HDRI News

HDR PhotoStudio is dead. Long live HDR Expose!

2010-07-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

The fine folks at Unified Color have changed more than just the name.

It's a complete overhaul, in the user interface and in the internal logic. What remains the same is the philosophy: You can edit your HDR in full 32-bit up until the end - when you save the image. It's really up to you if you apply just a color correction, de-noising and cleanup work on an HDR destined for lighting a CG scene. Or to take it to another tonemapper, for that matter. But you can just as well keep tweaking the look in HDR Expose, reveal highlights detail and work out small local contrasts until it looks nice on your screen - then you have effectively tonemapped your image in HDR Expose.

So, what's new?

Lightroom and Aperture plugin included for seamless integration
Colormanaged Display
Editable History Stack (can be saved as Recipes)
Live Histogram
64-bit, GPU and multicore acceleration

It's all about the creative workflow

Working with HDR Expose takes on the form of creative jam sessions. There's no pre-determined set of tools to use, instead you decide for yourself what sliders you need and stack as many of them as you want. For example, if you want to extract local contrasts with the Highlight/Shadow tool twice, just add this effect again.
Think of these operators like Adjustment Layers in Photoshop. Every effect works on the result of the previous one, but you can always go back in your operator stack and tweak the settings without loosing anything. With a tiny plus icon above the stack you can save the entire list as a recipe, which will then be ready for batch processing or as starting point for the next image.

Non-technical thinking

Technical decisions, like bit depth and compression of saved files, are all kept out of the way in the preferences. You set your workflow settings once you installed HDR Expose, and won't be bothered with that stuff again. I recommend setting up in your calibrated monitor profile right away, and choose TIFF: 16 bit / LZW and EXR with PIZ compression.
The same applies to the Lightroom Export plugin: You do your settings once in the overall Export dialog, and from there on you just invoke the plugin silently with the context menu.

High-quality legacy

One specialty that HDR Expose inherited from HDR PhotoStudio is the excellent halo reduction. Whenever you touch local contrasts (possible in multiple tools), you can set the quality of the halo reduction in 4 levels: Preview, Moderate, High, Ultimate. Calculation times can increase tremendously when switching to Ultimate, but when you need that extra bit of quality, it's there.

I had the chance to play with an early beta version, and so the 4th image in the tonemapping comparison on the Real HDR page (labelled "Photoreal") was actually created with HDR Expose. According to the survey below the images, people really liked the results a lot.

Downsides?

I was about to complain about stability issues I experienced with the beta, but now I'm happy to report that the release version turned out rock-stable (even on 32 MegaPixel imagery). There is, however, still some untapped potential for speeding up the performance, especially in Batch mode. There is no option to take panoramic projections into account, so you'd better be careful when applying local contrast enhancements to spherical panoramas. Despite the built-in ghost reduction, the HDR Merge module is not the best-in-class either.

Bottom line:

HDR Expose is currently the only software providing an end-to-end HDR workflow. It's indispensable for VFX artists to fine tune HDR lighting maps and highly recommended for photographers to create a natural tonemapping. It offers an unrivaled amount of control over colors and details, so it's a perfect match for control freaks like me aiming for the perfect picture.

After all, HDR Expose is a free upgrade for HDR PhotoStudio users. For everyone else there is a promotional offer of $99,- until the end of the month, but if you own the HDRI-Handbook that offer is in fact permanent for you. You'd just have to pick up your coupon on the software page...

So what are you waiting for? Download the demo or watch the new tutorial videos! Oh, and don't forget that June 26 is the deadline for Unified Color's HDR Contest phase 2!

HDR Video in the real world

2010-07-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Sure, you've probably seen the amazing timelapse HDR videos by Jay Burlage. Maybe you've already updated your Promote Control's firmware and tried some HDR timelapse yourself. But in the real world, shooting timelapse footage is rather the exception than the rule.

Digital video suffers from the same dynamic range limitations like photography, maybe even more because only very few video cameras offer RAW output. You may be able to tweak colors, framerate, shutter speed and grain to make video look like it was shot on film, but a clipped sky and blocked shadows always remain as the dead giveaway that the original source was a digital sensor. Soon this is about to change - with HDR video capture.

And while everyone is waiting for the RED Scarlet to arrive with a real HDR shooting mode (which is rumored to be still and moving footage), stereographer Graham Clark from E3D Creative came up with this brilliant example of a real world HDR shot:

More MOTION HDR from E3D Creative on Vimeo.

Graham explains:

Shot on 2 Red One's without MX upgrade with the OmniRig using 2 Ruby 14-24 zooms at 16mm with no geometric or lens fix in post. Tone mapping done in AE CS5 32bit project, added a little saturation on the HDR. This was shot at about noon with no lights or bounce, it was almost impossible to see into the shadows with our eyes as it was so bright out."

The OmniRig he's referring to is actually a Stereo-3D rig with a beamsplitter, which makes it possible to set the eye distance to 0 and simultaneously shoot different exposures with two cameras. It looks like this:

OmniRig on the Cartoni Twin 3D head from E3D Creative on Vimeo. More great photos on the E3D Creative website.

It does bear a striking resemblance to the 1930's three-strip technicolor monster cameras, doesn't it? When a stereo rig is misused like this for dynamic range increase, there's also an interesting technological parallel to shooting in color at a time when there is only black-n-white film available.

With 3D on the rise there are actually quite a few beamsplitter stereo rigs available now, notably from 3D Film Factory, 3Ality Digital, and Technica3D. For DSLR shooters like us, the best option seems to be the 3D-BS Mini Rig for $2,895. Unless of course, you'd just order a semitransparent 50/50 mirror and start building your own rig... or simply hire E3D Creative for your shoot!

PS - Monthly Update:

The Hot-on-Flickr gallery is rebooted for July, and to celebrate the WorldCup the free sIBL-of-the-Month is a football stadium from my hometown Halle.

