[Zen4Life]

Thanks Zen4Life; good comparison. Can I assume you were working with RAWs/DNG with all the photos?

I shot both RAW and JPG and only posted the JPGs for reference (no modifications).

Have either of you tried other means of dealing with artifacts?

I have not, my plan was just to blend a Non-PS with PS image in the artifact areas using photoshop.

But if you can pick up a Flucard it might actually be a BETTER choice.

Thanks for the tip, I had not considered it.

you really should have both.

That would be perfect, just wish my budget allowed for that!

[carolina_sky]

I have been playing around more with PDCU hoping I can use it for better processing of PS files but I just keep hitting roadblocks! Original file is RAW PEF. I tried to remove all edits and turn off PS, then convert to DNG. PDCU crashes every time. I tried to save-as JPG and PDCU does something very odd to the water surface on my long exposure (Hudson River). Doesn't seem to matter if I save as JPG or TIFF, this splotchy texture appears every time. Here is 1:1 crop of the water surface when I save JPG from PDCU. Note the splotchy surface of the image.

Second image is the JPG export from Lightroom. Here the water has one consistent texture on the surface.

The output from PDCU is unusable here and ruins the image.

Anyone have any ideas why PDCU output is so bad? Note that no matter what changes I make to the image (or don't make), this happens every time with PDCU and never with LR.

[Zen4Life]

I have not tried using PEFs in PDCU. All my files are DNG. I tried turning off PS and saving to TIFF and it works fine without crashing. Just an FYI.

[carolina_sky]

I have not tried using PEFs in PDCU. All my files are DNG. I tried turning off PS and saving to TIFF and it works fine without crashing. Just an FYI.

Yes, this works BUT same splotchy water artifacts as the image above. Even if I don't have water in my scene makes me worry what else PDCU is doing to the image!

[Zen4Life]

Yes, this works BUT same splotchy water artifacts as the image above. Even if I don't have water in my scene makes me worry what else PDCU is doing to the image!

Yes, sounds like an issue with PDCU. I wonder if the issue is just constrained to long exposures w/PS and motion? For my waterfall shots, it was better at removing artifacts than the in-camera engine. My exposure times were fairly short though. LR appeared to do no artifact correction which does not surprise me at all.

[UserAccessDenied]

Threads like this are why I love the PentaxForum community!

However, I really hope a firmware released to K-3ii will help address some of these issues in camera.
I don't have LR or Adobe anything, probably will be downloading Darktable this week and trying that out as my Picasa3 replacement.

EDIT:
I just realized my Fiancee has artrage on her laptop. It's not the greatest for photo editing, but I can use a selective tool and overlap the PS/non-PS image like you mention and erase the artifacts to reveal the single non-PS image underneath.
Still not an ideal workflow, but it's the object is moving like a long-exposure on a highway or flowing water, what do you expect PS to do with it anyhow?
It's not like we want a sharper blur? or do we?

Great information here. Makes me want to leave work early and test a few things out this windy day.

Thanks again for putting this all together!

[Oakland Rob]

EDIT:
I just realized my Fiancee has artrage on her laptop. It's not the greatest for photo editing, but I can use a selective tool and overlap the PS/non-PS image like you mention and erase the artifacts to reveal the single non-PS image underneath.
Still not an ideal workflow, but it's the object is moving like a long-exposure on a highway or flowing water, what do you expect PS to do with it anyhow?
It's not like we want a sharper blur? or do we?

There's desirable blur (think bokeh, depth of field, motion blur, star trails, etc) and there are crappy artifacts (think dust motes, scratches on film, red eye, and yes, PS artifacts).

You can still get blur in PS images (it's like a bracket of four shots slightly moved). So each of the four shots has blur, which can be not so bad. But on the edges you can get these lattices ugly colored highly artificial blotches. Over in other threads you can see them.

And unlike other blur, it's hard to fix in the field as well. I was taking macro shots of flowers the other day, and even the tiniest air movement on little filaments and pollen and petals caused artifacts, and since that's the main subject, PS was worthless. And this is in bright light; no amount of shutter speed can fix it, unlike regular motion blur. The very marginal increase in sharpness just isn't worth it in many cases in the real world. In studio work or maybe very still landscapes you can make it work, but even then it would be with an eye toward large prints and other output that could make use of it, not posting online (which is why you don't see that many example posted online).

