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02-08-2008, 09:38 PM   #1
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Cool new exposure blending technology (better than HDR)

(Clarification: When I say "better than HDR" I mean better at blending exposures together than what most people tag as "HDR" on Flickr.)

Example:


Background:
I've used Photomatix since version 1.1 (thanks Geraldine!) and have been making HDRs for 3D rendering for way too many years, but I've never been satisfied with the tonemapping that is done to squeeze lots of dynamic range into an 8-bit image for web or print. If it is my RAW processing, it's the horrid noise that I get when I try to squeeze too much out (but I hope a K20D will help in that regard). If it is in combining exposures into an HDR intermediary, then using Photoshop or Photomatix or FDRtools or whatever leaves me with inexplicable results from oddly named controls.

Hot Tip:
But now I've found what I've been looking for: Enfuse.
This is still a very early-stages and experimental technology, but the results are just astounding. No more silly halos or grainy black junk in my skies, no more weird color transitions between interior and exterior light, and no more "guessing" which settings will yield something I like to look at. Rather than build an HDR (32-bit float) image that can't be displayed on my monitor, this "fusion" takes the best of each exposure and sensibly blends them together, period.

Best Part:
There is a standalone app for OS X that takes multiple bracketed exposures and "fuses" them with a clean and very cool GUI. Bracketeer from Pangeasoft is the schnizzle-dizzle. And if you create bracketed panos (like I do) some features in Bracketeer are even better than icing on the cake (3D previews!). But the simple fact is that this Enfuse technology is so much faster and simpler and *more realistic* at blending differently exposed images of the same scene, that I've been having fun with it from when it was a Unix commandline utility. Bracketeer just means I can share it with others!

Final Words:
My above example isn't the best in the world, but it shows what can be done. If you have a Windows machine, well there is an Enfuse GUI for you too, but nowhere near as cool and neatly packaged. See this message here.

The K10D already has one of the best AEB mechanisms for multiple-exposures (5 brackets at 2ev steps!), so this is just a great way to take JPEGs or TIFFs and put them together better, faster, cheaper.

Just my "tip of the week"

-Mark

(BTW, the QTVR of the above pano can be found on my underconstructed site.)

02-08-2008, 11:14 PM   #2
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This looks interesting but I'm and idiot when it comes to "programing software" to load on a Windows (Vista) computer. I loaded all the files and can not find the executable file to install the program. The read me notes are way over my head. I've been to your page and several others suggested on the provided pages with no luck. So is there a simple link to download the program that is self executable? Or is this just too early for a simple download?
02-09-2008, 01:16 AM   #3
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Peter, is this what you ended up with?

"If you think this could be of any help, please download the droplets from http://www.erik-krause.de/enfuse_droplets.zip and EXIFTool windows executable from ExifTool by Phil Harvey and unpack all files in the folder where enfuse.exe resides[1]. Rename exiftool(-k).exe to exiftool.exe and create shortcuts as described in the readme.txt file from the droplets zip.

The batch files won't work directly, shortcuts are mandatory. Then drop a folder that meets above conditions on the shortcut that points to enfuse_auto_droplet.bat (best named "Enfuse Auto")"

Not for the faint of heart to be sure. When Mark said the Windows side was not as "neatly packaged" he was not kidding.
02-09-2008, 01:27 AM   #4
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It looks interesting.
I'll have to try it sometime after my move, and memory upgrade.
I'm just too busy now, plus my computers running too slow.

02-09-2008, 01:40 PM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by davemdsn Quote
Not for the faint of heart to be sure. When Mark said the Windows side was not as "neatly packaged" he was not kidding.
Yeah, most of this stuff is being built from the latest open-source code and is pretty rough on Windows and Linux. [Should be noted again: Bracketeer linked above is far from rough - polished in fact, but Mac only.] Not sure if this will be any easier to use (I guess it requires .NET framework):

Enfuse GUI

I'll also post better examples when I get time.

