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08/25/2008 06:38:06 PM · #26 |
Originally posted by artizenhdr:
That Robin photo looks familiar do you work for EHDR?
Edit: Even after a quick search i can see you are affiliated with them in some way or another. Another issue many Photomatix users have with this team is that they clearly make an effort to distort the capabilities of Photomatix on their site to make Photomatix look bad. There have been many angry discussions regarding this practice on their part, calling Photomatix cartoony when many users produce very natural results. At least now i know where you are coming from. |
I am affiliated with Imaging Luminary, but only as a member of their advisory panel - basically I try out different software and also throw ideas at them about possible directions to explore. Ultimately however they can take what I say with a pinch of salt. The reason they asked me to test/advise is due to my no bullshit approach, if I dont like something or think its useless then I will say. I don't get paid for the work, just get free copies of their software to test out.
I havent downloaded your software yet but will make a beeline for it now and give it a good going over. Thanks for the heads up!
Message edited by author 2008-08-25 18:38:26. |
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08/25/2008 10:48:46 PM · #27 |
Simms i don't imply that supporting an application you personally get to give direct input is bad (glad to see you enjoy HDR), and I look forward to your input and appreciate any you will give, we try not to directly imply that Artizen is better than this or that app cause the more ppl that get involved in HDR is better for us all. Also most HDR apps are each rather unique and different and aside from general common functionality they all produce different types of results that each appeal to different ppl.
Trueght no applogy needed, i am glad that we have corrected some of the things you feel were major deal breaker issues with Artizen. We also know that Artizen could always use more improvements, so any suggestions/issues you have will be taken very seriously and considered for addition in the next incremental update. I like the effect of your Photo and the Car.
dacrazyn dually noted, but so you know we will have Artizen and our PS Plugins (5) available for OSX in the near future.
Message edited by author 2008-08-25 22:56:22. |
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08/26/2008 12:44:44 AM · #28 |
Originally posted by artizenhdr:
dacrazyn dually noted, but so you know we will have Artizen and our PS Plugins (5) available for OSX in the near future. |
Hear that alot, and I hope you come through. Love to try it out. As a PS Plugin...even better
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08/26/2008 01:05:18 AM · #29 |
| I have been using Essential HDR for a long while, I think, in around 95% cases, it produce very good results, thus after the release of the program, I bought one. I don't know why artizenhdr is likely to say bad word on this program (say it is just an edge enhancer, flat), even he did not tested this program. I don't have this feeling with my processed images in my workflow . I purchased Photomatix as well. I also tried Dynamic Photo HDR and artizenhdr. Then I settled to Photomatix and Essential HDR. They both have their very good advantages. For Artizen HDR, I would not spent a penny to bought this one. It is very hard to use, though it makes a beautful but complex surface. However, the most important part for a HDR software should be the engine in the software, like the quality and speed of tone mapping etc. Artizen has no any advantages in these aspect. If edition and post processing is important, I will resort to other software like Photoshop, Lightroom etc, why should we spend $ to use these functions in Artizen? For HDR software, we just need a prepared tone mappng results, which set a nice base for post-processing, however, Artizen seems to lack this ability. |
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08/26/2008 02:32:34 AM · #30 |
fototouchabc i think you may want to re-read my comments, as i clearly said those weren't my comments, just other ppls opinions i have read in other forums. Their opinions are just as valid as yours, so you can't just dismiss them as simply wrong. What ability does Artizen lack in specifically and how, Auto Alignment, Tone Mapping and what don't you like about each operator? This is a new version so things have changed and still in beta so we are looking for feedback to help us make it better.
