The Quiet Picture

A while back I was being a bit sceptical about the new Photoshop CS5. Then I found out that there’s one feature that might actually be quite interesting for me, the improved HDR processing engine. HDR in CS4 was quite bad, actually, but this new version (HDR Pro) promised an option to remove ghosts that sometimes appear in your HDR pictures when something has moved between the frames, for example tree branches in the wind. I had one such HDR that I’ve been trying to fix on and off since last September, so of course I had to test if I could finally get it done in CS5.

In short – no.

If you look at the picture, the first sample shows the ghosting that appears when the image is processed normally (samples are not downsized or processed otherwise than the HDR, just cropped from originals). I then applied ghost removal and used the medium exposed frame as the base for it. And it actually does a pretty good job, but only with some of the branches. On the right side, things look fine. In the lower left corner, it’s a total disaster.

So I loaded the same HDR but using the under-exposed frame as the base for the ghost removal. Now it looks acceptable (let’s oversee the serious CA, it’s not the point of investigation here), but instead of the ghosting, there is now some weird pixelated splotches all over the place. Look at the tree trunk, there are some black dots that are not happening in the other samples. And on the right in the brances, some green dots.

I tried to adjust all of the processing settings to see if I could get these artefacts to disappear. But nix, it can’t be done.

This particular HDR could work with just two frames, but the ghost removal option is not available for a two frame merge. It probably wouldn’t help anyway because the un-needed overexposed frame is not used for the branches anyway.

Maybe this particular picture is just too much for HDR Pro. Let’s not forget that this is the first version of ghosting removal and first versions often just give you a taste of the tool. Just like the HDR tool in CS4 was crap and now it’s good, so there’s a reason to expect that ghosting removal will be improved in CS6!

But until then, I have to decide if I will keep this HDR or finally trash it after spending hours on trying to make it work. Currently my only option seems to be to combine the best bits from the two HDR versions with ghosting removal applied. After a while, I’ll probably decide that the picture wasn’t that good anyway!

I’ve got myself a new toy in the form of a 14″ Sony Vaio laptop. I must say that I’m quite happy with it, not least because I got it for discounted price that I’m sure was Sony’s mistake! When I was looking for a laptop, I was having a real hard time finding something that was perfect for my needs. Then I found this Vaio in one webshop, it was only some pre-release information with a price but it wasn’t available for order yet. So I went directly to Sony’s store, bookmarked the page and waited for the laptop become available. One day it did… but the price was a whole lot lower than the price I had seen in the first store. I didn’t waste any time but ordered the Vaio, and the following day when I checked the Sony store again, they had corrected the price so it matched the higher price I had seen at first. But in my order, it was still that “discounted” price, this is the first time I’ve been a beneficiary of a pricing mistake! Not complaining.

The laptop comes equipped with a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. I had been quite keen on seeing this new OS, having been one of the many (millions) who hate Vista. And so far it’s been a positive experience, even if it had some features enabled that were driving me crazy, but when I finally figured out how to disable the nuisance I’m much happier already. I still have one nag but I hope that I can fix that one, too. Google will help.

So apart from not being able to keep my fingers off the new toy, I spent some more time with my crocuses; there’s not much else growing yet anyway. There’s quite a bit of snow left in the forest, while the snowmobile trails are getting too soft to walk on so my walks are restricted to the roads at the moment. But things happen quickly at this time of the year, so I’m sure that things will look up soon!

Internetworld har gjort en webbhotelltest, och det visade sig att mitt webbhotell Cliche fick sämsta betyg. Jag har kanske haft tur då för jag har inte upplevt några som helst problem. Hur många år har jag haft minnak.net nu… fyra? Under den tiden har jag behövt kontakta supporten två gånger och fick snabb svar både gånger, först när jag behövde MySQL aktivering får att installera WordPress och sen när jag reggade en ny domän och ville peka om den. Fast ompekningen gick inte som jag ville, men det var mitt fel – det stod ju i klartext hur de kan peka om, och det jag ville göra var bestämt nånting annat. Så nu äger jag en domän som gör ingenting… tror inte jag förnyar den… Hursomhelst alltså, trots dåligt betyg från Internetworld så skulle jag ändå kunna rekommendera cliche.se. Kanske hjälper det att jag jobbar med IT så det här att man inte får något hjälp med att installera WordPress osv gör mig inget, och kontrollpanel har jag faktiskt inte saknat heller – jag tänkte inte ens på saken tills jag läste om det i testet. Uptime tycker jag får godkänt också.

Jaja, kanhända att har jag alldeles för låga krav då.

OBS! Jag har ingen annan knytning till cliche.se än att vara kund… tyckte bara att det var lite småroligt att se hur cliche misslyckades med nästan vartenda delmoment i testen. Your mileage may vary!

P.S. Titta jag lyckades med att skriva (nästan) hela inlägget på svenska, borde kanske prova på finska också nån gång får att se hur det känns!

Last year I planned to get a MacBook Pro this year to replace my desktop machine. However, the old desktop is still working fine and there’s sufficient hardware to cater to my current computing needs, so I couldn’t really justify the MacBook Pro yet. The only problem I had was the harddisk, it was slow and noisy and starting to get a bit full as well. So instead of a 23K Mac I got a sub-1K HD and after carefully backing up all my files, replaced the disk.

The new disk was recognised instantly so off I went installing Windows, no problems whatsoever, in with the drivers and now I hit a snag. It started complaining about some missing files… insert disc? No idea what it meant, so in with SP3, reboot and try again. Same error. Hmm. Check disk manager – WTF?! Windows was set up on … partition J? I mean, what happened with C?! Reboot and check again… sure enough, J. Hmm.

