Piccure+ output wrong, do I have a bug in my version?

[kwalsh]

I've finally had time to try out Piccure+ after keeping an eye on it over the past year or so.  The results are really disappointing (in my opinion).  I've tried five or six images, followed the handbook recommendations and tried a wide variety of settings.  In all the cases indeed the output looks sharper than the totally unsharpened input.  However, the output also looks quite a bit worse than just using LR/ACR detail panel settings to sharpen.

Things look worse with Piccure+ both in the image center, where things are quite detailed to begin with, and in the borders where the lenses are getting a bit softer.  I can't find any settings where Piccure+ is even matching LR/ACR output.  Piccure+ seems to actually be destroying scene detail.  This seems counter to how people here at LL have described the output and I've seen some samples here that seem to show it at least matching PS CC Smart Sharpen (which I'd expect to do at least as good or better than LR/ACR detail panel).  So now I'm wondering - is something wrong with my version?

Here is a sample showing a comparison:

https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Random/n-RqKfv/i-jsLf3dT/0/O/i-jsLf3dT.png

Piccure+ is on the left (Quality+, tick between micro and normal, Rendering 15, no denoise) and LR/ACR on the right (Amount 40, Detail 80, Mask 30, Lum NR 10).  The Piccure+ input in this case was a TIFF from LR (used Edit in...) with detail panel set to zero.  I tried many variations of Piccure+ settings including micro and rendering from 0 to 80.  I also tried Piccure+ standalone and also with the RAW file directly instead of TIFF input.  The output in all cases looked about like this sample, nothing I tried ever got close to what the above LR/ACR settings would do.

The above sample is from a GH2 shooting the 14-45 at F/6.3 and is from the lower right corner.  That lens gets a bit soft in the corners even stopped down, so I was hoping to see what Piccure+ would do.  Unfortunately it doesn't improve the corner much and it makes the middle of the image similarly lose detail compared to the LR/ACR sharpening.

Anyone have any ideas what I could be screwing up?  Can I provide a RAW or TIFF to someone to try on their install?  Or does someone have their own input and output example I could try to process identically and see if my install does the same?

I really feel like something must be wrong someplace.  I submitted a ticket to Piccure over a week ago with no response - small European team might be on a well deserved vacation.  Hoping I can narrow down the issue some more with help from folks here.

Thanks in advance!

Ken

[Lundberg02]

I am unable to see any difference between the two, just me I suppose, but believe me that girl needs to see a doctor right away.

[kwalsh]

I am unable to see any difference between the two, just me I suppose, but believe me that girl needs to see a doctor right away.

Erm... I guess I'm missing the joke?

Large file, view at 100% and the difference is glaring.

[kwalsh]

Another example, this one even worse.  Again, left Piccure+ this time with Quality+, Micro, Details 10 and no denoise.  I tried about ten settings and this was about the best I could get.  It just looks horrifically pixelated on almost a 2x2 scale compared to the sharpened only in LR.

https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Random/n-RqKfv/i-53RMf4k/0/O/i-53RMf4k.png

I mean this is just wrong, isn't it?  It really seems like something must be broken badly to get output that horrible.

[Alan Smallbone]

Well there is certainly a big difference. Not sure what to tell you but the ACR/LR sharpening is much better in your comparison. I hope someone has some insight. It almost looks like the PSF is too large and causing loss of details

Alan

[kirkt]

Provide a link to download a raw file.

kirk

[Jack Hogan]

Hi Ken,

If you search some of the old threads around here you will find that piccure+ is a very sophisticated piece of software designed to correct complex blur that varies throughout the field of view.  It's very good at that, much better than other deconvolution-based photography plug-ins.  But if images are taken with good technique (as I assume yours are) and the blur is relatively simple to correct, there are simpler/better/faster tools out there - as the piccure+ folks are first to say.   A Jeep Wrangler 4x4 might be heaven off road, but if you drive on a track chances are even a Corolla will do better.

Jack

[kwalsh]

Provide a link to download a raw file.

Oops.  I meant to do that from the start!

Here are three to try:

RAW for the first sample, again the shown crop is from the lower right corner:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46420541/120330_DV2012_P9010619.RW2

RAW for the second sample, crop was from near the center:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46420541/151205_Toroweap_PC050267.ORF

NOTE: That second file is quite large (100MB) because it is shot using the Olympus E-M5II "High res" mode which does a pixel shift capture much like the H5D does.  Since I was worried that might be upsetting Piccure+ with such a capture I tried a non-pixel shifted capture as well and similarly it looked bad too:

RAW for same scene as second sample, but standard 16MP capture without pixel shifting:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46420541/151205_Toroweap_PC050267ORI-2.ORF

Super-duper extra thanks in advance if anyone can give any of these a try and see if they get better results than I did!  If that's the case then it would give the developers a good A/B comparison to figure out what is screwing things up on my install.

Cheers!

[kwalsh]

If you search some of the old threads around here you will find that piccure+ is a very sophisticated piece of software designed to correct complex blur that varies throughout the field of view.  It's very good at that, much better than other deconvolution-based photography plug-ins.  But if images are taken with good technique (as I assume yours are) and the blur is relatively simple to correct, there are simpler/better/faster tools out there - as the piccure+ folks are first to say.   A Jeep Wrangler 4x4 might be heaven off road, but if you drive on a track chances are even a Corolla will do better.

Hi Jack,

Thanks for you comment.  Yes, I read all around here on previous piccure+ posts and that's why I was posting here - seems to be the one place with some piccure+ users who are familiar with piccure+ as well as other capture sharpening tools.

I get exactly what you are saying, and that's why I was looking at piccure+.  I've got some shots where corners start to go a bit soft and so I was hoping to see how piccure+ did with that.  Other tools do fine with the image centers, hoping piccure+ would bring something to the table in the corners.  Should be right up its alley - a PSF that varies across the image where it can hopefully work some magic in the corners where field curvature and astigmatism are starting to spread the PSF.  Unfortunately it is just absolutely destroying the image center and destroying the image corners - which is why I suspect there is some sort of bug in the version I'm using or else I'm somehow unknowingly screwing up using it.  No one could say a single good word about the output in the above  examples (especially the second which is amazingly bad).

[kwalsh]

Nobody has any ideas or evidence of better performance from Piccure+?

Anyone heard from a developer recently?  They seem to have disappeared for two weeks as far as support goes.  This seems to be the only place on web with some active users.

Having done a lot of searching I'm thinking the software is just incredibly inconsistent.  I haven't found a single convincing example of it doing anything better than a much faster and simpler deconvolution method, a lot of complaints of artifacts and a few people having just garbage output like mine.  A few folks post "it is wonderful" and then post no example at all or only an example comparing to unsharpened output rather than comparing to other sharpening tools.  The only comparison I've found so far was here in this forum in which someone took an unsharpened JPEG through PS Smart Sharpen and got equivalent or arguably slightly better results than Piccure+ working from an original RAW file of the same scene.  That wasn't encouraging to say the least, but it does seem to imply there is something wrong with my setup (in my case Piccure+ is significantly worse rather than about the same as Smart Sharpen).

So at this point I still think my install must be buggy because the output is really bad, but at the same time I've Googled as much as I can and still not found a single side-by-side example showing Piccure+ doing anything better than ACR/LR, DxO, SmartSharpen or any other much simpler and faster deconvolution kit.

Something is not adding up here - my best guess is it is something on my end, but the deeper I dig I'm distressed to not find a single robust comparison of Piccure+ with other tools.