In regards to the Image Editing, not everyone has Photoshop CS2 or CS3 or Lightroom and if you looked at the depth of features Artizen has, you would see for many users this would be a major step up. Also Artizen's ability to work with RAW files formats and Metadata rivals applications 5 times it's price. For Photoshop users we have plugins, so they don't need to purchase the entire application. |
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08/26/2008 05:00:04 AM · #31 |
artizenhdr, look at what your words, when you first mentioned that, why don't you say its others opinion the first place. You only mentioned this till somebody else pointed out what you say wrong. Also, I have accounts in many HDR forum, I did not find there are bad marks as you pointed for Essential HDR. If you find some, can you put the links here, otherwise, I just think you are intentionally advertising your product by say incorrect words for Essential HDR. Use your product say for yourselve, it is not a fair competition when you try to say bad words for Photomatix, Essential HDR, Dynamic Photo HDR. But for me, I think Artizen is a tool which is very hard to use and cannot produce nice image quality for HDR.
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 05:02:18. |
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08/26/2008 07:00:42 AM · #32 |
With all due respect - You did say that it was others opinions EHDR created flat looking images, then went on to mention that you have never used it, which was a bit silly really. Try it out yourself, I am surprised that you havent since you are developing your own HDR software, the first thing I would of done is get out there and test the competitors products and see where you can improve, you cannot just take the testers word for it. So that was a bit of an own-goal on your account..
HOWEVER, I did download your software last night and run a few samples through it and I must say it does create some VERY nice HDR shots. The `dramatic` setting is great but not cartoony like Photomatix. I agree some of the filters etc you have added will be beneficial, my particular favourite is the Orton effect you have implemented, so kudos to you on that. So much so I will probably go back to EHDR and recommend they check out your software (although they probably already have to be honest)..
Things I found cumbersome? Well, maybe I was doing it wrong but when I merged 5 shots into a single image, it then forced me to save it as an HDR file before I could move onto the tonemapping stage, surely this should be an option instead of mandatory. When I am HDR`ing it up I just want to merge then get down to the tonemapping, the extra stage you have in there interrupts my workflow and then means I have to go back and delete the file I was made to save.. Like I said, maybe I have done it wrong, but its seems to be the default behaviour in your software.
Also, improve your auto-align algorithm, its misaligned every single batch of shots I threw at it and I had to go in and align them manually - very tedious. I shoot a lot of my daytime HDR bracketed exposures handheld and EHDR copes with them well, Photomatix is probably better though for auto-align (at the moment).
Going back to my original point, if you are going to come onto a forum, say you have developed XYZ software, go on to say that ABC software creates flat images but you have never tried it personally, then you should expect to get flamed a wee bit and it doesnt make your company look very professional.
Good luck with the software, I will definitely keep an eye on its development. |
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08/26/2008 09:10:10 AM · #33 |
Other apps were mentioned initially and not by me i just said that i know that others have had many issues with each one of those apps. I never gave a personal opinion what i said to be perfectly clear was "I know many individuals who each would have many issues" before i made my comment not after, and not after someone pointed it out. I can see English is not your first language, so i think you still need to re-read what i said carefully and not just jump to conclusions. Also i have tried pretty much every other HDR on the market except for EHDR, but i will give it a tryout. In terms of Professionalism, i think it is more of bad taste to put an effort to compare an app with another by making the other apps results look deliberately bad, which is what a lot of ppl have a bone of contention with EHDR ppl (referring to the examples on their website).
In regards to Auto alignments here is a users test comparing 3 hdr apps, Artizen, Photoshop and Photomatix. Artizen auto cropped the results cause if this was a real photo you would have issues with tone mapping along the edges.
Unaligned Images Layered
Artizen
Photomatix
Photoshop
So take away from it you will. But thank you for the input, we will look into the file creation issue you have which is valid.
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 09:16:21. |
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08/26/2008 09:18:46 AM · #34 |
Originally posted by artizenhdr:
Other apps were mentioned initially and not by me i just said that i know that others have had many issues with each one of those apps, i never gave a personal opinion what i said to be perfectly clear was "I know many individuals who each would have many issues", before i made my comment not after and not after someone pointed it out, i can see English is not your first language so i think you still need to re-read what i said carefully and not just jump to conclusions. Also i have tried pretty much every other HDR on the market except for EHDR, but i will give it a tryout. In terms of Professionalism, i think it is more of bad taste to put an effort to compare an app with another by making the other apps results look deliberately bad, which is what a lot of ppl have a bone of contention with EHDR ppl (referring to the examples on their website).
