SNS-HDR Pro 2.1 released

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi,

Just to let you know, Sebastian Nibisz released the new official version 2.1 yesterday. It's a free upgrade for owners of a license to the earlier version 1 .

It's still a Windows only program, although it is reported to run under Parallels on the Mac OS. There may be a Mac version in the future (according to Sebastian on his SNS-HDR forum), but that'll take a while.

In my view, it's still the best HDR tonemapping application around if you like natural looking images, and now it has a number of new controls and reworked algorithms.

Cheers,
Bart

[earlybird]

Thank you for the info.

 

[Damon Lynch]

In my view, it's still the best HDR tonemapping application around if you like natural looking images, and now it has a number of new controls and reworked algorithms.

I concur. With my own images I've yet to see a single case where SNS failed to handle a scene that LR's HDR module could, but I've seen plenty of the inverse! SNS HDR is a superb program. Very impressive work by Sebastian Nibisz.

[Pictus]

For me it is the best HDR software.

[kirkt]

I can confirm that the beta of v2 runs on my Mac under Parallels/Win10.

kirk

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I can confirm that the beta of v2 runs on my Mac under Parallels/Win10.

Great, Parallels has a good reputation. Last month Sebastian mentioned on his forum that he had begun attempting to compile a Mac OS version, but that it would still take some time before he'd finish it. Anyway, with Parallels people can already use applications like SNS-HDR.

Cheers,
Bart

[Jeremy Roussak]

I can confirm that the beta of v2 runs on my Mac under Parallels/Win10.

The release version, which I downloaded last night, worked well under VirtualBox, which has the advantage over Parallels and VMWare of being free (for personal use). Of course, you still need a copy of Windows.

Jeremy

[francois]

The release version, which I downloaded last night, worked well under VirtualBox, which has the advantage over Parallels and VMWare of being free (for personal use). Of course, you still need a copy of Windows.

Jeremy

Better than nothing but a native version would be fantastic.

[kirkt]

Hi Bart - can you give me a quick rundown on SNS-HDR's color management?  I do not use it much, but I can run the demo of the professional version on my Mac, so I figured I would give it a test with my typical HDR test image sets.  Can I specify the work and output spaces?  Also, when I run it in Windows 10 with Parallels, can I point SNS (or the virtualized Windows 10) to my display profile that I create with ColorNavigator (Mac, for my Eizo display)?

Thanks - I figure it will be easier to ask you than wade through the SNS forum.

kirk

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi Bart - can you give me a quick rundown on SNS-HDR's color management?  I do not use it much, but I can run the demo of the professional version on my Mac, so I figured I would give it a test with my typical HDR test image sets.  Can I specify the work and output spaces?  Also, when I run it in Windows 10 with Parallels, can I point SNS (or the virtualized Windows 10) to my display profile that I create with ColorNavigator (Mac, for my Eizo display)?

Thanks - I figure it will be easier to ask you than wade through the SNS forum.

Hi Kirk,

SNS-HDR uses the profile of your source documents. I'm not 100% sure, but images without profile get sRGB assigned. You can see the embedded profile by hovering the mouse pointer over the little camera icon in the top menu bar (at the right of the block of icons at the top left) or change it by clicking that icon (in case the missing source profile is known to be something else).

There is no selection of a working profile as such, a lot of the processing is done in floating point and or with the GPUs.

The display profile is selected at the top right in the middle of that block, under the display icon.

Upon saving there is an option to save in sRGB, or retain the document's colorspace/ profile.

My normal workflow is; Use my preferred Raw converter to make use of CA correction and other specific strengths of that tool. Save the individual bracketed exposures as 16-bit/channel TIFFs with the color profile of choice. Drag/drop or load the files in SNS-HDR ... etc. The program can also open Raws (with DCraw) and blend those. It looks like Adobe RGB is used for Raw input.

Cheers,
Bart

[kirkt]

Hi Kirk,

SNS-HDR uses the profile of your source documents. I'm not 100% sure, but images without profile get sRGB assigned. You can see the embedded profile by hovering the mouse pointer over the little camera icon in the top menu bar (at the right of the block of icons at the top left) or change it by clicking that icon (in case the missing source profile is known to be something else).

There is no selection of a working profile as such, a lot of the processing is done in floating point and or with the GPUs.

The display profile is selected at the top right in the middle of that block, under the display icon.

Upon saving there is an option to save in sRGB, or retain the document's colorspace/ profile.

My normal workflow is; Use my preferred Raw converter to make use of CA correction and other specific strengths of that tool. Save the individual bracketed exposures as 16-bit/channel TIFFs with the color profile of choice. Drag/drop or load the files in SNS-HDR ... etc. The program can also open Raws (with DCraw) and blend those. It looks like Adobe RGB is used for Raw input.

Cheers,
Bart

That's the impression I got on all counts.  Looks like feeding RGB images (TIFFs) to SNS might provide a little more control over the output color.

Thanks Bart!

kirk

[Jeremy Roussak]

Better than nothing but a native version would be fantastic.

I couldn't agree more, but since I have to have some form of PC emulation for other reasons, it's nice to be able to use it.

Jeremy

[Brad Smith]

Thanks for the heads up, Bart.

