Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Mark D Segal on September 22, 2009, 10:58:29 pm

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Mark D Segal on September 22, 2009, 10:58:29 pm

I'm wondering whether anyone has any experience to relate using this product:

PhotoAcute (http://photoacute.com/studio/guide/guide.html)

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Hening Bettermann on September 23, 2009, 04:34:41 pm

Hi Mark
If you do a search you'll find 5 threads where it is mentioned/discussed.
Good light! - Hening

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Mark D Segal on September 23, 2009, 08:17:21 pm

Ya, I've been through a fair bit of that stuff - all dated and not that informative. I'm looking for recent and serious experience.

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Lightbox on September 24, 2009, 06:48:34 am

I've had good success using it to process HDR images, usually combining 4-6 tripod mounted shots, and I prefer it to using Photomatix, seems to handle/remove C/A very well and output a very natural looking file. Here's one I shot recently and processed with Photo Acute, although it has had more work in Photoshop afterwards -

(http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/2409/remarkables.jpg)


.

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: usathyan on September 24, 2009, 08:56:56 am

Quote from: Lightbox

I've had good success using it to process HDR images, usually combining 4-6 tripod mounted shots, and I prefer it to using Photomatix, seems to handle/remove C/A very well and output a very natural looking file. Here's one I shot recently and processed with Photo Acute, although it has had more work in Photoshop afterwards -

(http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/7319/landscape14.jpg) (http://img85.imageshack.us/i/landscape14.jpg/)

.

Thats a great picture!

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Mark D Segal on September 24, 2009, 09:01:51 am

Thanks for recounting your experience - and indeed - great shot - makes me want to come to New Zealand, which I hear is very photogenic in many places.

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: BernardLanguillier on September 28, 2009, 11:01:02 pm

I have a licence and used it a few months ago to try to do HDR on handheld images, but my conclusion at that time was that nothing could touch PTgui Pro for alignement of hand held HDR. I was frankly not overly impressed by the alignement/HDR capability of Photoaccute. I have not had the chance to test their super-resolution thing, but all the samples are focusing no very low res images to start with.

I have recently done a bit of HDR (on tripod this time) and again found PTgui Pro to be the best thanks to their brilliant alignement capability and implementation of Enfuse algo for automatic masking in a 16 bits space.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2570/3957326012_0306d101b9_o.jpg)

Regards,
Bernard

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Mark D Segal on September 28, 2009, 11:24:31 pm

Thanks for the assessment Bernard - and the image looks very "zen"!

Cheers,

Mark

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: thierrylegros396 on September 29, 2009, 01:20:55 pm

Very "natural" HDR picture Bernard !

Have a nice Day.

Thierry

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: thierrylegros396 on September 30, 2009, 04:27:38 am

Bonjour Bernard,

How many pictures did you use to achieve such a result ?

As you are certainly now "expert" with PTGui, do you have "basic settings" that give good results and good "starting point" ?!

Have a Nice Day.

Thierry

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: BernardLanguillier on September 30, 2009, 05:16:41 am

Quote from: thierrylegros396

How many pictures did you use to achieve such a result ?

As you are certainly now "expert" with PTGui, do you have "basic settings" that give good results and good "starting point" ?!

Thierry,

I used 6 images one stop away from each other.

Let's make things very clear, I am not an expert of anything besides Belgian beers. :-)

As far as PTgui goes, I use the Pro version to compensate for my lack of expertise, besides it is pretty straighforward.

One key aspect is to use both lens light fall off and points optimizations. I use optimizations of points in an iterative way until I get an average error around 0.3 (meaning that I delete all the points with large optimization errors). This can only be achieved if the entrance pupil of the lens was correctly positionned atop the rotation axis of the pano head while shooting.

Enfuse style HDR can is - I believe - only availabe in the pro version and enables you to brighten shadows and darken highlights with recovery like sliders. That is the best implementation of Enfuse I have seen anywhere and the reason why I like it. Then you often need to polish up the work in PS with a few masked curves to restore a bit of pops. Finish with a good beer and you are ready to go!

Cheers,
Bernard

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on September 30, 2009, 10:14:18 am

Quote from: BernardLanguillier

Finish with a good beer and you are ready to go!

Cheers,
Bernard

Bernard,

You omitted the most essential technical detail: Which beer?

Cheers,

Eric

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: David Mantripp on October 04, 2009, 02:37:11 pm

Quote from: EricM

Bernard,

You omitted the most essential technical detail: Which beer?

Cheers,

Eric

Delerium Tremens, if he claims to be an expert :-)

Title: PhotoAcute Studio
Post by: BernardLanguillier on October 04, 2009, 05:43:07 pm

Quote from: drm

Delerium Tremens, if he claims to be an expert :-)

A good pick for sure. My personnal favorites are the Bruge Triple and Lachouffe.

Cheers,
Bernard