Today is International HDR Day

2010-06-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

That's right, June 26 is International HDR Day as proclaimed by Rick Sammon and Trey Radcliff. June 26 also happens to be International Day against Drug Abuse and the International Day in Support of Torture Victims. Coincidence or clever planning?

Trey Radcliff and Rick Sammon are both authors of HDR books (here and here), both leaning towards the surreal-artistic side of HDR imaging. Some may argue Trey and Rick are largely responsible for promoting the overbaked "HDR Look", characterizing HDR as a trendy thing that you can agree or disagree over. It's true, funky styles do put HDR in the public spotlight. First reaction is always "woooaaaa". And by the time you've seen 100 images with this look, you either fell completely in love with it, or you're bored out of your mind and hate it.

The problem with that is, most people never even get to the point to discover that HDR is more than a one-trick-pony. If you go all the way, and really make use of a 32-bit pipeline, you will discover that there are serious advantages of an HDR workflow: truly lossless image editing, full exposure control, mastering any scene contrast without the need for artificial lighting, even down to fully preserving the light in scene so it can be virtually revisited anytime in the future. These things make a big difference for commercial real estate photographers, compositors, VFX artists, anyone with the need to take full control of an image.

Anyway, in celebration of the International HDR Day Trey and Rick invite everyone to submit one image to the DPExperience Flickr Group. Full contest details here. They will nominate a winner, that will receive a signed copy of their books. Which are useful as inspiration for beginners, just make sure you don't get stuck at the "Look ma, I'm creative" level.

No matter how different my view on what HDR is all about, there's one thing that I completely agree with Rick and Trey: HDR should be fun. And I believe everyday should be HDR Day. So here is my contest entry:

Sneak peek at Nik Software's upcoming HDR tool

2010-06-21T11:48:00.001-07:00

Nik Software, famous for filters plugins like Sharpener Pro and Color Efex Pro, is ramping up to enter the ever-growing HDR/tonemapping arena.

The unnamed HDR tool is currently in early development, somewhere between Alpha and Beta stage. At first sight it looks like an interesting blend between Magic Bullet Photo Looks and Lightroom, and it already features Nik's ingenious Control Points for truly localized adjustments, a wide variety of presets, and seamless Lightroom integration.

To see Nik's new baby in action sign up for a personal sneak peek webinar.

Here's a leaked recording of an earlier webcast, raw and uncut. Shortcuts to highlights are:

05:20 - Lightroom to Nik Software HDR via plugin, merging to HDR.
07:00 - Demo of some tonemapping presets.
09:10 - Alignment and De-Ghosting (fully automatic)
14:00 - Appearance setting
16:20 - Curves
18:00 - Toning a single JPEG (yuck)
25:00 - Localized changes using Control Points (nice)
33:00 - Painterly look walkthrough
40:00 - Q&A chatroom:
- It will be a plugin for Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop CS, maybe Bridge.
- Ghost Removal included.
- No fixed release date or price yet.

Nik Software HDR Tool Sneak Preview from minus kronor on Vimeo.

Personally, I would rather care for using these tools while keeping the image in 32-bit mode, enabling color-correction and fine level tuning on real HDRIs. We will see how the Photoshop plugin version will turn out.

Introducing: Real HDR webgallery

2010-06-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

About a year ago Rafal Mantiuk invented HDR-HTML, which is a clever way to display HDR images on a website with a real exposure slider. Now I took that technology, polished it a bit, and came up with a beautiful new HDR Web Viewer.

This is the beginning of a whole new gallery section, but it also brings up the old question again: What do you consider a "Real HDR Image"? There are many different opinions about it, all of them very valid, and I would like to use this opportunity to make it the subject of a survey.

Go check out the Real HDR Viewer!

Please do participate in the survey on the bottom of that page, takes only a second.
And then tell a friend so we get another opinion!

Friday Webcast: HDR in CS5 with Jack Howard

2010-06-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

Something to look forward to on Friday:

Jack Howard will open up his bag of tricks for you, showing off all the new HDR features in Photoshop CS5. It's a free O'Reilly web seminar, all you have to do is sign up and tune in at 10 AM (Pacific Time). That's right - it's broadcasting live on the world wide web, and you can get your questions answered in a Q&A session afterwards.

Sign up for Jack's Webinar here.

By the way - Jack just updated his "Practical HDRI" book to the second edition, featuring the latest techniques including CS5 and HDR PhotoStudio. It's a must-have for professional HDR photographers, now open for pre-order on Amazon.

Update: If you missed it, you can watch a recording on O'Reilly's Webcast site or with Adobe Connect (which is how it was broadcast).

sIBL-GUI 3 released, along with a flood of new sIBL sets.

2010-06-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

The new version of our automagical HDR lighting tool turned out awesome:

Real Google Maps inside
Seamlessly ties into Max, Maya and XSI via socket connections.
Fully customizable interface
Extendible with components
Database for managing huge amounts of sIBL-sets

Get sIBL_GUI 3 here, and check out this QuickStart screencast:

NOTE: If you're upgrading from sIBL_GUI 2, do a fresh install, DO NOT install over the old version. And in particular, make sure you're installing the new helper scripts for Maya/Max/XSI - the old ones are not compatible and won't connect to sIBL_GUI 3 correctly!

Veterans should also take a minute to see what's new in this in-depth screencast:

To celebrate this historic launch, Alex Hart from the Rhode Island School of Design donated 12 new sIBL sets for our archive. Awesome, thanks Alex!

On top of that, our dutch friend Bob Groothuis donated not one, but 4 unique sets for June's sIBL-of-the-month! It's a recently discovered bunker from the world wars, looks spectacular in this pano tour.

LightBitch 1.4

Lightwavers, on the other hand, can enjoy a brand new version of LightBitch - the down and dirty alternative way of HDR-lighting by extracting light sources.

LightBitch is now fully 64-bit compliant and has a special Export Compatible mode. That will ensure the generated light rig works perfectly fine in Maya, Max and XSI, via Lightwave's standard FBX export.

One more thing...

... in case you'd like to know what I'm doing in my day job. NBC just picked up The Cape for next season, which is the pilot I was recently working on at EdenFX.

