New Image Enhancement Tool

[kdobson]

I've created a new Photoshop (and compatible) plug-in to enhance images from any digital camera. It does three things: removes digital camera artifacts which come from Bayer interpolation, giving images a more "film-like" appearance; enhances detail lost by the anti-aliasing filter; and removes high-ISO artifacts (which are different from the basic-image artifacts). It works on both 8 and 16-bit images. It is NOT a smoothing filter.

Please have look a look here...
http://knm.webhop.org/Public/SmarterAR

Regards,
Kevin Dobson
Creator of SmNR and Breezebrowser's Noise Reduction.
http://knm.webhop.org/SmarterNR

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Kevin,

Hum, not too impressed with this one right away. Here's a crop from the before image:

http://www.pixelpixel.org/images/linked/cdp/smar1.jpg

Here's was I got after SmAR. Detail enhance and High ISO Filter on with blending 80:

http://www.pixelpixel.org/images/linked/cdp/smar2.jpg

Regards,

[kdobson]

Roger,
That's the watermark. The question is, what do you think of the rest of the image?
Regards,
Kevin Dobson

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Aah, the watermark... I was fooled by the fact that the first picture I tried didn't show the watermark:

http://www.pixelpixel.org/images/linked/cdp/smar3.jpg

:eyes

But I'm sorry to say, Kevin, that I didn't really see a difference.

I use YarcPlus with ARF on to convert my raw files. Is SmAR targetting a similar problem? Would this explain why I couldn't see a difference?

Regards,

[kdobson]

SmAR is for those who are looking for the best possible image quality. It is a subtle effect. Casual observation won't show much (except on high ISO images). There seem to be two types of flaws in digital images: noise and artifacts. Noise is a random thing, which tools like SmarterNR can help to eliminate. Artifacts are non-random errors (seemingly) produced by the Bayer Interpolation. For artifacts, there seems to be two basic classes: the first occurs in all images, the second only occurs in high-ISO images. Both types of artifacts are more prevalent in the shadow areas of digicam images.

SmAR addresses the second problem: artifacts. Running SmAR with neither of the options selected will help remove any of the first type of artifact, without damaging image detail OR highlights.

SmAR with "high-ISO" selected helps to remove both types of artifacts, still without removing image detail and without damaging the highlights.

As an added bonus, SmAR also does one more thing if you select "detail enhance". There is an optical low-pass filter in (almost) all digital cameras to prevent aliasing. But because no filter is perfect (that is, not a "brick-wall") some of the desirable detail is attenuated too. SmAR with "detail enhance" selected will boost back some of the detail attenuated by the low-pass filter.

If you want to see exactly what is being changed, duplicate the background layer, do SmAR on it, temporarily increase the gamma using a levels adjustment layer, and zoom in to 200% or more. Then toggle back and forth.

- Kevin