I have liked SNS-HDR in the past for its natural look after tone mapping and user adjustments. I do recall that I had some issues with de-ghosting. I just updated to the latest version of SNSHDR 2.1 Home. I tried it out on a 3 image HDR set of a landscape image with foliage. It appears to still have some ghosting issues in the tree leaves and even in one stationary rock. I was sure to check "Ghosts reduction" prior to processing. I found Lightroom CC's Merge to HDR did a better job, particularly with de-ghosting this set. According to the SNS-HDR web site, the Home and Pro versions only differ in the ability for batch mode, so I would expect similar de-ghosting performance from both.

I'm am curious what others have found with regard to de-ghosting?

Brad

[kirkt]

Thanks for the heads up, Bart.

I have liked SNS-HDR in the past for its natural look after tone mapping and user adjustments. I do recall that I had some issues with de-ghosting. I just updated to the latest version of SNSHDR 2.1 Home. I tried it out on a 3 image HDR set of a landscape image with foliage. It appears to still have some ghosting issues in the tree leaves and even in one stationary rock. I was sure to check "Ghosts reduction" prior to processing. I found Lightroom CC's Merge to HDR did a better job, particularly with de-ghosting this set. According to the SNS-HDR web site, the Home and Pro versions only differ in the ability for batch mode, so I would expect similar de-ghosting performance from both.

I'm am curious what others have found with regard to de-ghosting?

Brad

If there is a weak point in SNS it appears that it may be deghosting.  However, I have found that when I have ghosting issues, I can merge and deghost in PS and save as EXR and bring that into SNS and proceed with tone mapping.  I suppose any HDR application that will export the 32bit result and has sufficient deghosting can work this way.

I run SNS on my Macs with Parallels/Win10 and I just bought a license today.  Looking forward to putting it through its paces!

Kirk

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Thanks for the heads up, Bart.

I have liked SNS-HDR in the past for its natural look after tone mapping and user adjustments. I do recall that I had some issues with de-ghosting. I just updated to the latest version of SNSHDR 2.1 Home. I tried it out on a 3 image HDR set of a landscape image with foliage. It appears to still have some ghosting issues in the tree leaves and even in one stationary rock. I was sure to check "Ghosts reduction" prior to processing. I found Lightroom CC's Merge to HDR did a better job, particularly with de-ghosting this set. According to the SNS-HDR web site, the Home and Pro versions only differ in the ability for batch mode, so I would expect similar de-ghosting performance from both.

I'm am curious what others have found with regard to de-ghosting?

Hi Brad,

Deghosting is not as simple as it may seem to a human, especially when we have to deal with different exposures from which to choose. Replacing some of the image's detail with that from another image can cause sudden local jumps in noise. The topic, and in an attempt to improve SNS-HDR's handling of ghosts, was addressed on the SNS-HDR forums during the initial phases of the development of version 2. Sebastian said he was working on it, but also noise reduction had to be improved (to hide the local noise jumps).

I've shared some suggestions/links for Ghost reduction methods on Sebastian's forum, but it's up to him to decide if that is compatible with the inner workings of SNS-HDR.

I'm sure that Sebastian is open for suggestions, but it is not a simple issue. Some very good exaples have been shared with him, but he probably wouldn't mind getting some more example images to test with. Tree branches in the wind are amongst the sources for ghosts that are the hardest to solve. I have to test whether alpha masking of the source TIFFs, helps SNS-HDR to prioritize which image from the sequence to use.

Cheers,
Bart

[Brad Smith]

Hi Bart,

Thanks for the comments, link and your explanations. It helps me realize that Sebastian is probably already quite aware of the deghosting issues.

I will contact him separately to see if he might be interested in working with my image set to help improve this otherwise very nice program.

Brad

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi Bart,

Thanks for the comments, link and your explanations. It helps me realize that Sebastian is probably already quite aware of the deghosting issues.

I will contact him separately to see if he might be interested in working with my image set to help improve this otherwise very nice program.

Hi Brad,

Yes, it wouldn't hurt to bring it to his attention that there is still some improvement needed for that aspect of HDRI. Good examples, the ones that failed, are always useful for illustrating the point.

His current aim is focusing on image quality, i.e. noise reduction by using image details with higher levels of exposure in the stack, but that might be less effective on complicated ghosts.

Cheers,
Bart

[Guillermo Luijk]

His current aim is focusing on image quality, i.e. noise reduction by using image details with higher levels of exposure in the stack, but that might be less effective on complicated ghosts.

For maximum noise reduction and sharpness the input images must be linear (or affected by a pure gamma curve that can be easily undone). In this situation sensor linearity becomes our ally to allow creating a seamless composite where only highest exposure non-clipped pixels are used.

If SNS-HDR allows to input images with random bright/contrast level adjustments previously made (for instance those output from any RAW converter without strictly zeroed settings), then it probably performs a sub-optimum blending in terms of SNR and sharpness (as Photomatix or Enfuse do). It is not SNS-HDR's fault, it's simply the only possibility to deal with non linear images and still yield a visually seamless composite: perform a progressive blending where not only highest exposure pixels are used for every pixel position but also lower exposure pixels participate. This means not achieving the maximum SNR so as losing sharpness unless captures are perfectly aligned, which seldom are.

Non progressive transitions can be visually seamless with linear input images:






Regarding deghosting, and having seen how powerfully user defined masks are implemented in SNS-HDR, I find surprising that Sebastian doesn't introduce the possibility of using these masks to allow user assistance in indicating the ghosting conflict zones. The software should simply use a single highest exposure non-clipped input image in that specific area at the only unavoidable cost of some extra noise:





Regards