We did the cape for the training sequence in CG, of course lit entirely with Smart IBL (in Lightwave). For this I spent some fun nights on set at the Queen Mary, shooting about 40 custom sIBL environments. And spent some more nights lighting, rendering and compositing. Also, we did several smoke effects here that required LightBitch to work nicely with MAX+FumeFX. See, I wasn't kidding: Smart IBL and LightBitch are production-proven, quite frankly I don't see how we could roll without them anymore.

Here's the trailer:

May Shortcuts

2010-05-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Unified Color announces HDR photo contest winners.

11 contestants were selected by a jury of professional photographers, taking home pretty awesome prizes. Congratulations to all the winners. You're now one step closer to snatching the grand prize: a MacBook Pro + National Geographic Workshop.

The contest will continue all throughout the year, now accepting submissions for round two.

Find out more in the Press Release and check out the Winner Gallery.

Open Camera Controller v3.2b

Our OCC project has been quickly adopted by photographers worldwide. We already see the fruits of this community spirit, forum member Achim Berg came up with some significant improvements:

uses more widely available parts
features a 'heartbeat' LED
no wire bridges needed on the circuit board itself

Achim also developed a slim version that fits inside a regular-sized GBA module. Assembly is currently too tricky to share, however Achim doesn't mind making OCC cables for the electronically challenged (like myself). Just drop him a line in this thread.

Read the updated OCC Cable tutorial.

Smart IBL is now truly universal

The "Big Five" in 3d software are Maya, MAX, XSI, Lightwave and Cinema 4D. And now, that Steve Pedler single-handedly wrote a Cinema4D Loader Plugin, we have them all covered. Yay. It was a welcome reason for me to update the Smart IBL Software page.

Smart IBL already found great acceptance in the Cinema4D community. Here's a sweet rendertest from C4Dblog.com:

they are back - example of sIBL loader for Cinema 4D from Marcin Czerwiński on Vimeo.

See more praise for sIBL in C4D on C4Dblog.com, on CGTalk, and here.

Lee Perry-Smith posted some breathtaking renderings on CGFeedback using Smart IBL (in a variety of renderers: VRay, mental ray, Ligtwave).
Elvis Blazencic's Corvette renderings (using Smart IBL in Lightwave) were chosen as Picture-of-the-Month in the Lightwave3D newsletter.
And the 3D-World Magazine #130 once again features some free sIBL-sets on the DVD, exclusively provided by Bob Groothuis, HDR-VFX, and yours truly.

ProEXR 1.5 Photoshop Plugin

Now that you updated to CS5, it's time to update the plugin that fixes Photoshop's OpenEXR support. Yes, it's still needed, which is a case for another post...

ProEXR version 1.5 is faster, better, and free for existing users. It also comes with a new EZ plugin for people that get easily confused with multi-layer support but still prefer to have control over Alpha Channels and file compression. Although After Effects CS5 ships with ProEXR, you should still download the update to get the excellent EXR Comp Creator.

Reminder: My readers get ProEXR for $76,- instead of $95,-. Just answer the security question on the the software page to pickup your coupon.

Tucson 2010, Part 2

2010-05-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to my coverage of the Pano Conference.

I mentioned in part 1 that 360cities.net is about to make their huge library accessible on the iPhone browser. It's currently in beta stage, and just not quite there yet.

Charles Armstrong: Remote Realities

The real potential of the iPhone is in native Apps.

This is where Tour Wrist from Spark Labs comes in. It may not have as many panoramas as 360cities in the database (yet), but it presents them in super-slick way. It basically turns your iPhone in a window into the panorama. Using compass and accelerometer it tracks along with your motion and shows whatever you would see at the pictured location. It's also GPS-aware, with community ratings, linked tours, and all that jazz.

The killer feature is that you can even shoot, tag and upload your own panorama tours with this App. For that you just need a clip-on fisheye lens, and the App walks you through all the steps. They call this feature an "AmaTour", and while that obviously won't compare to professionally stitched panos, it's pretty cool for the casual shooter. And the best: Tour Wrist is free.

So, how do they make money then?

There are three pretty innovative revenue models.

Users can book hotels and flights associated with the pano locations, right within the app. That is handled through affiliate programs, and the revenue is shared 50/50 with the photographer.
People can order a custom VR Tour for their business, which is then commissioned to photographers in the area. So the app is your agent, in that case.
As professional VR photographer you can order a custom branded version of the program, which will make you shine in front of your clients.

Currently they are working on the iPad version, which is probably going to steal the show.

Mark Segal: Aerial Panoramas

Granted, that has nothing to do with HDR (again), but it's still pretty awesome:

Mark Segal from SkyPan Internationl hangs a pano camera under the belly of an RC helicopter, and shoots gorgeous balcony views from not-yet-built skyscrapers. Or other places of interest like golf courses or event locations. If you're asking me, these people are just looking for any excuse to go wild with their heavy-duty electric copters. ;)

Their pano copter features:

feet lift up with hydraulics
remotely controlled gimbal head
can carry 26 lbs
up to 400 feet

And it shoots images like these:

Check out Skypan's Gallery or Mark Segal's website for more aerial eyecandy.

Mark knew some interesting stories about "Always keeping the copter in line-of-sight" and "Trying not to crash into waves on ocean fly-bys". With the new small HD cameras he also gets an live signal to a ground-based control monitor. That's your low-budget opening shot right there. Although I must admit that the footage on the website could greatly benefit from some good old-fashioned After Effects motion stabilizing.

If you're looking into getting your own RC helicam off the ground, Mark recommends checking out www.DraganFly.com!

Notes from the Pano Conference Tucson, Part 1

2010-04-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

The International Panoramic Photography Conference 2010 was happening the other week in Tucson. It was a 4-day gathering of the best pano shooters worldwide, along with some exclusive previews from pano gear vendors.

