Raw Recovery with ‘Oloneo Photo Engine’

Yesterday I presented a somewhat older panoramic image from 2006. Usually I don’t need that much time to reach a result which matches my vision. My standard workflow for panoramic images starts with loading all the files in the raw converter. I choose a common white balance for all images and unify exposure, shadows, and other parameters which have to be identical among every source image. After stitching I got the following result:

Castle Rock near Lynton (Devon, England)
Only global exposure set in raw converter

I was really disappointed. In my imagination the view just was stunning. But what I saw on the screen was really dull and boring. I tried to achieve a better result with adding masks and doing some dodging and burning, but I didn’t reach my goal of a spectacular image. So I left the files on the harddisk and they were buried in oblivion.

Recently I purchased Olonoe Photo Engine in order to use it for my high dynamic range workflow of spherical panoramas. Independently of that fact, I was recently crawling through the sphericals of our website and I stumbled upon the panorama PanoTwin Jürgen shooting Castle Rock. So I browsed my database for the images and found the long forgotten files of Castle Rock on my hardddisk. Immediately I realised that this image is a good candidate for the mode ‘raw recovery’ of Olonoe Photo Engine. So here is the result after playing a bit with the parameters:

Castle Rock near Lynton (Devon, England)
Raw recovery applied in Oloneo Photo Engine

So I choose the ‘raw recovered’ image as new base image of my tweaks. Again I applied some dodging and burning, but now the image matched my vision when I was standing at the coast of Lynton and looking towards Castle Rock. And this is the final result:

Castle Rock near Lynton (Devon, England)
Final image after tweaking in Photoshop

As Olonoe Photo Engine is capable of processing TIFF images with a bit depth of 16bit, be sure to start your panoramic imagery with images in RAW mode of your camera. And for best results stick to a full 16bit workflow.

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Castle Rock near Lynton (Devon, England)

Nearly six years ago we’ve been at the Panotools-Meeting in Bath. After the sessions we toured the south-west of England four another two weeks. And while taking a little hike near Lynton I took this panorama. And finally today I consider this image as completely post-processed 🙂

Castle Rock near Lynton (Devon, England)
Final image after tweaking in Photoshop

Panotwin Markus made a spherical while I was shooting a mosaic of this view. Back in 2006 I used a Konica Minolta Dynax 7D which had 6 Megapixel. As the shot was hand-held and I wanted to make sure not to forget some portions of the view, I chose an overlap of approximately 50%. So I ended up with 20 images (4 columns with 5 rows in landscape orientation). The final panorama has a resolution of only 42 Megapixel. But hey, this was nearly six years ago!

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Munich Airport Arena Polo – Stereographic Down Wide

This image shows a reprojected image of an arena polo event at the Munich airport. You find the interactive version of the panorma here. The projection is stereographic down with a field of view covering 328°x313°.

Reprojected Arena Polo at the Munich Airport
Reprojected Arena Polo at the Munich Airport
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Comparing corrected and uncorrected images of CV12mm/5.6 on Sony NEX-7

In a post from yesterday I analyzed a series of images from the Voigtländer Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm/5.6 on my Sony NEX-7 in order to identify the best aperture for maximum resolution. I wondered about the impact of my corrections at the stage of post-processing the images. To answer this question I picked the image taken with an aperture of f=8 and compare a uncorrected and a corrected version of the image.

While post-processing the uncorrected image I did the following:

  • conversion from ARW- to DNG-format
    (Adobe DNG Converter 6.6.0.261)
  • input sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw
    (Sharpn. = 25, Shrp.Radius = +1.0, Shrp.Detail = 25, Shrp.EdgeMasking = 0)
  • noise reduction in Adobe Camera Raw
    (LuminanceSmoothing = 0, Col.NoiseReduction = 25, Col.NoiseRed.Detail = 50)
Magenta cast and vignetting in corners uncorrected, distortion and chromatic aberrations also uncorrected.
Full image (uncorrected) with marked crop locations

While post-processing the corrected image I did the following:

  • conversion from ARW- to DNG-format
    (Adobe DNG Converter 6.6.0.261)
  • correction of magenta cast in the corners and vignetting with cornerfix
    (cornerfix 1.4.2.0)
  • correction of chromatic aberration in Adobe Camera Raw
    (ChromaticAberrationR = -15, ChromaticAberrationB = +8)
  • correction of distortion in Adobe Camera Raw
    (LensManualDistortionAmount = +3, PerspectiveScale = 101)
  • input sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw
    (Sharpn. = 25, Shrp.Radius = +1.0, Shrp.Detail = 25, Shrp.EdgeMasking = 0)
  • noise reduction in Adobe Camera Raw
    (LuminanceSmoothing = 0, Col.NoiseReduction = 25, Col.NoiseRed.Detail = 50)
Corners corrected with cornerfix, distortion and chromatic aberrations corrected with Adobe Camera RAW
Full image (corrected) with marked crop locations

For each of the marked locations in the full image I extracted a square (250 pixel * 250 pixel) which I will present at it’s original resolution. These images are not sharpened except for the same input sharpening with the raw converter. They are saved for web with a quality-setting of 60%.

Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8 (uncorrected)
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8 (uncorrected)

Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8 (corrected)
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8 (corrected)

In my opinion it’s clearly visible that the applied correction didn’t reduce the resolution of the image and therefore the identification of the best aperture for maximum resolution is not affected by these corrections.

Voigtländer Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm/5.6 (on Sony NEX-7) at different apertures

Recently I started using a Voigtländer Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm/5.6 on my Sony NEX-7. In two other articles I already described how to configure your NEX-7 for maximum assistance with manual lenses, how to attach the lens to the camera and how to post-process the images to eliminate the magenta cast in the corners.

As I am aware of the fact, that any combination of lens and body has it’s maximum sharpness at a specific aperture I did a series of test images to find this maximum. My subject was the front of a building. It has a nearly flat surface and the clinker bricks contain a lot of fractal details. The camera was mounted on a tripod whose distance to the wall was approximately 15 meters (approximately 50 feet). Images were taken with self-timer to prevent any camera-shake. Focus was set at the first exposure which was taken at f=5.6. The image quality was set to RAW (6,000 pixel * 4,000 pixel).

While post-processing the images I did the following:

  • conversion from ARW- to DNG-format
    (Adobe DNG Converter 6.6.0.261)
  • correction of magenta cast in the corners and vignetting with cornerfix
    (cornerfix 1.4.2.0)
  • correction of chromatic aberration in Adobe Camera Raw
    (ChromaticAberrationR = -15, ChromaticAberrationB = +8)
  • correction of distortion in Adobe Camera Raw
    (LensManualDistortionAmount = +3, PerspectiveScale = 101)
  • input sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw
    (Sharpn. = 25, Shrp.Radius = +1.0, Shrp.Detail = 25, Shrp.EdgeMasking = 0)
  • noise reduction in Adobe Camera Raw
    (LuminanceSmoothing = 0, Col.NoiseReduction = 25, Col.NoiseRed.Detail = 50)

The following image (at f=8) was scaled to 1,500 pixel * 1,000 pixel, sharpened and saved for web with a quality-setting of 60%.

Corners corrected with cornerfix, distortion and chromatic aberrations corrected with Adobe Camera RAW
Full image with marked crop locations

For each of the marked locations in the full image I extracted a square (250 pixel * 250 pixel) which I will present at it’s original resolution. These images are not sharpened except for the same input sharpening with the raw converter. They are saved for web with a quality-setting of 60%.

Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@5.6
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@5.6
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@8
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@11
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@11
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@16
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@16
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@22
Voigtländer Ultra Heliar 12mm/5.6@22

In my opinion it’s easy to see that the Voigtländer Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm/5.6 reaches it’s maximum sharpness at an aperture around 8 on a Sony NEX-7. If you stop further down diffraction starts to limit the resolution. For further reading on this issue try to start at this page at diglloyd.com.

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