Local toning algorithms are becoming very popular among photographers. We all grown to love Lightroom’s clarity tool, which basically preforms local contrast operations on the image. A new paper suggests using Edge-Preserving Decompositions for Multi-Scale Tone and Detail Manipulation, which may bring new possibilities for image processing operations such as clarity, USM, DRC and even HDR. I really liked the tone manipulation method results as shown on the researches web site. I think it will allow me to get very interesting photographic results. Maybe some of this will be implemented in a photographic tool someday so we can enjoy it. Click here for Edge-Preserving Decompositions for Multi-Scale Tone and Detail Manipulation.

A few weeks ago a kammagamma reader asked me if it is possible to set Adobe Lightroom to mimic his Leica M8 colors with Nikon D3 RAW files. For those of you who don’t own a Leica M8 rangefinder, Leica M8 captures DNG files with gamma and color settings that were designed by Leica. So when opening Leica M8 DNG files in Lightroom or ACR, a “Leica” color look is being applied to the images. Long story short, it’s rather simple to mimic those setting with lightroom for Nikon cameras and I think most of you might find this preset interesting.

I’ve tested this preset with some Canon cameras and it was quite close (although in theory it should be the same), but there is more accuracy with Nikon D3/D300 cameras. If there is going to be demand for this preset I’ll try to produce a more accurate Canon version. Please do let me know how this preset works for you.

m8-on-nikonlrtemplate.zip
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We have a new top story today! We wanted to test how much of an improvement is the new Nikon D300 over the Nikon D200. We tested the Nikon D300 for true sensor RAW Dynamic Range, SNR and noise reduction on JPEG files. All in our new top story.

We are back from a slight break with a new article! This one is about Canon DPP and High ISO images. As you know, we are quite pleased with Canon’s JPEG noise reduction performance. Sadly though, the same excellent level of noise reduction is not what you’ll find with DPP. There are some tricks you can do to produce better results, but it is really up to Canon to address these issues. Click here for “High ISO with DPP should and can be better”.

I had to get me one of those iPhones. It really is that good as they say. During some sneaking inside the iPhone I have discovered the ICC profile for the screen the iPhone is using. It is really amazing that the iPhone actually uses an ICC profile, but even more amazing is that its screen is quite good. Its gamut range is very close or in even better in some cases than the old non LED LCD screen of my MacBook Pro. Not bad at all, you can find some comparisons here.
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I was analyzing some focus tracking test images I’ve done with the Canon EOS 1D Mark III a few weeks ago. To speed up things I need to come up with a simple tool to automatically find the most detailed and string edges in the image. The result is Focus Finder, a Photoshop droplet to find the focus point in your images.

See this page to download Focus Finder and for more details.

We have a new top story today. In the new “Leica M8 colors” article we talk about how Leica has designed the color look of the JPEG images. We also looking into how different RAW solutions render the colors out of the Leica M8 DNG files. The results are very much subjective, but we also use some objective measurements to help you better understand the colors. Read the “Leica M8 colors” article.

Finally, it’s here! Phase one just announced a free beta download of Capture One 4.0. The new version has some new editing tools, a new design and a very slick user interface. I have been a long time Capture One believer, mainly because the ICC support so I am very glad Capture One will soon be up to date with Aperture and Lightroom. The one thing that is very important to me is Image Quality, and version 4.0 seem to have a few improvements. From a first glance I think the Luma noise filter still needs quite a lot of work (Think beautiful grain Phase One!) and the Color LUT editor is now missing (Might appear on the Pro version?). Let’s hope for a quick final release. Download Capture One 4.0 Beta here.
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We have a new scene comparison today! As many readers requested we compared the new EOS 1D Mark III to the EOS 5D in our lab scene. You can find our Low ISO comparison here and our High ISO comparison here. There is a new feature in our High ISO comparison, we are now allowing you to switch between RGB view, Luma view and Chroma view. This will allow you to better understand how the camera maker has filtered the image. Very cool new feature.

photo-cafe.jp has some interesting high ISO samples of the Canon EOS 40D with NR set to ON and OFF. From those samples it looks like the EOS 40D can reduce noise in the same fashion as the EOS 1D Mark III, but we will have to test that ourselves to be sure.

Nikon has announced the new Nikon D3 and Nikon D300. Both are very much similar in exception to course to the full frame sensor of the Nikon D3, a 12 MP CMOS sensor with a pixel pitch of 8.45µm! Both cameras now utilize Nikon’s new 16 bit image processor called EXPEED. It has some very interesting features, such as real time chromatic aberration correction and Active D-Lighting. For those of you who are not familiar with the D-Lighting technology, D-lighting can “light” the dark parts of the image by using a filter. This way the system will lighten pixels in depends to where the pixel is in the image. Also interesting to note is the new “Picture Control”, a unified color system for all Nikon Cameras. There are Standard, Neutral, Vivid and Monochrome Picture Control settings. Each can be tuned by the user and could be transferred to other cameras. This still not means Nikon uses color LUT that could be uploaded to the cameras as Canon does (And all of this is worthless if you use non Nikon of Canon Raw software). Nikon claims EXPEED is capable to produce the same image quality as Nikon Capture NX, which normally does produce excellent image quality – far better than the Camera. We’ll have to test EXPEED to see if it is true.

www.photo-cafe.jp, a Japanese website has new details on the Picture Style Editor. From the included screen shoot it looks like it has a color LUT editor!!! Finally you can create your own picture style profiles by transforming HSL values, something I have been wanting to do for ages.
Picture Style Editor will show you both before and after images while you edit the color LUT. It looks like you can also sample the color from the image. On the right side you can find a list of all edited colors and a luminance editor along with input/outpot text boxes. I wonder how many points could be added to the luminance editor. It looks a bit like the Capture One ICC editor, but never the less, we are very excited here at kammagamma.com. Click here for full PSE screen shoot.

Update: Canon has a new sub website for the PSE in Japanese.

Sony as today announced a new APS-C CMOS sensor that can read out full 12 megapixels images at 10.39 frames per second. It is doing so by having “line parallel A/D conversion system (column A/D conversion system)”. Are we looking at the next Nikon DSLR sensor? We will know soon… If you recall, a few days before the Nikon D2x was announced sony released a press release describing the new D2x CMOS sensor. More information is available in the press release.

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Out of the many new Canon announcements today is the new Picture Style Editor 1.0 software. This is very exacting, according the the announcement it will allow us to edit picture style profiles by editing the “style, color, and tone curves”. I hope that by color they actually mean that we could easily edit the color LUT to change how colors are rendered. This would make DDP one of the more powerful Raw software currently available for Canon cameras. Speaking of which, version 3.1 promise to deliver many new lens aberration corrections functions to correct chromatic aberration, color blur, vignetting, and distortion.

The EOS 40D is the new EOS 30D successor with a new CMOS 10.1 sensor, live view and 6.5 frames per second. The new EOS 40D uses the new DIGIC III with a 14 bit pipeline, a new 9 point cross-type AF sensor and of course a large 3.0” LCD screen. It is interesting to note the EOS 40D can do AF while in live view. As long as the AF ON button is being pressed the EOS 40D will keep the mirror down and focus. Releasing the AF ON button will resume live view. According the press release, the EOS 40D has a “electronic 1st-curtain shutter function in Live View” which might mean that there is no need to close the shutter before the exposure. This should reduce shutter lag. The EOS 40D will be available for $1,299 in September.
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