Here are some of the things I picked up, straight from my notepad:

Jook Leung: The Panoramic Narrative

Opening the conference, star shooter Jook Leung shared some great tips for adding artistic value to your panoramas:

Anticipating and visualizing the outcome is the most important skill for selecting just the right spot to shoot a panorama from.
Including people (carefully choreographed) is an excellent tool to tell a story, convey scale, and pull the viewer in on an emotional level.
HDR Ghosting can be put to artistic use to indicate motion and add some life to your panorama.

You can include yourself in the pano by separately shooting a self-portrait and photoshopping it in later. Even better, when shooting with a horizontal tripod or pole, you can use that self-portrait to cover up the blind spot.

To see more panoramic excellence download a PDF with Jook's slides.

Greg Downing / Eric Hanson: XRez Studio

Big ideas are born at XRez. Their mission is to apply techniques from Visual Effects and cutting-edge photography to projects of scientific significance. Many of these techniques they invented themselves:

Large environments are best captured from a higher altitude. For a regular panorama you'd put the camera on top of a pole, but that doesn't work so well for Gigapixel images. Because then you need to use a remotely controlled robotic head, and the additional weight introduces severe stability and safety problems. The solution is a tripod of epic proportions, constructed from three flagpoles.

Gigapixel images can be printed out in enormous size. Unlike your regular large-scale print, a Gigapixel print reveals more and more detail when you step closer. However, XRez's experience shows that the average trade show visitor is not aware of this, and instinctively keeps the distance to see the image as a whole. Turns out, you'll have to motivate people to have a close-up look. Simple tricks like hanging magnifying glasses from the ceiling or printing footsteps on the floor really help the viewer to appreciate a Gigapixel print in its full glory.

Dome projection cinemas are on the rise. Most planetariums are converting to a fully digital projection, and they are hungry for panoramic content. China is sprinting ahead here, with several brand-new dome cinemas opening doors in metropolitan areas. The latest trend is stereoscopic 3D laser projection in 8k resolution. Yay!

Read more on the XRez Blog or watch the recent interview on CGchannel.

Jeffrey Martin: The 360cities Community

What Flickr is for regular photos, is 360cities.net for panoramas. Actually it's better even, because the content is moderated to maintain a quality standard. Jeffrey Martin is the creator of 360cities, and he had some interesting stories to share.

It started with Jeffrey taking panoramas all over Prague and collecting them on a website called Prague360. The hard part was to convince businesses to pay for getting featured on there, but he kept going guerilla-style nevertheless. And it grew beyond capacity. When his second-generation database system went online, it turned out to be so versatile that it could easily map out the entire world. At this point it blew up completely, and now 360cities is featured in the default installation of Google Earth, has 5 fulltime editors, and hosts about 50.000 panoramas. Still growing.

So, if you want your panoramas to be seen, 360cities is the place to be.

They just added batch submission and a really cool web-based Virtual Tour Builder. Publishing is free, as it's always been, and you get paid for prints sold through the website. Or you can embed their player in your own website, enabling you to have a supercool pano gallery without typing a single line of code. Also, they just recently figured out how to show all panos on the iphone (currently in beta).

Soon 360cities will also introduce Pro Accounts. That one will allow you to build websites for clients using their gallery system. I know from experience how exhausting it is to maintain a good panorama gallery, keeping up with the player software (krpano in this case), and linking hotspots by coding XML files. Considering all this is done for you, a Pro account may actually be worth it's €179,- per year. Well, plus another annual €19,- for each client gallery (which I think just makes things complicated, hope they drop that extra charge when Pro accounts get officially announced...)

UPDATE: Pro Accounts officially announced for June 2010.

There are many more cool things I discovered, stay tuned for part 2.

In the meantime, let me earn some street creds with this pano I shot earlier this month:

Downtown LA at Night

That's a 500 Megapixel HDR pano, taken over the course of 90 minutes. Picturenaut and Photomatix 64-bit (PC version) and were both able to tonemap this giant image. Hurray!

HDRI in Photoshop CS5

2010-04-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

Jack Howard had some time to play with CS5. Here's what's new:

No more need to buy Extended, HDR Layers and Brushes trickled down to CS5 Standard
Ghost-Removal
Better HDR Merge from RAW files
More controls in the Local Adaptation tonemapper

Read more in Jack's article on Adorama's TechTock.
There's another great review from Mike Seymour on FXGuide.

On the flip side, I'm getting a bit concerned that Adobe itself is promoting Pseudo-HDR and Merge-straight-to-Tonemapping techniques (video). Obviously intended to serve the Flickr crowd, they are following a trend just when it is about to reverse itself. Because if you're watching the Hot-On-Flickr gallery, you'll notice that "tasteful" is the new trend in tonemapping, and "catchy/cartooninsh" is actually on the decline.

GigaPan EPIC is out and we're cracking the 2 Million Mark

2010-04-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

First off, a big huge THANK YOU to all my readers!

HDRLabs has officially shot past the 2 Million visitor milestone. It's a bit intimidating to know that I'm speaking to such a large audience here. But also feels good to be heard.

What really pushed traffic over the edge was the Open Camera Controller project.
Since it's launch just about a month ago this project has made huge leaps forward: CircuitBoardsToGo started to feature the OCC board on their front page, volunteers are working on a list of European part suppliers, Achim Berg contributed an improved circuit board layout, and there is even talk about designing a dedicated cartridge housing. Great work guys, I'm really happy to see the community adopt this project so quickly.

GigaPan EPIC: First look by Greg Downing

Photographers that feel more comfortable with ready-made products will be happy to hear that the GigaPan EPIC Pro robot is now available.

The original GigaPan unit has been around for a while. It's very easy to use, and I shot several panos with it (Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Arches, Hollywood Hills). Still, it bothered me to that it was limited to point-and-shoot cameras. GigaPan EPIC Pro changes that.

Compared to mine, this new unit seems like a worthy upgrade: Much better battery solution, real remote release cable (instead of that clunky lever pushing the camera's release button), and a U-shaped bracket to hold the weight of a DSLR.

Here's Greg Downing's review:

Gigapan Epic Pro (DSLR version) Review from xRez Studio on Vimeo.

