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Computational Photography in the Mainstream

By Wayne Cosshall

Computational photography is what you get when you combine the capabilities of a camera, computer, appropriate software, and a modified photographic workflow and the result is much greater than the sum of the parts. I first wrote about computational photography on this blog back in November 2007. It has been one of my most read posts. A year later seems a good time to revisit this important topic.

For those new to it, computational photography is what you get by combining very smart software on your computer with your camera images and a modified workflow that understands the needs of the software. The two most widely used areas of computational photography are panoramas and high dynamic range imaging, or HDRi. But it is not limited to that.

Because there is readily available software to do it, computational photography actually encompasses the following areas:
·         Panorama stitching and exposure balancing by blending multiple shots to cover the desired field of view;
·         High dynamic range imaging by blending multiple images taken at different exposure settings;
·         Increasing depth of field by blending shots taken at different focal points;
·         Re-computing depth of field, creating a shallower depth of field and simulating out-of-focus lens effects in a single image; and
·         Image noise reduction and control.

Other capabilities that I talked about in my previous post on computational photography, such as post-shot point of view choice, are still in the pipeline.

Panorama stitching has become so mainstream that many compact cameras either do it in camera or have modes to make it an easier process. Cameras that have exposure bracketing make shooting for HDRi easier, though many cameras still provide an inadequate bracket range.

Photoshop is part of most photographers’ lives these days and what it does causes people to pay attention. Photoshop has supported HDRi for some years, though not as fully as other software. Still, it has probably contributed to the rise in interest in HDRi. Now, Photoshop CS4 has added the capability to stack images shot at different focal points to increase the depth of field. My testing of this capability shows that Photoshop does a great job on tasks such as combining two or three shots to gain greater depth of field in situations such as interiors, but falls down in extreme situations such as macro where many images are being combined. Just as with HDRi, Photoshop CS4 does a great job with increasing depth-of-field, but you can probably push it further with other software.

You have always been able to decrease the apparent depth of field in Photoshop by using blur, layers and layer masks. But, again, third-party software takes this capability further.

The capabilities that Adobe chooses to include in Photoshop eventually seem to work their way into the brains of photographers. So with the inclusion of depth-of-field-increasing technology in CS4, I am expecting an increase in the awareness and adoption of this extremely useful approach.

Photoshop truly is a direction setter for photographers. As you would expect of software that is so all encompassing, it does so many things well but you can do better at the extremes with specialized programs. This is also true in computational photography. Photoshop will meet the needs of most photographers, but those who want to push further will extend their capabilities with other software.

I am so convinced that computational photography will become ever more important to an increasing number of photographers that I have added a whole new section on computational photography to one of my sites. I plan to spend December and January testing and writing up reviews and tutorials on a huge range of software in this area.

What we need now is for the camera manufacturers to add a new range of capabilities to their cameras. For example, focus bracketing would be a great help. Perhaps you would be able to set the near and far “must-be-in-focus” points and how many steps in between. Or, the camera could use the aperture and focal length information to calculate how many shots are needed to achieve optimal overlap of sharp zones. Then, on a motor drive setting, the camera could take a burst of shots, refocusing as it goes. Aperture bracketing can already be done by putting the camera in shutter speed priority mode and using exposure bracketing. For those of us who use these options frequently it would be handy if the camera could save these settings and add them to a ready Function menu or such, so we can quickly switch everything necessary to do HDRi, aperture bracketing or focus bracketing in one hit. These capabilities should not just be on the top end models. What I see in discussions among photographers is that while professionals do use these techniques, serious amateurs are probably more into them. So these features should be on the pro models but also on at least the serious amateur models.

We are in a blossoming time for photography as we find new ways to do old things and completely new capabilities we never had before. It is a great time to be a photographer.

 

Posted 12-04-2008 12:40 AM by Eileen Fritsch
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