‫KammaGamma » News‬

‫Edge-Preserving Decompositions‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:05:48 +0000

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.

‫Lightroom Preset: Leica M8 Colors with your Nikon‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:28:01 +0000

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

‫New top story, Nikon D300.‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:53:15 +0000

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.

‫New article, High ISO with DPP.‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:55:54 +0000

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”.

‫iPhone’s screen gamut is quite good‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:29:04 +0000

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.

White grid = MacBook Pro non LED, Color grid = iPhone

White grid = sRGB profile, Color grid = iPhone

White grid = Nec SpectraView 2180, Color grid = iPhone

‫Finding focus for EOS 1D Mark III images‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:21:37 +0000

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.

‫Top story: Leica M8 colors‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:30:58 +0000

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.

‫Phase One Capture One 4 beta is here!‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:48:37 +0000

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.

‫Canon EOS 1D Mark III vs. Canon EOS 5D‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 14:07:58 +0000

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.

‫Canon EOS 40D high ISO samples‬

‫Max Penson‬ — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:45:31 +0000

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.