The wobbly construction is easily fixed and seems to be a manufacturing exception. Michael James from hdriblog.com reports the unit arrived in sturdy condition.

Read more: Greg Downing's full review on the XRez Blog.

More sIBL sets for you.

If you missed the March issue of 3DWorld (or got one without DVD), this is your lucky day. Until May 4 you can download all 8 exclusive sIBL sets directly from the 3DWorld blog.

On top of that, I just updated the sIBL-of-the-Month. A little late, but worth the wait...
Enjoy.

Contests, Conferences and a Coupon Code

2010-04-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

Catchy headline, eh? We’re dealing with three completely separate news items here, each of them awesome on its own.

Unified Color launches “True Vision HDR Contest”

The maker of HDR Photostudio are launching an HDR photo contest. It will run all year long, with three rounds of winnings, the first one coming up in May.

Now, I know what you’re thinking - “they just want to fill their gallery with my photos”. But hold on - I wouldn’t drop this hint if it wouldn’t be worth it: They have insanely great prizes!!! Literally a pile of great photo gear is waiting for you, topped with a professional workshop from National Geographic Expeditions and a MacBook Pro.

May 12 is your first submission deadline, sign up here.

International Panoramic Photography Conference

On April 14 − 18 the small town of Tucson, Arizona will turn into a buzzing hub of pano fanatics. The winning formula is:

Top Speakers + Scenic Location + Great year for new Hardware/Software = Kick-Ass Conference!

I will be there as well, talking about “HDR and what Hollywood needs your panoramas for”. You'll get to see a good part of my SIGRRAPH presentation (which was always well received), enhanced with some exclusive clips and making-ofs from EdenFX.

Check out the full schedule to see what the real big stars in the pano scene are talking about: Jook Leung, Greg Downing, Jeffrey Martin, and many more.

April 14 is approaching quickly, and the hotel is filling up, so better sign up now.

Get HDR Darkroom for 15% off

Frequent visitors of this site know that my readers get unmatched discounts on most commercial HDR software. You just need to punch the password from the HDRI Handbook into the sidebar on the Software page.

The great folks at HDR Darkroom, newest member of the HDR utility/tonemapper family, join this tradition now. Your special rate is $67.15 - that is 15% on top of the introductory 20% discount on $99. Pretty cool, eh?

CS5 and Magic Bullet

2010-03-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

Photoshop CS5

Adobe started a countdown page, in search for some big social networking hype. The big selling feature is Content-Aware Fill, and it looks very useful for cleaning up panoramas after stitching.

Here's a less popular, but much more informative sneak peek video:

More feature goodness:
Better Edge Selection and Masking - Sounds simple, but may turn out to be most awesome.
Paint Tools - new brush bristles, and several handy shortcut enhancements.

If it would be for me, I'd be happy with a simple Curves Tool in 32-bit mode. But let's see, maybe there's more in CS5 than they dare to disclose yet...

Magic Bullet PhotoLooks

Magic Bullet used to be one of our secret weapons at Eden FX when it comes to color grading and finding just the right look. And now you can have that same magic in Photoshop as well.

According to the feature list it works in 32-bit. And yes, it includes Curves and all the other tools you're missing in Photoshop (until CS5?). Haven't yet tested it myself, but if it's half as good as the original After Effects plugin it's worth its weight in gold.

Read more about it on Stu Maschwitz' blog.

Introducing the Open Camera Controller

2010-03-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

What if you had a programmable touchscreen remote with an 8 hour battery life, that can be fitted to any DSLR? With free apps for extended HDR shooting, timelapse, controlling an affordable telescope mount, sound triggering, and more. All Open Source, driven by a community of enthusiastic photographers like you.

Then you must have an Open Camera Controller.
The catch: you have to build it yourself. Out of a Nintendo DS.

It will be a cool garage project, easy to do and very rewarding. We've done everything to document the whole process. The hardware is subject to Open Source rules as well, so if you're a wizard with electronics we highly welcome your improvement ideas.

This project is brought to you by Steve Chapman, HDRLabs' newest collaborator.

Steve is sort of a legend in Hollywood, known as the go-to-guy for scanning actors, props and sets. In fact, in 2001 my very first job duty in the VFX industry was to character-rig Captain Archer of the Enterprise, which I later found out to be scanned by Steve Chapman himself. And Steve's quite a character as well, which you will discover when you're looking at the comments in his source code...

The Open Camera Controller (OCC) was previously known as PanoCamera. It’s just that the project has grown out of bounds, and while the core program is still the ultimate HDR-panorama-bracketing machine, it now also does astrophotography, sound triggering, e-book manuals, the whole nine yards. And who knows what the Open Source community will come up with… That’s why we put the emphasis on “Open” as in “Whatever you want your camera to do”-platform.

OCC fits HDRLabs like a glove, similar in spirit and open accessibility. That's why it is a top-level project now, housed in the main menu right next to Picturenaut. What was previously the PanoCamera forum, is now a category in the HDRLabs Community. It had only 15 active members, but a ton of great discussions and ideas. If you’re one of these 15 early adopters, congratulations and welcome!

Read more on the OCC project page.

And the Oscar goes to … Paul Debevec

2010-03-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

I’m talking about the Technical Oscar, the stepchild Academy Award that was already out handed last month. It’s dedicated to the unsung heroes of the movie biz, the inventors of groundbreaking technology that makes those flickering lights more and more spectacular every year. After all, it’s still the “Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences”, right?

Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar got honored for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.

Their Light Stage is what fueled the production of Avatar, Benjamin Button (VFX Oscar Winner last year), Harry Potter, Superman 3, ect. So, it really is the star behind the scenes; the “thing” that makes photo-real digital actors possible.

Read more on the Lightstage Project page or watch Magic Paul's TED Talk on Digital Emily.

Oh, and my congratulations to everybody who worked on Avatar. Well deserved VFX Oskar. I seriously considered quitting my job and opening a t-shirt shop when I walked out of that movie. It's disturbingly good VFX work!