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My biggest bugbear with Photomatix is the fact that large images rarely ever look like the final output, which is worthless. I can deal with the cartoony look that can be achieved, sometimes I like it, but what annoys me is merging 5 fullsize images (from my 5D for example) running the tonemapping and seeing an awesome image in the preview, clicking the TONEMAP button, and then getting asomething completely different presented to me, that has always been a huge issue with Photomatix and something they seem reluctant to admit.. E-HDR (and from my experiements your software) give me a final output very similar to the preview, which is great.
I use and rate EHDR and Photomatix equally, each has its good and bad points. EHDR is good for true, natural HDR images, Photomatix is great for those stunning images that sort of resemble real-life, but also exposing some underlying fantasy land.
BTW, those examples are good to prove for X & Y Transitional shift, but how is Artizen for rotational shift as well?
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 09:20:15. |
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08/26/2008 09:24:04 AM · #35 |
In the example you posted above, which version of Photomatix was used? The newest version of Photomatix does a much better job of aligning.
I know that there was an issue with a Beta release of Artizen where it was attempting to align the moving objects instead of the non-moving objects. I received a reply to my inquiry on this a couple months ago saying that it would be corrected. Was this corrected in Beta 4? If not, this may be what Simms is referring to. Artizen was able to align things perfectly even when I shot handheld until something changed in one of the beta releases.
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08/26/2008 09:27:29 AM · #36 |
Originally posted by Simms:
BTW, those examples are good to prove for X & Y Transitional shift, but how is Artizen for rotational shift as well? |
In my experience it does a very good job. It is much better than the previous release of Photomatix and a bit better than the current release, in my experience. This is assuming that Artizen corrected the alignment issues I mention in my previous post.
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08/26/2008 09:57:39 AM · #37 |
artizenhdr, I still think you are not very professional and a dishonest person. What you tried to do is to say bad words to other softwares, this is indeed your intention, no matter you pick up somebody else words or tried to say that by yourselve, but you put these remarks here before you test the software. You action is not responsible. In addtion, you said these words were from other's opinion and used "I know many individuals who each would have many issues". You mentioned "MANY". So can you put these links here that expression such opinion? Remember, we need MANY. Advertising your product by putting down others is your purpose. The examples you put here again demonstrate your intention. However, I would like to say, it might be correct that your software works better for the example, however, it is ONLY FOR THIS EXAMPLE. How about others? For some other examples, theirs will works better than yours. You should know that.
As Simms mentioned, you did not tried out some of other softwares and then put remarks for them. This action is really unfair as you are a competitor among the HDR software. You words are really misleading. You seem to dishonest person, how can other trust your software you developed? |
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08/26/2008 10:03:14 AM · #38 |
Simms: you wouldn't be the first to say this about Photomatix and it is a regular discussion in many forums. Artizen can handle rotations, but at the present beta release it is not automated and so user have the option to perform a manual correction. I personally believe that every auto alignment algorithm will fail with some photos and so it is vital to allow the user to override these options to ensure that they are correct. No algorithm that exists today that i know of is better than the human eye. This may expose some failure in our algorithm but at least the user has the ability to correct it. Some applications don't allow you to do this and that means if it can't auto align properly you are SOL, and it may not be obvious at first but with close inspection you can see major issues in the alignment, which i have personally seen in all applications that don't allow the user to override the alignment options.
On a side note i have downloaded and tried out Essential HDR and out of 20 sets of photos that Artizen was able to align perfectly, they were able to do about 80% successfully, but each set is different so this maybe the opposite for you.
