with the free trial demo will explain more than I will.

In my case I would need a lot more than a few minutes because I tend to dig into stuff, but thanks for the advice - not that I hadn't thought of that, but I was hoping to hear more from others who have.

[picc_pl]

Never the less, I would already own a license to Piccure+, and use it when it showed its strengths, but $79 for only one install caused me to choose not to make a purchase. I need two installs but will not pay the $119 for that luxury. I hope that someday Piccure will allow for a second install and only cost $79.

The idea that the relatively high cost reflects the fact that it has received a lot of upgrades seems valid until I consider that the history has seemed, to me, to have started as an unusable curiosity, then it was maybe good or maybe unusable, and now it may be better than that. It seems like it may just now be evolving to where it should have been at the onset.

The people working on piccure+ all have PhDs in physics, computer science and are among the scientific leaders in the field of blind image deconvolution. In order to make something like piccure+ available, you need a strong team with experience in programming GPUs, multi-core processors, memory management, doing cross-platform software development and know all the respective APIs (piccure+ can be integrated in more programs than any other solution). The "large" players in the market have tried for years to aggressively hire away our key developers. The technology is used in much much more expensive camera systems in modified ways... For a rational business person it would make very little sense to research, develop and market such a technology over several years and subsequently sell it in the niche market of DSLRs (the market with the steepest sales decline high-tech). But the people behind piccure+ like photography and they wanted to develop something that "they could show their family" instead of simply licensing it away... In addition to that, in software you invest everything upfront - and don't know whether you will ever make a dollar of revenue, particularly with a new technology. There is a big risk involved as well - and most academics/scientists would rather work for a lot of money in a large software company than be faced with this amount of risk and uncertainty...

In the end you need to see the "119.99 USD benefit" for yourself. However, since most of our customers spend several thousands USD on their equipment they are willing to pay that price for the "package" they get. But not everyone sees that benefit and we are ok with that choice.

I could expand on how we differ from a technological perspective - but I think the bottom line is simply: our solution may make your images sharper than other solutions in the market - and recover "several thousand dollars of sharpness" you lost due to manufacturing variation and design choices. It's no magic bullet for everyone, but can help many people.
Have a nice weekend.
Best,
Lui

[Damon Lynch]

Mark et. al., attached is a sample. Zero sharpening on the left, sharpened on the right using the parameters as set. The image is a 1D X file using an 11-24mm @ 11m, f/7.1, ISO 2500, with shadows lifted a bit.  It's at 100% view, of course.

(In this image, if denoise is set to off, the noise in the shadows noticeably increases, so I turned it on.)

The sharpened image is clearly much sharper, but suffers from a fatal flaw - the high contrast edges look dreadful, e.g. on the three women's hijabs (head scarves).

For images that don't have high contrast edges, or edges of the kind caused by using an extremely high aperture lens wide-open, Piccure+ can produce extremely impressive results. But for those images with the flaw, it's a royal pain in the butt to fix it in Photoshop, which may or may not be worth it.

I reported this problem long ago. I don't know if it can be fixed or not. I hope the developers can fix it!

[Mark D Segal]

That's very useful Damon, thanks. A couple of observations: firstly, since the screen grab is an enlargement of a small portion of the image area, and the effect you mention is present but rather subtle, I wonder how visible it would be say in a 13*19 or even 17*25 inch print of the whole photo. Large magnifications of small areas (less politely known as pixel-peeping, but I'm not going there  ) is useful for identifying underlying issues, but their significance could be another matter. This depends on practical results in prints. Secondly, in both renditions I notice what looks like a fair bit of colour noise in the pavement and the windshield of the automobile notwithstanding that noise mitigation is deployed. If you use LR, out of curiosity it would be interesting to see whether this same photo fares better or worse there in respect of both sharpening and noise mitigation.