Christian Bloch

Smart IBL gets on the 3D-World Cover DVD

2010-03-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

It's sometimes funny how communities develop.

At this point there are 4 vendors offering HDRIs as ready-made sIBL sets:

Bob Groothuis with his fabulous Dutch Skies 360 collection
Charles Leo with a huge 120-set library on HDRSource
HDR-VFX offering custom HDRI / sIBL shoots of any scale
And Yours Truly, holding the project together on HDRLabs.

You'd think they're competitors, but no. It's actually a very friendly community that helps each other out all the time. And as Bob Groothuis lands a gig with 3d-World, he happily gives us all a lift.

Winner of this situation is you, the 3d artist community. You'll find a most precious gift glued to the cover of the March issue of 3D-World:

8 Premium sIBL sets for free.

My contribution is an exclusive select from Tokyo, the Tatami Room B. And there's Helipad Night A from our in-house library at EdenFX, with all best wishes from my boss John Gross. This is something you'd normally wouldn't get your hands on. Ever.

See, pure gold on that 3D-World DVD. The US issue comes out in April, UK readers get it mid-March already. Make sure to check for the DVD - not all of the mags actually have one.

This issue also has some really interesting topics about the Linear Workflow and new-school Color Management.

Christian Bloch

PS: As you've come to expect, there's also a new sIBL-of-the-month and new chances to rise to the top in the Hot-on-Flickr gallery.

Updates: HDR PhotoStudio, Promote Firmware, Smart IBL

2010-02-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

The HDR world is in constant flux, there's always something new around the corner.

HDR PhotoStudio 2 on the Mac

HDR PhotoStudio has been last year's shooting star. I already raved about it here and Jack Howard has a great article here.

Even Kirt Witte wouldn't stop mentioning to our Tokyo crowd the awesomeness of HDR PhotoStudio and it's unique Veiling Glare tool

. And I absolutely agree! Wait, no - I like the Whitebalance and Color Tuning tools

tools even more.

Or maybe, what I love best is the philosophy behind HDR PhotoStudio: it lets you edit and tweak an HDR image, while taking full advantage of all available HDR image data at every step.
That's way beyond tonemapping. That's professional image editing on a production-quality level. These are color tools formerly only known in $4000,- VFX Compositing packages like Fusion or Nuke! And maybe even a bit better. I find it invaluable now for preparing HDRIs for lighting.

And now Unified Color answers the #1 user request: Make it work on the Mac! What they deliver is not just some lame conversion, instead they rewired the entire program to feel native on any OS. They also made a 64-bit Windows version, which I personally appreciate even more. And as special surprise with cherry on top it also installs a Lightroom plugin. Now it's just a matter of selecting my brackets in Lightroom, Right-click → Export to HDR PhotoStudio, and done (just like the Photomatix plugin).

Promote Control Firmware Update 1.16

The other revolutionary newcomer from last year has been updated as well. With the Promote Control most Canons and Nikons get a a turbo-charged Autobracketing mode.

See, the folks from HDRSoft are sharing with us this list of AEB modes of all cameras (which a great collaboration - thanks Geraldine!). It's a very long and mostly sad list, because the standard is 3-frame bracketing and/or 1 EV spacing. How pathetic.

The Promote Control fixes this situation, and allows arbitrary number of frames, with any EV spacing. No, it's not perfect, and I'm still having my complaints about the user interface and button layout - but it's the best we have right now and it does a damn great job in shooting pictures.

And now, with the new firmware, it also displays a preview of the HDR sequence, captures 9999 frames of timelapse, and can be intelligently slowed down to wait for slower cameras. All features that user requested in the most epic thread of our forum - so why am I telling you all this anyway? Promote developer Arty also says new holster accessories are on the way, soon you can strap that baby right on your tripod or panohead.

Get the Promote Firmware Update here.

Smart IBL for Lightwave v2.2

Great, my own software update now pales in comparison.

It's a maintenance update, okay: faster, more stable, a few more preferences and presets. Ready for the linear workflow in LW HardCore. Highly recommended.
If you have Auto-Update enabled your Smart IBL plugin should update itself, otherwise get it here.

Tokyo Transmissions

2010-01-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I haven't told you anything about Japan yet.

Yes, I went to SIGGRAPH Asia in December.

Did a Guerilla book signing session and held, together with Kirt Witte, our annual course on HDRI for Artists.

I really think our presentation was much better than last year in LA. We did better hand-offs, spiced it with more production examples, had more visual eyecandy all over the place. We did some extensive taping of the show, but it didn't turn out to be as useful as I was hoping.
One of these days you'll get to see our show, I promise - either in person or in some properly remastered digital equivalent.

For now I can only offer you the course notes at www.hdrlabs.com/siggraph/. It's basically an update of last year's course notes, and if you're a frequent visitor of HDRLabs you have seen most of the material already....

My favorite area at SIGGRAPH is always the Emerging Technologies floor.
Here's what I discovered:

Inflatable Panorama Dome

Why should your niece have all the fun in that bouncy castle? I find the idea of an inflatable panorama dome ingenious. Throw it on the back of a pickup truck, and you're ready to run your own tripped out festival. Just the entrance looked strangely uninviting, like it would swallow visitors. I wish there would be a better design solution for that.

Panorama Ball Vision

As an alternative, how about a fully spherical LCD monitor on your desk? This puppy uses a 500 RPM spinning LCD line to show equirectangular panoramas. Resolution isn't stellar, but the design with the outer glossy glass ball is so gorgeous!

More info about this device on this blog.

Project Dragonfly

This looked interesting for all you home inventors. Apparently Microsoft Reseach is involved in the development of a hardware sandboxing platform. Similar to the popular Arduino platform, but with much fancier modules - amoung them a touchscreen and a Wi-Fi radio.

Strangely enough, there's zero info about this on the web. Does it even exist? Was it a dream? All I have left is this flyer.

Robot Attack!

