Oloneo PhotoEngine feedback

[bill t.]

Antoine, that is simply wonderful!

I reworked a few difficult old bracket sets and was very pleased with the results.  It appears I can now push things quite a bit farther while still remaining naturalistic and avoiding excessive granularity.  And the responsiveness makes everything so much easier.  The user interface is very nice indeed.  A lot of control there, feels kind of liberating.  Including the LDR controls is brilliant, saves a lot of guesswork!

One feature most panoramic stitch photographers would appreciate is the ability to work on several images side by side.  But even without that, Oloneo is looking terrific, thanks for the work!  Put me down for a release copy.

[PierreVandevenne]

Impressive indeed. While I am not a HDR fan, I gave it a try and found it sleek and fast. It's very easy to obtain good, natural looking, results.

[BernardLanguillier]

When is the OSX version due out?

Cheers,
Bernard

[Dinarius]

Very interesting program.  

A few observvations..........

1. It seems I can only make adjustments using the sliders and not using the up/down arrow keys (as I would in ACR or LR - there I only use the sliders to get close to where I want to be. I use the up/down keys for fine tuning.). This makes very fine changes almost impossible. It would be useful to have this feature.

2. There doesn't seem to be any highlight/shadow warning. I would have thought that this would be essential in a HDR program.  No?

3. I have installed Oloneo as a LR plugin. However, I cannot get any image to open. Even choosing a single image I get the error message: "Error reading file: '__Photoenging_Temp1.tif'. Unable to find the specified file." What am I doing wrong?

4. Finally, when I Browse to a folder of images, I do not see preview images. I only see .dng or .tif files and file name icons in the browser window. In order to know which image(s) I want to open, I have to open the same folder in Bridge and make a note of its filename. Very strange, but maybe the fault is mine?

5. If I click on the ? next to Low Dynamic Tone, I am taken to a video called "To convert your image to black and white or modify saturation........". This must be incorrect?

However, the effects that can be achieved are very interesting and I would recommend that people try the program. The Presets are great! 

I'm Vista x64bit.

D.

[AntoineC]

Hi Dinarius,

You can move a slider using the arrows (you have to select the slider first). You can also hold the Control key while dragging with the mouse to fine tune a value with a high accuracy.

The video is correct. It is just that YouTube decided to show that particular frame as a preview before you start the video! Simply click the play button to watch the entire video.

Unless you are using files without thumbnails, you should see the thumbnails in the Browse Workspace. Please contact us using:
http://www.oloneo.com/en/page/support/technical-support.html

We need more information and may need to see one of your files to answer to your questions (the same goes for the issue with Lightroom).

Thank you for your kind words and for recommending PhotoEngine. 

Best regards,

Antoine

[semillerimages]

I've only played with the software for a short time, but the one thing that pops out at me is that when you process a single raw file through Oloneo the results are really really good... except there should be a noise reduction option in this area.
So far, with processing 3 and 5 image sets, made for HDR processing, the results have been extremely nice - especially after flipping through some of the presets.

Cheers to your achievement! Consider adding the noise reduction to the single image processing pipeline!

*steve

[AntoineC]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your kind comments.

We do plan to add a single image noise reduction feature. Meanwhile, you can use the Lightroom plug-in to pre-process the image or the Export to Photoshop option to post-process.

If you use Lightroom, do the following:
 - Edit the raw photo in Lightroom
 - Set everything to zero except noise reduction (Lightroom always changes the Brightness, Contrast Curve, Black Level, etc)
 - Use the PhotoEngine plug-in or simply select Edit In PhotoEngine (use TIFF 16-Bit ProPhoto RGB)

This can be further accelerated by creating a Preset in Lightroom.

Thanks,

Antoine

[leuallen]

Antoine, like the program. I have CS5, Photomatix, and Nik HDR programs and generally use Oloneo. I preprocess in LR, set all to zero. Adjust sharpness and noise and then to Oloneo. I process a very flat file in Oloneo and then to PS for final work. Attempt to get a semi-natural result.

