31–40 of 249 posts
I may be wrong because I don't know much about image based algorithms, but this seems to be a pretty successful new approach to achieving this effect. Are there any other existing "lens blur" or depth of field tricks that phone makers or apps are using? I'd love to see their code open sourced.
One of the greatest features is the ability to change your focus point AFTER you shoot. This is huge.
We had an interesting discussion about this a few nights ago at a Photojournalism talk. In that field, digital edits are seriously banned, to the point multiple very well known photo journalists have been fired for one little use of the clone tool [1] and other minor edits. It's interesting to think I can throw an f/1.8 lens on my DSLR and take a very shallow depth of field photo, which is OK, even though it's not ve…
For example, almost certainly your cameras have dead pixels, which are processed away during the demosaicing stage, but showing them would be a "straight off the camera image" that I doubt any photojournalist would desire.
Additionally many scene-wide process steps (like lens shading map estimation) can be changed in post-processing if the cameras automatic algorithms (3a, etc) "decided" wrong.
Is looking at the examples giving anyone else a headache? It's like the software blur falls into some kind of uncanny valley for reality.
So saying that the effect as a result of a wide-open aperture is more truthful than algorithmically blurring the background of a photo seems odd. Both are a photographic artifice that approximates what you think you see when your attention is on one object in your field of view.
The same is true for the effects of focal length. A longer lens approximates, but can never actually reproduce, the effect of the brain trying to make same-sized things look the same size. A shorter focal length does the opposite, and puts more emphasis on foreground objects.
We had an interesting discussion about this a few nights ago at a Photojournalism talk. In that field, digital edits are seriously banned, to the point multiple very well known photo journalists have been fired for one little use of the clone tool [1] and other minor edits. It's interesting to think I can throw an f/1.8 lens on my DSLR and take a very shallow depth of field photo, which is OK, even though it's not ve…
Photojournalism is a weird cross over of history/evidence collection and drifting in to art. They fit together like oil and water, for all the reasons you pointed out.
-bowerbird
Impressive feat. Took a few snaps on my Nexus 4 and it seems to work really well given a decent scene.
We had an interesting discussion about this a few nights ago at a Photojournalism talk. In that field, digital edits are seriously banned, to the point multiple very well known photo journalists have been fired for one little use of the clone tool [1] and other minor edits. It's interesting to think I can throw an f/1.8 lens on my DSLR and take a very shallow depth of field photo, which is OK, even though it's not ve…
On the one hand, you have dodging and burning, which were often used in actual darkrooms and are still used by respected photojournalists to increase the impact of their photos. [0]
Then you have things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Hajj_photographs_controve...
Where clumsy and obvious use of the clone tool damaged the reputation of an entire news organization.
The AP standards and practices strikes an interesting balance [1]:
AP pictures must always tell the truth. We do not alter or digitally
manipulate the content of a photograph in any way.
The content of a photograph must not be altered in Photoshop or by
any other means. No element should be digitally added to or subtracted
from any photograph. The faces or identities of individuals must not
be obscured by Photoshop or any other editing tool. Only retouching
or the use of the cloning tool to eliminate dust on camera sensors
and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints are acceptable.
Minor adjustments in Photoshop are acceptable. These include cropping,
dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, and normal toning and
color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary
for clear and accurate reproduction (analogous to the burning and
dodging previously used in darkroom processing of images) and that
restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density,
contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the
original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally
blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The
removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.
We had an interesting discussion about this a few nights ago at a Photojournalism talk. In that field, digital edits are seriously banned, to the point multiple very well known photo journalists have been fired for one little use of the clone tool [1] and other minor edits. It's interesting to think I can throw an f/1.8 lens on my DSLR and take a very shallow depth of field photo, which is OK, even though it's not ve…
Could you speak to how familiar photojournalists are with the math and transformations that take place inside a digital camera? For example, almost certainly your cameras have dead pixels, which are processed away during the demosaicing stage, but showing them would be a "straight off the camera image" that I doubt any photojournalist would desire. Additionally many scene-wide process steps (like lens shading map est…
I find it funny that this was one of the "exclusive features" of the HTC One M8 thanks to the double camera, and days after it's release Google is giving the same ability to every Android phones. I'm sure the HTC implementation works better, but this is still impressive.
I believe the algorithm could be improved by applying the blur to certain areas/depths of the image without including pixels from very distant depths, and instead blurring/feathering edges with an alpha channel over those distant (large depth separation) pixels. For example, if you look at the left example photo by Rachel Been[1], the hair is blurred together with the distant tree details . If instead the algorithm d…