Then I had a great idea, create another partition and install Windows on that one. Said and done. Now I had Windows on partition I. Except the really funny thing was while I was logged in Windows #2, I could see my original Windows installation on C! What is going on?? Ok check Google, there must be a way to swap the letters for the system drive. Indeed there is, so I did as instructed and… Windows #1 won’t start. Hmm. Maybe I did it wrong, so I tried it on the second Windows and… Windows #2 won’t start. Hmm.

But now I realised that my internal multi-card reader was probably messing up with the drive letters, so I disconnected everything and launched Windows setup again. Deleted the existing partitions, did a rain dance and crossed my fingers and… voilá, I had Windows on drive C. Perfect. The drivers all installed without errors as well, although I did check the drive letters rather nervously after every reboot!

The new disk is superfast and superquiet with a 750 GB capacity, so disk space will certainly not be an issue for the next 5 years or so (it will outlive the rest of the computer by far). I still have one of the old 120 GB drives as a backup and it’s interesting to compare these two disks, they are like night and day. When I copied my files from the backup to the new disk, I could hear the old disk crunching away while the new one was barely audible at all. Lovely!

Now that my desktop computer has a new lease of life, I can save up for a MacBook Pro 17″ with extra RAM, maybe next year then…

I’ve mentioned quite a few times that I don’t like wideangle lenses because they are a compositional nightmare for me. I do however like wide views – panoramas. A stitched panorama shows so much more than a panorama crop of a picture taken with an extreme wideangle lens.

The biggest problem with creating panoramas is to create a seamless join between the frames. The left edge of the first frame is never a 100% match of the right edge of the second frame, so if you’re creating your panorama manually, it becomes very time consuming to manipulate the pictures in order to hide the seam. I’ve tried a few panorama programs in the past but nothing worked to my satisfaction (or the program was so complicated to use that I gave up) so I’ve been doing my stitching the hard way, which is not only tedious but also very time consuming.

So I decided to take some measures to improve the situation. Firstly, I ordered the Acratech Leveling Base which will enable me to level the ballhead, because a perfectly level platform is the foundation of a good panorama (I just got the thing so hopefully I can say something about it after this weekend). And then I also wanted to give stitching software another chance, especially after I heard that Photoshop CS3 is very good at it so I felt that I was just making things too hard for myself by stitching manually. Unfortunately, PS is not an investment I can justify in any way, so I looked for specialist stitching software instead and I started with Canon PhotoStitch which came with the camera. I gave up after the first panorama – total crap. PhotoStitch is best used uninstalled. I browsed some photo forums to find out what software other photogs used, and saw someone recommend Microsoft’s ICE (Image Composite Editor) which apparently is just as good as Photoshop. And the price is right – it’s free.

I loaded up my panorama frames and waited for ICE to do its thing. I was amazed – I couldn’t tell where the seams were, even when I knew where they were! I have now been throwing panoramas at it for two nights in a row (I had lots of unstitched images in my catalogue), everything from 2 to 13 frames, and it seems to deliver perfect results most of the time. There are two things which seem to be an issue sometimes, one of them makes sense but the other one is a bit of a mystery.

Firstly, although all the detail in the image is seamlessly joined, ICE doesn’t always seem to be able to compensate for uneven light from one frame to another. By this I mean that if one side of the frame is slightly darker than the other (it is so slight that you don’t even know about it until you start stitching), then in stitching you will notice this when the lightness of the picture changes at the seam. ICE allows you to export the panorama in e.g. Photoshop format with layers, so for critical work, you can use adjustment layers to fix the issue. You can see an example of this problem in the panorama below – there’s a sharp change in levels a little bit right from the middle, and then about 2/5 from the right there’s a wide strip with some lighter levels. It’s good enough for me because I won’t use this image for anything other than keeping in my catalogue (and using it as an example here), but if were to e.g. print it then I would take some time in an editor to sort out the levels.

Secondly, sometimes ICE leaves out a frame in the stitch for no apparent reason at all. Initially I thought it’s doing it because there wasn’t enough overlap between the frames, but then it happened again when there was definitely enough overlap. I re-loaded the frames but it did the same thing again. The really strange thing is that ICE knew exactly what size of slice was missing in the panorama, so it left a gap which was a perfect fit to fill in Photoshop without moving any of the layers done by ICE. Weird. This happened e.g. with the above panorama.

Other than these bugs, it really doesn’t get any easier. Launch the software, select the pictures, read some news while you wait (it doesn’t take very long anyway), select the crop and how you want to save it and that’s it. I never thought I’d say this but… well done Microsoft!

The only problem I have now is what will I do when I go over to Macs next year like I’m planning to? I somehow doubt that Microsoft will make a Mac-compatible ICE!

There’s a new browser in town – Google Chrome. Google has built the browser from ground-up so it has some nice new features, while otherwise it is very bare-bones (at least in this first beta release version). All in all, something that made me curious so of course I had to install it. I am rather pleased with it, actually – all the pages I visit seem to work fine, the only broken page I’ve come across included a Java app, not sure why it doesn’t work… Java should work better in Chrome and all the other Java apps tried so far have also been fine. A reinstallation of Java perhaps, but it’s not urgent. Even Lotus Notes webmail was rendered adequately, despite the warning that this browser is not supported.

So will I ditch my beloved Firefox for Chrome? No I won’t – well, not yet anyway. For example, I really like the customisable search bar in FF. You can add search engines of your choice (including IMDb, Wikipedia and dictionaries) and while Chrome allows you to change your default search engine, it won’t allow a multiple choice. And even if Google will add more options to the browser, in the meanwhile Firefox will also evolve. Will be interesting to see what the future will hold though, considering how Google has supported Mozilla – a bit of a conflict of interests, methinks.

There’s only a Windows version available at the moment, but they are apparently working on Mac and Unix versions as well.

Spread Firefox! Firefox 3 download day coming up.