Dramatically enhance digital photos quality?

That's the claim made by Almalence Incorporated, which produces a tool called PhotoAcute.

I saw about this tool on DSLRPhotography and it does look interesting. It can do three things for you: reduce noise, increase resolution and remove moving objects from the scene. All done by analysing a series of images of the subject.

However, I'm a bit sceptical about the usefullness in real-world applications, as you are forced to take multiple images for each picture and I can't see myself doing that too often.

Hi Kris,

easy enough to download it and have a play. I suspect it does what they say it does, unfortunately it does not do it for a canon20d in raw, in my first few attempts.

below added after about half hour wasted time -

Right, took some photos, hand held. run of six on each subject. took about 2 minutes /image to process, so for 6 images, 12 mins processing time. As you can't save on the trial, i can't tell if the results are sharper, they look as if they may be, but since they display the original, that maty be blurred, to make it look like their sharpening is better than it is. One thing certain, the images as shown in the 'initial image' views seem to have a pink colour cast. The second set of six, starts processing, then after five minutes, the program seems to shut down, it just all disapears from the screen.

If it worked, I could see it working nicely for landscape photographers, may be portraite/product, where you needed higher resolution, sharper, whatever they say it will do. For wildlife, sport, probably not so useful. They need to include more cameras, however.

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

Hi Kris,

easy enough to download it and have a play. I suspect it does what they say it does, unfortunately it does not do it for a canon20d in raw, in my first few attempts.

about half hour wasted time -

Click to expand...

I'll try to test the real version. These programs generally require a lot of intensive processor time. I think this has great promise. They list Pro cameras and have the Rebel!! No 1D series at all,

Noise is the easiest thing to remove by using many images and to go to higher BIT with reall additon of detail. Reindeer Graphics has such plugins for PS for several years.

The lens aberration issues again are addressed by other software such as DXO. So I certinly think everything is possible.

When you used the test, were you looking at mail or had some other program open?

Also, and this is important did you have to insert the distance info?

Asher

Hi Asher,

For the images that worked, I said that the 20d was a rebel, it complained but went ahead. The ones that didn't run, I left it as 'camera unselected' - it can get camera info normally from the exif info - btw you need to add in the adobe convertor png,exe thing, too - it opens up to a help page, if you ask it to, if it thinks you need it.

If it can't find the camera in the exif, then some functions are 'greyed out'. If you download the software, and it works for your camera and lens, then in all probability, you will not get the problems I have.

There was/is software that does the same for video images - takes a number of frames, possibly uses the 'jitter' to get higher resolution still images. This acute stuff and an hdtv camera is the way to go...

The moving object removal aspect, is similar to the Sony/other in camera image stabalisation, I suspect. For their prosumer video cameras, it was not much use - gave blurred grass...

Overall, I am not sure it will give much improvement over one image and qimage, although in theory it should be better.

Best wishes,

Ray

ps no need to enter distance, no other programs being used, afaik, but who knows with windows? - zone alarm, avg, usb drivers, etc... But if its written and tested properly, these things do not matter

Ray,

Is this only for windows?

Asher

Hi Asher,

Yes, according to the download page. If you are Mac only, I do not think this one program is worth your bootcamp - purchase windows downgrade path, at the mo.

Best wishes,

Ray

Asher, it seems to be windows only, unfortunately.

Ray, thanks for testing it out. I didn't have time today but will probably do so shortly. I have a bit of a problem abandoning my prefered RAW processor, so I will first try it out on TIFFs. I realize that the results may not be as good as from RAW files but my camera is not supported yet (20D) anyway.

I find it strange that they have so few profiles for professional/prosumer cameras and so many for the compacts. I don't see too many compact owners caring enough to be willing to go through this process.

At the end of the day, maybe this tool is at its best with images produced from camera phones

Hi Kris,

Well, it is simple to use, and not at all expensive for none interchageable lens type cameras. It may be that folk using those do not buy much other software - I mean cs2 is more expensive than many such cameras. So its nice to be able to fire off half a dozen quick shots, and get a decent high res image - cheaper than many other solutions. I would have liked to have compared with other methods, but ideally I would need to be able to save at least part of a result.

I have a cheap canon 75 - 300 zoom on the 20d. It gives 'similar', maybe worse results compared to 'enlarging' in cs2. The 70-200f4L is far better. With kenko convertors (1.4x) then (2.0x) then (1.4x +1.2x) then qimage , then this software - a pretty large matrix, if you combine them in any order, plus the four or five qimage sharpening algorythms. If you print, and if you do not use qimage, then download that trial - that works well.

Let me know how the tiffs go, I may play some more. The resolution improvement was noticeable on the screen, but as I indicated, the start may have been skewed.

Best wishes,

Ray