Two things:

When I go to PS, the save dialog does not give the correct fileneame. I get 'From Lightroom...tif'. I seem to remember that it worked correctly for a while when first installed (trial version, will purchase in a couple of days). This is a major annoyance.

If I am over aggressive and use a file which is too overexposed, the ghosting does not seem to work. The overexposed file is way out of register. Remedy is to reprocess eliminating that file. I like the feature is CS5 that allows files to be toggled on/off without having to go back to LR.

Probably a technical reason for not having, but I would really like a RGB readout of the values at the cursor. Even if approximate.

Also probably a limitation due to LR, but it is really annoying to always have to synchronize when going back to LR.

And finally, what is the difference between Method 1 and Method 2 when removing ghosts? Ghosting is always a major problem and I sometimes have to switch to one of the other programs for better results.

Larry

[Dinarius]

Hi Antoine,

Apologies for the delay in replying to you.

1. Thanks for clarifying the issue with controlling the sliders using the arrow keys. A few impressions......

a. This works, but in reverse order on my Vista x64 system. i.e. Up Arrow reduces/ Down Arrow increases.

b. The incremental increases are quite large, I think. TM Strength +/- 7, Detail Strength +/- 20, Exposure +/- 80, Fine Exposure +/- 10.

My main problem, however, is with the thumbnail views. If I Browse directly to the images in the card reader, I see the files. Equally, if I copy the files onto my Desktop, I see the files.

However, my normal workflow is to Import files from a card into Lightroom, thereby creating a folder of .dng files.

I cannot see .dng thumbnails in the Browse window.

Any idea why?

Thanks.

D.

ps. I love the Presets! Great fun! 

[AntoineC]

Hi Dinarius,

1. Sliders:
The sliders actually follow the Windows guideline. Apparently Up means decrease and Down means increase at Microsoft! Now, you can also use the Left and Right Keys that work in logical way. All sliders work with a 10% increment when using the keyboard. We could use smaller increments but that does not work well with the Timeline that records all changes.

2. DNG:
PhotoEngine displays thumbnails included in DNG files. Please verify that Lightroom is set to create a thumbnail when exporting to DNG (Enable "Jpeg Preview" in File Handling in Lightroom Preferences if I recall correctly).

Thanks,

Antoine

[feppe]

1. Sliders:
The sliders actually follow the Windows guideline. Apparently Up means decrease and Down means increase at Microsoft!

Where? For example, volume increases as you push the slider up in all versions of Windows I've used.

[AntoineC]

Check for instance the Color Intensity slider found in (Windows 7):
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization\Window Color and Appearance

The vertical sliders such as sound volume or icon size use the reverse approach. Don't ask why! This is the way Microsoft has defined how Windows sliders work.

Thanks,

Antoine

[Graham Mitchell]

I am also trying the trial version. I like the results I've seen from others but need more time to evaluate it for myself. Some comments so far:

1) I would not buy the PC version as I have a Mac. I am running the trial using Parallels.
2) The histogram is acting up. See below.
3) When making changes or just clicking back a step in the history, the image becomes very pixelated and the message "Updating.." is displayed. This makes it impossible to directly see a difference between two versions. See below.
4) It is very slow for me and sometimes crashes. I am running it with XP Pro 64 bit, which has 3GB of RAM allocated to it via Parallels. That seems like enough to run one program and have one image open but perhaps it's not.

[Graham Mitchell]

Further query: I imported a 16-bit TIFF file which was 480MB and when I exported it, it had grown to 590MB. Any idea where the extra 110MB came from?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Further query: I imported a 16-bit TIFF file which was 480MB and when I exported it, it had grown to 590MB. Any idea where the extra 110MB came from?

Hi Graham,

Perhaps different compression?

Cheers,
Bart

[Graham Mitchell]

Perhaps different compression?

They are both uncompressed files.