More suggestions

[jrandall]

After spending many hours test driving FDRTools 2.3.0 I'd like to make the following suggestions. I appologize in advance if I missed the point, am not clear, or if my suggestion is simply bone-headed.

Alignment

1)  Need significant help seeing minor alignment differences between images.  Consider applying edge or difference filters (?) to enhanse small alignment differences.
2)  Enable greater than 100% loop view to better see small differences.
3)  I encourage you to add a rotation alignment feature to your current translation feature.  This is equivalent to having a two stick-pin feature.  Consider adding a 4 stick-pin feature and have the translation/rotation alignment feature the default option (not critical, but good to have)

HDRI Creation

1)  Make the Average/Separation/Creative/xDOF user options master sticky settings in Preferences.

Tone Mapping/Post Processing

1)  Ability to save and load tone mapping settings *during* tone mapping. Note:  The current system requires too many clicks and mouse moves to exit the project, save as a template, select the closed projects to apply the template to, and then open the project.
2)  Show pixels with b/w point clipping (red/blue blinking or continious).
3)  Show percent b/w point clipping (not critical, but good to know).
4)  Option to show log scale histogram to better see and evaluate the histogram tails.
5)  Create a system to save at least one previous screen resolution tone mapped image and the corresponding settings and have the ability to blink between the saved and current image to better see the full effects of tweaking settings.  Note:  side-by-side comparison is not a good substitue for "overlay" blinking.
6)  I understand your reluctance to recreate a full post processing image editor, but please consider adding the following features to your post processing tools:

>  color temperature to adjust white balance
>  saturation highlights and shadows in addition to master saturation (not critical, but good to have)
>  fill light (not critical, but good to have)

[AndreasSchoemann]

After spending many hours test driving FDRTools 2.3.0 I'd like to make the following suggestions. I appologize in advance if I missed the point, am not clear, or if my suggestion is simply bone-headed.

Alignment

1)  Need significant help seeing minor alignment differences between images.  Consider applying edge or difference filters (?) to enhanse small alignment differences.

Yes. A difference blending mode is really lacking.

2)  Enable greater than 100% loop view to better see small differences.

This function is there, albeit not obvious. You can use the '+'/'-' keys to zoom in/out in the Preview window.

3)  I encourage you to add a rotation alignment feature to your current translation feature.  This is equivalent to having a two stick-pin feature.  Consider adding a 4 stick-pin feature and have the translation/rotation alignment feature the default option (not critical, but good to have)

Please note that the Tripod alignment method is for photos that were taken with a tripod. Imho correction for translational movement is sufficient for tripod photos. Do you agree? Or do you think that rotation correction is necessary for tripod images? If so please explain, maybe you have an example?

If you are talking about a method that reliably aligns photos taken "hand-held" you are of course right. Unfortunately FDRTools currently has no reliable algorithm to do this. However, if I decide to start implementing an algorithm for hand-held alignment I won't "do things by halves". What I mean is that the rotational correction you are talking about is by no means sufficient to do the job. It might help a bit in certain situations but that is not what I want and probably not what you want. The main problem is that implementing an algorithm is a very time consuming issue. I won't start with it unless I'm convinced it solves the problem. I can not afford to waste time with mediocre stuff. And on top of that: currently I have no time anyway as I'm busy with solving remaining problems with the Compressor tone mapper.

HDRI Creation

1)  Make the Average/Separation/Creative/xDOF user options master sticky settings in Preferences.

I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean here.

Tone Mapping/Post Processing

1)  Ability to save and load tone mapping settings *during* tone mapping. Note:  The current system requires too many clicks and mouse moves to exit the project, save as a template, select the closed projects to apply the template to, and then open the project.

Well, it depends. The question is how often you want to use preset values.

Currenty I rarely use preset values for tone mapping mainly because a certain result with one scene is not really reproducible with an other image. I do use it - via projects - to automatically process a selection of scenes before I release a new FDRTools version. So I use it for testing purpose only.

My intention is to reach the reproducability goal but I'm not there yet. I can imagine that it would make sense to have preset values to achieve a certain "look". I will probably do this if the number of Compressor parameters further increases - which will probably happen - and the "look" is more or less reproducible with different kind of imagery. I think that currently adjusting the few parameters is straightforward and does not really require a special preset value feature.

However, I don't know your use case for preset values so I'm not sure if I'm currently ignoring some facts.

2)  Show pixels with b/w point clipping (red/blue blinking or continious).
3)  Show percent b/w point clipping (not critical, but good to know).

Yes. Good suggestions, but not realizable unless the tone mapping preview is really reliable. A reliable and fast preview for the Compressor tone mapper is what I'm currently working on. Once that works there will be a clipping preview too.

4)  Option to show log scale histogram to better see and evaluate the histogram tails.

What do you mean here?