-Mark

Last edited by panoguy; 02-10-2008 at 08:46 PM.
02-09-2008, 03:23 PM   #6
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I gave up. I'll wait till they write an easier interface and loading program that is self extracting. Looks great from the pics but I'm clearly not ready.
02-10-2008, 08:50 PM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by Peter Zack Quote
I gave up. I'll wait till they write an easier interface and loading program that is self extracting. Looks great from the pics but I'm clearly not ready.
Like I said, Windows is lagging behind technologically and interface-wise when it comes to running these apps written for Unix. The app Bracketeer is just about the first commercial front-end for Enfuse, but is OS X only. I just found out that Photomatix will probably have this technology in the near future, so it might just be a waiting game for those on Windows...

-Mark

02-10-2008, 09:02 PM   #8
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This front end for enfuse seems promising:

Enfuse GUI

Loaded it on my Vista machine and it looks pretty good, but the actual "enfuse" program for windows is hard to find.... the author's page is here:

Downloads This week in panospace

but as of this writing, the link to enfuse seems down by will of the author.... maybe he's about to release a new build? Too bad, I'd love to try this out but all searches lead back to this panospace web page.

Anyone have an alternate link?

germar
02-11-2008, 01:17 AM   #9
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Mark, thanks for the heads-up and links! The Enfuse and Bracketeer combination looks promising, and I think I'll add them to my toolkit, since Photoshop's HDRs can be frustrating at times.
02-11-2008, 08:11 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by germar Quote
Downloads This week in panospace

but as of this writing, the link to enfuse seems down by will of the author.... maybe he's about to release a new build? Too bad, I'd love to try this out but all searches lead back to this panospace web page.
Oh, that's Yuval's blog. Kind of a "gathering point" for this experimental pano stuff. I'm glad things point there, as I didn't know he had already made nice installers for Windows. Yuv's probably building the "latest and greatest" version as we speak.

The actual Enfuse is a part of the Enblend libraries written by Andrew Mihal. (Sourceforge page) If you use almost any panoramic "stitching" software (PTGui, PTMac, Stitcher, Photoshop CS3) it uses this technology, or something based off of it, to blend the edges of the photos together as if by magic. Enfuse is something added as of last December.

QuoteOriginally posted by christinelandon Quote
Mark, thanks for the heads-up and links! The Enfuse and Bracketeer combination looks promising, and I think I'll add them to my toolkit, since Photoshop's HDRs can be frustrating at times.
That's why I'm letting people know - especially Mac users right now! So much faster and easier, and it gets rid of noise and "keeps the blacks black and the whites white."

Here is another quick run with the default settings:

02-11-2008, 07:10 PM   #11
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Update on Enfuse for Windows and some clarifications.

QuoteOriginally posted by germar Quote
...the actual "enfuse" program for windows is hard to find.... the author's page is here:

Downloads This week in panospace

but as of this writing, the link to enfuse seems down by will of the author.... maybe he's about to release a new build?
Well, Yuval, the "This week in Panospace" blogger/ author (who is *not* the Enfuse author, let that be known) emailed me some updates and clarifications for those who use Windows (all 92% of the market).

Here they are: (quoth Yuval L.)

QuoteQuote:
1. First an apology: the Windows installer has been unavailable for about 20 hours. My mistake (mod_rewrite rules). It's available again.

2. Credits. The authors who deserve full credit for enfuse are:
* Tom Mertens, Jan Kautz and Frank Van Reeth for the math
* Andrew Mihal and Pablo d'Angelo for the code
* Erik Krause for the droplets (Windows only)
* Harry van der Wolf for building and packaging OSX binaries
* me for building and packaging Windows binaries
* a number of people on the hugin-ptx mailing list for helping out
* a number of people for the different GUIs that are mushrooming around

3. on all platforms, the underlying *functionality* is exactly the same, and we are striving to support everybody. Note that ours is all voluntary, part-time, unpaid effort. As far as OSX is concerned, the effort is more complex than the other platforms and we have less resources, but Harry does a great job at keeping up with it.