Ken: I believe this was with one of the beta releases of version 3.0 and Photoshop CS2, so things may have gotten better. Based on our user base, which is rather large they seem to feel our new auto alignment algorithm in Artizen is the best one they have used even when they throw hard photos that failed everywhere else, but you will need to try it out on your own. The manual alignment option i don't think is a negative thing cause like i said no auto alignment is prefect.
One last note, Artizen is a friendly app that will allow users to fit into any part of a users workflow such that if you like the Auto Alignment or want to manually align your photos that fail in other apps, Artizen will export cropped single exposure so that they can be merged in another app. |
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08/26/2008 10:20:57 AM · #39 |
Originally posted by artizenhdr:
Ken: I believe this was with one of the beta releases of version 3.0 and Photoshop CS2, so things may have gotten better. Based on our user base, which is rather large they seem to feel our new auto alignment algorithm in Artizen is the best one they have used even when they throw hard photos that failed everywhere else, but you will need to try it out on your own. The manual alignment option i don't think is a negative thing cause like i said no auto alignment is prefect.
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Curiosity got the best of me - I checked email and it was 2.6 Beta 2. I haven't used Beta 3 much recently and in the next few days will give Beta 4 some testing.
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08/26/2008 10:30:53 AM · #40 |
[/quote]
My biggest bugbear with Photomatix is the fact that large images rarely ever look like the final output, which is worthless. I can deal with the cartoony look that can be achieved, sometimes I like it, but what annoys me is merging 5 fullsize images (from my 5D for example) running the tonemapping and seeing an awesome image in the preview, clicking the TONEMAP button, and then getting asomething completely different presented to me, that has always been a huge issue with Photomatix and something they seem reluctant to admit.. E-HDR (and from my experiements your software) give me a final output very similar to the preview, which is great.
[/quote]
This is definately an issue that I've noticed with photomatix...doesn't always happen, and I can't say I'm presented with as many awesome images as mark (simms) probably is in preview either (lol), but it is annoying nonetheless to have a very different image post tonemapping. Something else which may be inherent in all other applications, is a greyish murking effect (sorry, can't explain it any better - its that monday afternoon effect) - see image below (around the sun in the sky) - don't know why this happens! I do tend to get at least 5 exposures to cover the whole dynamic range of the scene (usually 2 stops apart). It is something I've read about before though. Anyway, I'll have to dabble with other hdr software to see whether it can improve on photomatix which on the whole I'm quite impressed with. Will definately try essential hdr as I tend to prefer natural looking as opposed to whacky!!!
[thumb]705197[/thumb]
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 10:31:35. |
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08/26/2008 10:33:49 AM · #41 |
Caravela you may want to at least give Artizen a test run while you are at it, by the way that is a great photo must have been beautiful to see it in real life.
Ken i really look forward to your feedback.
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 10:36:32. |
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08/26/2008 10:37:27 AM · #42 |
Originally posted by artizenhdr:
Well Caravela you may want to at least give Artizen a test run while you are at it. Ken i really look forward to your feedback. |
Yeah, I'll defo give it a try! |
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08/26/2008 10:43:14 AM · #43 |
ok...I was a skeptic...a big one! I am associated with none of these companies..but did a little test this morning. I took the same photo, ran through each Aritizen, DynamicHDR, and Photomatix. I worked my best to do the same workflow/settings with each. Below are the results from each program. I will say I can't decide between DynamicHDR and Artizen which is best..but both beat out Photomatix in this case - by a MILE!!!! Artizen gave very nice results, DynamicHDR was just as good, alot smoother in parts, but highlights blown a little more, Photomatix gave strange yellow tone to whole image...not sure what is wrong there... I think I prefer DynamicHDR a little more in this case...but would have rather had a sharper image than what I ended up with. I like the smooth surface tone, but wanted more detail in the smaller areas. If someone could provide "selective" tone mapping, or better masking, in a program I think it would help a ton! Maybe you can provide some input on the image I edited
Artizen
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/artizen.jpg
DynamicHDR
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/dynamichdr.jpg
Photomatix
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/photomatix.jpg
Message edited by author 2008-08-26 10:46:26.