5)  Create a system to save at least one previous screen resolution tone mapped image and the corresponding settings and have the ability to blink between the saved and current image to better see the full effects of tweaking settings.  Note:  side-by-side comparison is not a good substitue for "overlay" blinking.

Yes. I intend to implement a history mechanism with the ability to create "snapshots" and to switch between the snapshots.

6)  I understand your reluctance to recreate a full post processing image editor, but please consider adding the following features to your post processing tools:

>  color temperature to adjust white balance

To be honest I don't understand what this shall be good for:
1. Correcting white balance is best done during RAW conversion/development, hence before HDR creation and tone mapping.
2. Tone mapping should not change white balance.
Why would you want to change color temperature during the tone mapping phase?

>  saturation highlights and shadows in addition to master saturation (not critical, but good to have)

Yes, enriching color handling is a reasonable thing. I haven't thought much about it so far but once the time is ripe I will do something.

>  fill light (not critical, but good to have)

Well, Compressor tone mapper does "fill light" to the dark corners of your scene. However, Compressor can do more. What else do you think of when you talk about "fill light"?

[jrandall]

1)  Need significant help seeing minor alignment differences between images. 

Yes. A difference blending mode is really lacking.

I hope this is on your "to do" list.

2)  Enable greater than 100% loop view to better see small differences.

This function is there, albeit not obvious.

Have you considered adding a mouse wheel zooming feature?

3)  I encourage you to add a rotation alignment feature to your current translation feature. 

Please note that the Tripod alignment method is for photos that were taken with a tripod.

If you are talking about a method that reliably aligns photos taken "hand-held" you are of course right. Unfortunately FDRTools currently has no reliable algorithm to do this.

I understand your priorities.  Have you considered a manual hand-held alignment feature such as implemented in DynamicPhotoHDR or easyHDR using "stick-pins" rather than a fully automatic hand-held alignment feature?  I'm no programer, but this approach seems simpler (yeah, easy for me to say!).

I assumed that tripods suffer from the same pitch/roll/yaw/translation as hand-held images.

1)  Make the Average/Separation/Creative/xDOF user options master sticky settings in Preferences.

I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean here.

Currently the default paramenters (auto|color+off|trangle2) are applied everytime.  I'd like to set my user default to EXIF (which defaults to auto if EXIF is not present) and color+on rather than having to reset every time.  These settings seem more universal to me -- am I missing something?

1)  Ability to save and load tone mapping settings *during* tone mapping.

Well, it depends. The question is how often you want to use preset values.

Using your existing approach with templates, I was trying to create snapshots of the current project to more rapidly apply various combinations of tweaks for comparison.  I fully agree that universal templates good for a wide range of images is not feasible.  I see you have responed to the snapshot functionality below.

2)  Show pixels with b/w point clipping (red/blue blinking or continious).
3)  Show percent b/w point clipping (not critical, but good to know).

Yes. Good suggestions, but not realizable unless the tone mapping preview is really reliable.

Please implement.  The histogram appears to be in the RGB colorspace and that the intensity of each vertical bar is the max of the individual R, G, B channels -- correct?  Please consider including the ability to select the R, G, B color channel for viewing clipping. Or convert to the HSV or HSL colorspace and plot the histogram of V or L. Often only one color reaches saturation and the others are far from saturation.

4)  Option to show log scale histogram to better see and evaluate the histogram tails.

What do you mean here?

The vertical scale of the histogram appears to be linear.  If you plot the logrithim of the intensity the scale will be compressed and thus the low values at the tails are more easily seen.

5)  Create a system to save at least one previous screen resolution tone mapped image and the corresponding settings and have the ability to blink between the saved and current image to better see the full effects of tweaking settings.

Yes. I intend to implement a history mechanism with the ability to create "snapshots" and to switch between the snapshots.

The snapshots feature as implemented in ArtizenHDR and DynamicPhotoHDR are good examples.  The ability to rapidly apply the various settings and switch between the snapshots is key to being able to see minor changes.

6)  I understand your reluctance to recreate a full post processing image editor, but please consider adding the following features to your post processing tools:

>  color temperature to adjust white balance

To be honest I don't understand what this shall be good for:
1. Correcting white balance is best done during RAW conversion/development, hence before HDR creation and tone mapping.
2. Tone mapping should not change white balance.
Why would you want to change color temperature during the tone mapping phase?

I didn't know you could do white balance before FDRTools (DCDRAW) conversion.  Are you suggesting one convert the 3 RAW images taken at different shutter speeds, adjust each, save and then open in FDRTools?  I'm sorry I must be missing your meaning.

I was suggesting the ability to tweak white balance as a feature to the post-processing tools.

>  saturation highlights and shadows in addition to master saturation (not critical, but good to have)

Yes, enriching color handling is a reasonable thing. I haven't thought much about it so far but once the time is ripe I will do something.