It wouldn't be Japan if there wouldn't be fancy robots on display. They were all behind glass at the booth of the Advanced Robotics Lab. So I really can't tell if they're just dumb puppets or self-aware killer machines. But I know for sure that their design rocks.

Eye HDR - Gaze-Adaptive display for HDR images

Here's one that better fits the topic of this blog. A professor from the Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore built a system that tracks your eyeball motion, figures out what you're looking at, and adjusts the exposure of an HDR image in realtime. Nothing revolutionary on the hardware side, and probably nothing that will rival the iPad, but for sure an interesting idea.

Here is a video of my friend Alex getting a demo:

Eye HDR from Christian Bloch on Vimeo.

3D Multitouch Interface in Style

The french VR company Immervision makes this insanely cool touch-pad cube. It's so beautifully designed, and the multitouch makes it so joyfully interactive to use. You grab, spin, pich, and the 3d object / environment does what you want. Remember the first time you pinched a photo on an iPhone? This is the same wo-haaaa effect all over again, but this time in 3D on a Magic Mirror.

Let my assistant Alex show you:

Cubtile from Christian Bloch on Vimeo.

But most exciting about this trip was Tokyo itself. I shot a bazillion panoramas in a variety of traditional and futuristic places.
Check out the best of them in my newly opened Tokyo Pano Gallery.

Picturenaut goes Open Source

2010-01-14T17:58:00.000-08:00

Actually, not really.

We have something even better for you: an
Open Source Plugin SDK

It's the complete package with examples, documentation and installation guide. That will allow you to use the insane realtime multitasking power of Picturenaut for your very own tonemapping algorithms. Just check out the code example on the SDK page to learn how easy that is.

Oh, and by the way - there's also a new Picturenaut version out! Only one minor change: the tonemapping button now has a drop-down menu. That's to cope with all the fancy tonemapping methods you guys will be coding...

HDR Source offers 120 sets for Smart IBL

2010-01-07T22:46:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to welcome HDR Source as official sIBL supporter. It's one of the oldest HDR stores on the web, with a huge library of over 120 sIBLs from a great variety of locations.

The man behind HDR Source is Charles Leo, who works in architectural visualization himself and is well known in the VRay community. Check out Lunar Studio for some breathtaking renderings! Maybe that's why his HDR libraries are so popular - because they just work.

Charles also wrote some great tutorials on setting up Smart IBL in MAX and rendering with Linear Workflow in VRay. I think that speaks volumes for his expertise.

To kick things off right, Charles friendly provided 7 promo-sIBLs for you. Very awesome!

Literally spent 30 seconds on this: I just grabbed a random object from our Eden FX asset library, and loaded up the Hotel Lookout sIBL. Rotated and moved the environment until I found a nice composition, and hit render. No adjustments to lighting or render settings, no post processing, it came out just like that... Which confirms: The lighting in the sIBL-sets from HDR Source certainly is in tune. The render may not be perfect, but clearly a great starting point.

Welcome to the future!

2010-01-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

2010.
We managed to get through the icky single-digits into the era of real science fiction. Hurray!

Let me start with a quick review of last year.

2009 has been pretty busy year in the HDR market.

• Photomatix and FDR Tools have matured a lot. Both have polished their Photoshop Plugins which has helped workflow integration.

• Picturenaut has become a real challenger to the commercial HDR packages, with its new interface and features. And thanks to your generous support it's still free.

• At least 4 new HDR programs entered the market, among them HDR Photostudio representing a real milestone.

• The Promote Control came out, the first professional remote controller to bring advanced bracketing to Canon and Nikon cameras.

That's all great. But let's rather look forward. At the chance to leaning myself way out the window, here's my...

Predictions for 2010

Dolby is likely to build an HDR display that will blow everyone away.
Nowadays every display company has at least one flagship model with Local Dimming technology. Their software is proprietary, tech specs are confusing to downright misleading, driver support to display real HDR content is non-existent. Dolby, having signed up the original inventors, will rule them all by creating the reference HDR display device. It will likely be ungodly expensive, but Dolby will license the tech out to the others, who will have to bite the bullet and obey. Because once established, consumers will look out for the Dolby Vision Logo sticker.

Microsoft will push hard on JPEG XR.
This highly flexible HDR format, formerly known as WDP or HD Photo, has real potential to become the workhorse of consumer-friendly HDR hardware. I imagine it to become a third option in cameras. The dynamic range of a RAW file, but the size and simplicity of a JPEG file. Sounds like the best of both worlds, doesn't it? And since the JPEG comite approved JPEG XR as official standard, there's no license restrictions. Hardware vendors just need an incentive to use it. As Windows 7 with full JPEG XR support gains more ground in 2010, all it takes is user demand and one daring underdog to jump ahead to unleash an avalanche of JPEG XR capable cameras.

Of course, these predictions are based on pure speculations. I'm curious myself if they actually turn into realities.

But I'm absolutely sure about my....

Plans for 2010

Steve Chapman is joining the HDRLabs family, contributing one of the most exciting projects to date. His infamous PanoCamera is going Open Source, a truly universal DSLR remote controller for handheld platforms. We're feverishly working on the documentation right now, so watch this space in January!

Smart IBL will continue to grow, on the software support side as well as the available content. Charles Leo from HDR Source has just joined the ranks of sIBL set vendors, expect some really awesome sample sets in the near future. Here's a taste of his 120+ sets...

And most importantly, I will be working on the second edition of the HDRI Handbook. It will probably take me all year, and it will be a very comprehensive update.

Happy New Year to all of you,
and Happy Shooting / Stitching / Rendering in 2010!

Christian Bloch

December Shortcuts

2009-12-03T19:53:00.000-08:00

A bunch of news have accumulated over the past weeks. Each one deserves a full article, but I'm lacking the time right now. Before they slip out of my mind, here are the quickies:

2009 HDR All-Stars

Shortlist of the hottest new cameras by Jack Howard. Sitting right at the source, Jack gets his HDR-savvy hands on pretty much every new model. Great read. Very tempting to forward this list to Santa Claus.