PS reminds me of focus stacking and similar techniques. Handy to have, but a bit of work, and something you usually don't resort to if you can get what you want in other ways, like just stopping down and adding light in the case of focus stacking. Even if there were easy fixes in post processing that didn't mess up parts of the photo it still isn't something that's a substitute for perhaps a better lens choice or other techniques that are more flexible. But hey, panorama processing used to be really iffy and now it works amazingly well, so perhaps in time it will improve. I applaud having options like it. There might even be things to do with the unique aspects of sensor movement, as Astrotracer does, like a sensor motion pan, or even more frames over a wider area. Who knows.

[Nass]

... But on the edges you can get these lattices ugly colored highly artificial blotches. Over in other threads you can see them.

And unlike other blur, it's hard to fix in the field as well. I was taking macro shots of flowers the other day, and even the tiniest air movement on little filaments and pollen and petals caused artifacts, and since that's the main subject, PS was worthless. And this is in bright light; no amount of shutter speed can fix it, unlike regular motion blur. The very marginal increase in sharpness just isn't worth it in many cases in the real world. In studio work or maybe very still landscapes you can make it work, but even then it would be with an eye toward large prints and other output that could make use of it, not posting online (which is why you don't see that many example posted online).

PS reminds me of focus stacking and similar techniques. Handy to have, but a bit of work, and something you usually don't resort to if you can get what you want in other ways, like just stopping down and adding light in the case of focus stacking. Even if there were easy fixes in post processing that didn't mess up parts of the photo it still isn't something that's a substitute for perhaps a better lens choice or other techniques that are more flexible. But hey, panorama processing used to be really iffy and now it works amazingly well, so perhaps in time it will improve. I applaud having options like it. There might even be things to do with the unique aspects of sensor movement, as Astrotracer does, like a sensor motion pan, or even more frames over a wider area. Who knows.

I'd like to add that this is more or less my exact experience as well. Couldn't have put it better myself. I'm a focus stacker which is quite a slow process, and I've stacked PS images, non PS images and so on. Out of a bunch of trials I did last year I was able to make one stack of PS images work, but on the rest the matting was too pronounced. I'll probably experiment a bit more with it this year, but it's not top of my "todo" list unless Pentax give us a firmware update that helps us with this matting. Ie maybe that functionality that seems to be on K-1, some sort of movement compensation thing.

[Zen4Life]

But on the edges you can get these lattices ugly colored highly artificial blotches

Yes, that is also where I found the lattice artifacts in my waterfall shots, right on the edge between the moving water and static rocks. Hard to correct with cloning and such, easiest method would be to use layers with a non-PS shot. Perhaps the new algorithm in the K-1 will improve on this?

I'm a focus stacker which is quite a slow process, and I've stacked PS images, non PS images and so on. Out of a bunch of trials I did last year I was able to make one stack of PS images work, but on the rest the matting was too pronounced. I'll probably experiment a bit more with it this year, but it's not top of my "todo" list unless Pentax give us a firmware update that helps us with this matting.

I have been reading up and some of Olympus's new MILCs have both Focus Stacking (in-camera) as well as Focus Bracketing options which appear very interesting. In addition, their implementation of pixel shifting (8 shots shifted by 1/2 pixel vs 4 shots shifted by 1) seemed to yield better results than the K-3 II. The drawback being the extra time needed for 8 shots vs 4. This was from a imaging-resource test here :

Olympus PEN-F Review: Now Shooting! - High-Res Shot Mode

[stevebrot]

I originally repaired artifact areas by exporting a PS photo to TIFF in-camera with PS turned off, giving me the PS and non-PS versions. In the latest DCU5 (5.4.2), there is a button in the laboratory screen for turning PS on/off that allows you to export the PS version, and also the non-PS version. Then, layering these in Photoshop with the PS version on top means that you can use the eraser tool to selectively remove the artifacts, revealing the non-PS version underneath for those areas. This is possibly what the K-1 will do automatically, and which I hope comes to the K-3II via firmware update.

Glad to hear this approach works.


Steve

[clackers]

Ie maybe that functionality that seems to be on K-1, some sort of movement compensation thing.

Uses the first picture only for an area where movement's detected, apparently.