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08/26/2008 11:53:18 AM · #44 |
Originally posted by Truegsht:
ok...I was a skeptic...a big one! I am associated with none of these companies..but did a little test this morning. I took the same photo, ran through each Aritizen, DynamicHDR, and Photomatix. I worked my best to do the same workflow/settings with each. Below are the results from each program. I will say I can't decide between DynamicHDR and Artizen which is best..but both beat out Photomatix in this case - by a MILE!!!! Artizen gave very nice results, DynamicHDR was just as good, alot smoother in parts, but highlights blown a little more, Photomatix gave strange yellow tone to whole image...not sure what is wrong there... I think I prefer DynamicHDR a little more in this case...but would have rather had a sharper image than what I ended up with. I like the smooth surface tone, but wanted more detail in the smaller areas. If someone could provide "selective" tone mapping, or better masking, in a program I think it would help a ton! Maybe you can provide some input on the image I edited
Artizen
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/artizen.jpg
DynamicHDR
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/dynamichdr.jpg
Photomatix
//i97.photobucket.com/albums/l208/bigdphoto/photomatix.jpg |
of those 3, I personally prefer the Dynamic HDR version ... photomatix was awful and the artizen looked over processed to me ... please take this as one person's opinion though |
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08/26/2008 12:04:49 PM · #45 |
| I'm sure things could have been pulled back on each to give more subtle results but it clearly is a stylistic results. The yellow casting issue is horrible in the Photomatix result IMHO. Which operator in Artizen did you use, cause maybe i could maybe help give a suggestion on how to smoothen out the results a bit. |
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08/26/2008 12:15:39 PM · #46 |
I used the dramatic operator...going to try the cipher later..and maybe the natural.
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08/26/2008 12:19:15 PM · #47 |
| I would definitely try Natural before Cipher, it is a much better operator. Cipher is still something that is lingering from the past and really needs a good update. |
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08/27/2008 12:13:34 AM · #48 |
I tried the new Beta 4 and it seems that it's improved over the previous versions.
1 - auto alignment is working again, and it aligned 3 hand held shots perfectly
2 - we lost the ability to save the composited shot as *.exr.
3 - vignette seems to work but seems to be limited
4 - during alignment and tonemapping, it would be great to be able to increase size of window, and not just rely on the "fit in window" view.
5 - I tried tonemapping with the natural filter and could not get rid of halos. Perhaps I need more practice, although the screen (believe) filter worked much better.
6 - Maybe I'm used to Photoshop, but speed seems to be very good
7 - If you resize and then use the slicer (save for web), it only gives html extension to save. If you cancel at that point it give a runtime error.
Below is my test, only basic editing done in Artizen.
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08/27/2008 09:10:48 AM · #49 |
| Well Ken, i think you did a really nice job on the shot which does look extremely Natural in appearance but with great detail. To help minimize on Halos in the Natural filter, it is usually controlled by 2 sliders. The Halos option and the Radius option, where Halos will control if halos appear at the edge of high contrast situations and Radius will try to blend what halos do appear in the photo. You can decide by playing around to what extent you want. The EXR option is still available but due to the amount of memory required to create them it gets disable if the image is large. We were a bit too conservative on what that limit was, which has been pointed out to us by several users. We will make sure this option is fixed in the next update as well as the option to not even create an HDR file if you don't want to. |
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08/27/2008 09:35:45 AM · #50 |
Also i forgot to mention
3 - The builtin Vignette option in the Tone Mapping window is a limited version compared to the specific Vignette under the Filter menu option.
4 - We will look into coming up with a solution.
6 - Photoshop has gotten much slower in their last couple of update specifically CS2 and CS3. Since we are still in beta we hope to squeeze a little more performance out of the work flow for the final release.
7 - This will get fixed for the next update. |
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