HDR Darkroom 1.0

Yet another HDR software is out. The feature set is pretty solid for a version 1, albeit I wouldn't call it revolutionary. Very slick workflow-oriented interface, RAW import, 2 image alignment methods, 2 Local and 1 Global Tonemapper. No sign of 360 panorama compensation, and it can't save in EXR format (although it can load it just fine). Haven't run it through all its paces yet, but HDR Darkroom might be something to keep an eye on.

HDR Thumbnail Browser: Bracket

Managing HDR files used to be the biggest workflow gap ever. Lightroom ignores everything HDR, XNView and Adobe Bridge support some formats but have poor display capabilities. To the rescue comes Bracket. Shows about every flavor of HDR imagery, properly gamma-adjusted so you can actually see something, on PC, Mac and Linux. On top of that it's free, hence highly recommended download!

Photomatix Tonemapping PS Plugin v2.0 beta

Has caught up feature-wise with the standalone version, and is even available in 64-bit. I use it now regularly, and it looks very awesome. (Note: Make sure to flatten the image before running this plugin!)

SpheroCam HDR wins Award

Gerhard Bonnet received the Robert-Luther-Award from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh) for changing the game with his SperoCamHDR. Conratulations, Gerhard!

Monthly Site Updates

As you've come to expect, there is a brand new sIBL-of-the-month out, this time from beautiful Barcelona. The Hot-on-Flickr gallery now finds the most interesting December submissions, and looks better than ever. I sweetened the lightbox style and added a slideshow feature.
Most revolutionary are the feature additions in the Community Forum: Attaching images automatically generates zoomable thumbnails, and putting the URL to an equirectangular pano in-between [pano] [/pano] tags will automatically embed the krpano viewer in your message. Pretty slick, huh?

Advanced HDR techniques in Photoshop with Jack Howard

2009-11-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

You think Photoshop is weak when it comes to HDR?
Think again.

Jack Howard, fellow RockyNook author and Director of New/Social Media at Adorama, is here to prove you wrong by demonstrating some really cool Photoshop HDR tricks. It's all about getting creative with workarounds.

You may want to watch part 1 first, or just press play below to skip to the really good stuff.

Very inspiring, thanks Jack! Another favorite of mine is tweaking the mask of an exposure adjustment layer with the gradient tool and soft brush strokes. Makes some really smooth "invisible" effects. You know, the kind that only gets the image where I want it without looking processed.
In fact, these are the techniques I rely on when tonemapping these extremely big shots of David Breashears. Just finished another piece:

David Breashears' Karakoram B in 520 Megapixel

Site update:

Long-time members of the HDRI Community forum will recognize the new look, now better matching the site theme. There are also new features: Facebook integration, a Spell Checker, and many more.

Blochi

Saving the world, one gigapano at a time

2009-11-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

The glaciers are melting, that's a sad fact of life.

I'm no big environmentalist, and this won't be one of these "Call to Action" posts. It never occured to me that I could make a difference. I mean, yes, my ride is a scooter with 80 miles/gallon, but that's just because I love my Vespa and I got sick of finding parking in LA ;)

And then there's people like David Breashears. A passionate Mout Everest climber, who made it his lifetime goal to educate people about the climate problem. He's matching famous photographs from a hundred years ago, and it's pretty scary how much the "water towers of the world" have dried out in this time. Check out this video clip:

It's called the Glacial Research Imaging Project (GRIP). You might have seen the New York Times Ad on Synday, on the back cover. More info about GRIP is here and here.

After seeing my 2.5 GPixel Grand Canyon pano, David went back up the mountain to reshoot these pictures in HDR and in really really high resolution. He came to me for some shooting advice. After several phone calls I sort of joined the project, doing the merging, stitching and tonemapping.
An interesting challenge. But well worth the effort, especially when the result turns out like this:

David Breashears' Karakoram in 770 Megapixel

You'll get the full explanation to the glacier after Mr. Breashears is back from the mountain, did his round with the scientists, and gets his own website up. I'm just in it for the post processing.

To my knowledge nobody has done an HDR image this big before.

Here's what I learned during the process:

Photoshop CS4 is the only app that can load and tonemap an EXR file of 6 GB.
AutoPano Giga can make such a file, but it needs to be on LInear Blending, no Color Correction, and no Compression.
That's why Vignetting needs to be removed during RAW development (Lightroom here).
SmartBlend works on PC, but not on Mac. Although it still tends to generate blending artifacts in HDR mode.
PTGui on the other hand, works great at this size with standard PTGui blending.
The 64-bit version of CS4 is pretty responsive in the viewport, but every operation (load/save/sharpen/flatten) takes ages. Consdering the image eats up 10 GB of RAM, only my VFX workstation at work can actually do this.
Tonemapping snow is hard. Somehow it always turns out grey. Figured out that this is just a mental thing: there is no upper point of reference. So there is nothing stopping me from overdoing the local contrasts, effectively working against the overall global contrast and darkening the snow patches.
TIFF files can't be bigger than 4 GB.
PSB is the only file format that really works. Can bloat up to > 17 GB, when tonemapping manually with adjustment layers.
Photomatix 64-bit, made for tonemapping huge images, needs to support PSB. At least the single layer, flattened PSB - otherwise it's kind of pointless.
Gigapanos are strange. Tonemapping them to look good in every zoom level, all the way out and when focussing on a tiny detail - very hard.

Why did I go full HDR on this?

Using a local tonemapper on the tiles before stitching was my first idea. But that leads to a huge variation in overall brightness. Especially the clear sky tiles turn into a mess, because noise/grain is the only detail emphasized here.

On the other hand, all the snow and ice do show a very high dynamic range. A combined field of view of 320 degree makes it even worse. Compare the result with the Best Exposure Preview stitch, and you'll see that the HDR treatment does make a hell lot of sense. Although, in comparison, that preview stitch was ridicuously easy done in Autopano Giga on MacbookPro.

While my involvement probably won't stop the glaciers, it's nice to gather some Karma points while tackling an interesting HDR challenge like this.