I encourage you to check the ripeness often.

>  fill light (not critical, but good to have)

Well, Compressor tone mapper does "fill light" to the dark corners of your scene.

OK, this suggestion can easily be catagorized as in the bone-headed pile!

[AndreasSchoemann]

1)  Need significant help seeing minor alignment differences between images. 

Yes. A difference blending mode is really lacking.

I hope this is on your "to do" list.

Yes.

Have you considered adding a mouse wheel zooming feature?

Ok, no problem.

I understand your priorities.  Have you considered a manual hand-held alignment feature such as implemented in DynamicPhotoHDR or easyHDR using "stick-pins" rather than a fully automatic hand-held alignment feature?  I'm no programer, but this approach seems simpler (yeah, easy for me to say!).

I'm going to implement a stiching algorithm. Probably you know panorama stitchers. I'll do something similiar, though surely not as elaborated. However, it will be sufficient to create panoramas from rectilinear and wide angle lenses in high quality. It will be build in stages, first with manual control point setting, then later on with automatically generated control points.

I assumed that tripods suffer from the same pitch/roll/yaw/translation as hand-held images.

If you use a stable tripod and take care of the setting (so that the tripod does not slip away) then there is no movement. However, minor movement can be caused by the reflex mirror (DSLR) or when you press the release manually. Wind can be a problem too. These minor movements are corrected by the translational alignment. So far this works very well for me.

Currently the default paramenters (auto|color+off|trangle2) are applied everytime.  I'd like to set my user default to EXIF (which defaults to auto if EXIF is not present) and color+on rather than having to reset every time.  These settings seem more universal to me -- am I missing something?

I see. I'm going to save the complete state of the application so that all parameter settings are restored with the next program start.

Please consider including the ability to select the R, G, B color channel for viewing clipping. Or convert to the HSV or HSL colorspace and plot the histogram of V or L. Often only one color reaches saturation and the others are far from saturation.

I see. Will implement RGB channel histograms.

The vertical scale of the histogram appears to be linear.  If you plot the logrithim of the intensity the scale will be compressed and thus the low values at the tails are more easily seen.

I see. Will try to make the histogram more "readable".

I didn't know you could do white balance before FDRTools (DCDRAW) conversion.  Are you suggesting one convert the 3 RAW images taken at different shutter speeds, adjust each, save and then open in FDRTools?  I'm sorry I must be missing your meaning.

I was suggesting the ability to tweak white balance as a feature to the post-processing tools.

I'm sorry, this was a misunderstanding.

1. If you use "Auto White Balance" with your camera (though this is not recommended) FDRTools can correct simple white balance problems automatically. However, if you get into real trouble with white balance, e.g. in scenes with mixed light sources, you will probably be better off if you first do RAW conversion outside FDRTools. Often you will have to do severe editing of the developped images before merging them to HDR in order to avoid unwanted color deviations. Tip: Do all image editing prior to HDR merging in 16-bit and in a linear color space.

2. There is a white balance tool in the "Tools" window. You can of course use this to correct white balance. This is the place where one would add "Color Temperature" as a way to modify white balance. Maybe I'm going to add this feature one day.

3. The white balance tool works on the HDR image, not on the tone mapped image, even though you can apply the tool in the tone mapping view. If you click with the pipette tool in the tone mapped image then the HDR image is newly calculated and then tone mapped.

I encourage you to check the ripeness often.

Sure. Like a vintner I'm inspecting my grapevines in regular intervals. I want to reap grapes of good quality

[jrandall]

Please consider including the ability to select the R, G, B color channel for viewing clipping. Or convert to the HSV or HSL colorspace and plot the histogram of V or L. Often only one color reaches saturation and the others are far from saturation.

I see. Will implement RGB channel histograms.

Please consider including some flavor of "lightness" channel in the histogram or at least show (in white?) where all three RGB channels overlap.  This coupled with the option to chose a log histogram output (or square root or cube root or ?) should greatly increase the power of the post processing curves function.

Thanks.

[AndreasSchoemann]

Will do my best.

Thank you.

[rhb248]

Workaround for better alignment:

After reading an article in Photoshop User by Katrin Eismann suggesting that handheld HDR images were possible (she did use FDRTools for the software), I tried this technique today.  However, the alignment achieved in FDRTools was slightly off resulting in ghost images in the print on a sign in the image.

The workaround I used had excellent results: I opened the images as NEF (RAW) files in Photoshop CS4 and then went to File>Scripts>Load files into stack, checking off the option to align files.  Once the files were aligned, I cropped off a bit around the edges where the files did not precisely overlap.  Then I went to File>Scripts>Export layers to files.  Once those files were created (tiffs), I used them in FDRTools and found that the alignment was perfect without any further alignment needed in FDRTools.  Apparently Photoshop CS4 is able to align files more precisely, although FDRTools creates a superior HDR image.