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Piccure+ 2.5 Released
12 June 2015
Intelligent Imaging Solutions has released Piccure+ 2.5, a free update to the image reconstruction tool featuring a 30 to 70 percent speed increase using its new imaging kernel Kestrel, among other improvements.
Improved Interface. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO added (see inset).
When we reviewed Piccure+ last year, we said we looked forward to its continuing development. Speeding things up was high on our list and the improvements in 2.5 "favor laptops and slower computers (which suffered the most in the past)," according to Piccure's Lui.
HIGHLIGHTS
Highlights of the new release include:
- A 30-70 percent speedup without tapping the GPU, the higher number achieved by slower systems
- Full support as an external application for DxO Optics Pro 9 and 10 as well as Capture One Pro 8.
- Standalone user interface has been improved. Information regarding shutter speed, aperture and ISO is now readily available
- Chromatic aberrations can now be corrected separately from the setting "Strong" in Lens+
- Thumbnail generation speed in batch mode for the standalone (RAW) has been increased by 90 percent
- Support for 34 cameras was added, bringing the total number of supported cameras to 632
"It is our goal to seamlessly integrate piccure+ into the workflow of any professional photographer. It was thus extremely important to speed up piccure+ and to make it directly accessible through a wide variety of image editing programs. The update is free of charge for all users and re-emphasizes the team's commitment to its customer base and the technology," says Prof. Dr. Ruder.
The update announced itself when we launched Piccure+ but it's also available via the Menu's Update option. We processed some candidates for today's slide show, noticing the speed improvement.
For more information see the change log, blog entry and the news release below.
Piccure+ 2.5 Delivers Significant Speed Increase
piccure+ 2.5 offers a 30-70 percent increase in speed for all users. Correcting complex optical aberrations has never been faster.
GERMANY -- In November 2014, a world revolution was launched. piccure+ is the first software solution to offer the correction of optical aberrations by a process called deconvolution to the public. Unlike other solutions, this approach models complex optical aberrations by determining "point spread functions" and subsequently reconstructing every pixel in the image based on the information of several hundred surrounding pixels. Since how the information from surrounding pixels is taken into account varies for every pixel in the image, the computational complexity for this problem has been tremendous. Also, as the software auto-calibrates itself for the equipment used, no specific knowledge or calibration is needed.
Fig 1: Optical aberrations are quite complex. This image shows what happens to a point source after passing through an optical system of an expensive lens (point spread function). The point source spreads out several hundred pixels in the image plane. These aberrations often cause a lack of sharpness in images and cannot be corrected with classic "unsharp masking."
The team has achieved a breakthrough just eight months after the initial release of piccure+. With the latest update, users can expect a 30 to 70 percent decrease in processing time thanks to the new imaging kernel "Kestrel." The software does not rely on a fast GPU. In fact, users of dual-core computers or laptops will probably benefit the most from the update. The update is free of charge.
In addition to the increase in speed, the team has made piccure+ accessible for DxO Optics Pro and Capture One users. It is now possible to use the software as an add-on in these image editors as well as in Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, which were already supported.
"It is our goal to seamlessly integrate piccure+ into the workflow of any professional photographer. It was thus extremely important to speed up piccure+ and to make it directly accessible through a wide variety of image editing programs. The update is free of charge for all users and re-emphasizes the team's commitment to its customer base and the technology," says Prof. Dr. Ruder.
About the Technology
piccure+ adaptively determines a virtual lens, which represents the optically flawless equivalent of the actual lens used and then corrects the image through a sophisticated deblurring process (deconvolution). The picture is corrected with the aim of reconstructing the scene as if it were taken through this optically flawless lens. The approach of correcting optical flaws through the process of deconvolution is not entirely new. NASA was able to correct the flawed mirror of the Hubble space telescope and save their $10 billion project from failure through this process.
The disadvantage of existing software solutions is that deviations from the modeled optical system over the true errors in the image often lead to disappointing results. Lens-to-lens deviations due to manufacturing tolerances cannot be accounted for. In addition, if no lens or camera profile is available, no correction is possible at all.
piccure+ differentiates itself from other solutions through several key features:
- More complex and accurate modeling of optical aberrations through non-parametric "point-spread functions"
- Optical aberrations are determined for the equipment and for each image individually instead of relying on possibly ill defined lens profiles
- Sophisticated deblurring routines reverse optical flaws piccure+ has the capability to automatically correct the unique optical imperfections of a lens without relying on any predefined lens profiles. As a result, piccure+ can even be used for analogue film archives.
piccure+ is the only software solution that can determine the optical aberrations from the image itself and is therefore capable of accounting for lens-to-lens deviations caused by manufacturing tolerances. This can have a tremendous effect on the cost of lenses in the future as cheaper design and manufacturing will become possible.
"The advances in computational photography will have a dramatic impact on image formation in general. Image formation will no longer be just an optical process; instead, it will be a combination of both optical and computational processes. The boundaries between software and hardware will become blurred," says Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder, CEO of IIS. "This development will allow cheaper, lighter and smaller optical systems. We made the first radical step in this direction with piccure+, but even bigger opportunities lie ahead. Lens manufacturers still do not recognize the full potential of digital photography and continue to treat lens design the same way they did fifty years ago."
Even though the software was designed for improving the images produced by high-end camera lenses, it will also provide a number of benefits to the average photographer because the improvement in images taken with lower-priced zoom lenses can be even more impressive.
About the program
A 30-days trial version can be downloaded from http://www.piccureplus.com without registration.