4. The latest enblend-enfuse for Windows, available since last week, is not difficult at all. A summary:

* download the latest enblend-enfuse installer from <Downloads This week in panospace>
* go through a standard Windows install process (click blindly on the next button a few times). it will result in a few icons on your desktop
* drag a folder full of images on the droplets and it will enfuse the images

DONE. forget anything else. I made the installer as user-friendly as a Windows installer can be under the given circumstances. I am always open for feedback.

Oh, there is some complexity: more than one droplet. For example, one of Erik Krause's droplets aligns images automatically, using Pablo d'Angelo's hugin functionality. There might be a new droplet with more functionality in the next installer, due soon. These are development snapshots, they change frequently. Check my blog regularly, I'll try to keep it updated with links to the latest tools.
Some final notes from myself (Mark):

The core team can be contacted at <hugin and other free panoramic software | Google Groups>

And if you like Enfuse, or ever stitch multiple images together and say "wow, I'm glad that Enblend thingy is going to smooth out my seams" then I encourage you to support this open source project by contributing your feedback, skills, or a small donation in your local currency. Enjoy, and don't forget to post your results!

-Mark
02-11-2008, 09:17 PM   #12
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Works nicely in Windows!

I can confirm that the "This Week in Panospace" link is now working. This product, when teamed up with Enfuse GUI, is pretty darn impressive out of the box. I just dragged and dropped some bracketed shots and the results were better than Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (none of that weird "dust" in the sky) and helluva lot quicker than endlessly mucking about with Qtpfsgui's algorithms.

Very impressive stuff, I will be watching this product's future development in the weeks and months to come! Excellent work, all of you who are involved with this.

I need to search around a bit more for some help with Enfuse GUI's available settings.

Regards,

Germar
02-27-2008, 01:18 PM   #13
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To the original poster: I'm curious as to how you go about stitching the pre-HDR/blended images into panoramas so they will exactly match each other for the HDR/blending process. What do you do to prepare the three or five bracketed images?
02-29-2008, 06:48 PM   #14
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Looks promising... It took me quite a while to figure out how to get the software, but I eventually did and ran a couple of pics through it on default.

Generally, opensource is such a pain, usually badly documented, bug-ridden and difficult to run effectively without spending a lot of time understanding. That makes it barely worth the effort in my books.

But, this program may well be worth the effort. I'll have to try my hand at some bracketing.


- Andrew
03-21-2008, 12:52 PM   #15
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Panotools

QuoteOriginally posted by sjl7678 Quote
To the original poster: I'm curious as to how you go about stitching the pre-HDR/blended images into panoramas so they will exactly match each other for the HDR/blending process. What do you do to prepare the three or five bracketed images?
Hi,

I use a stitcher based on a fairly common set of algorithms called "panotools." This moves and warps the images to fit together as a complete panorama based on numeric values. These values are defined by either manually or automatically choosing common points in each pair of overlapping images.

So, I (manually in my case) pick points on the best exposed set of images, and use the algorithms find the best values of warping for the alignment. Because I use a tripod and a precision panoramic head, I can then apply those same values (as a template) to stitch the sets of images of higher or lower exposure that might not have enough detail to be visually aligned. The results are consistent because the software and the photography setup are consistent.

Some great stitchers that can do "template stitching" (but are not all panotools-based) are:
Hugin (free, open source)

Realviz Stitcher ($80 for single rows, $350 for multi-rows, $600 for fisheyes)

AutoPanoPro ($150)

PTGui ($130)

PTMac (Mac-only: $60 for single panos, $120 for batching)

The interface and workflows for all of these can be radically different, but they can all stitch a single pano from well-exposed images and then repeat the results on tripod-aligned brackets. Also, they all can "automatically" do the alignment for you, but that should only be done for the first set.

There you go!

-Mark
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