Backyard Dusk Panorama with Luminosity Masking

Having some fun with luminosity masking on a dusk scene, based on a multi-image panorama.

Red Sky in the morning

I must admit I’m normally still snuggling in a warm bed at this time of the morning, and it has been a very cold spell. However I was up and awake early today and able to capture the first light of dawn. Giving me a great opportunity to compare my “girls” (the three current mistresses, aka photo managers/editors, I’m using rather than picasa/google photos) as I would normally edit/tweak them. The Photo on the right is the original unedited Jpeg. The photos below are edited by AfterShot , Lightroom  and Perfect Photo Suite 9. These three systems render my .pef file (Pentax’s RAW format) differently but their RAW file renders all look very flat compared with the jpeg. I liked the dark silhouette of the trees, so I have left the images very low key and just just concentrated of adding a little extra contrast and vibrance.I also straighten and cropped each version. In the edge they all look somewhat similar, supporting the observation that it probably doesn’t matter a lot which software you use as long as it does what you want.

AfterShot Pro 2, which has become my first stop on my laptop. In this case I have just click on Perfect Clear and lifted the vibrance slider a little. With a straightening and crop to finish. All over in seconds
Lightroom 4.4, was a little more considered and all done in the development module, lifting clarity (rather than contrast) and a little vibrance (not saturation) then straightening and crop.

Perfect Photo Suite 9, was a actually my second port of call but I have left it till last as it seems to match my memory of the moment best. I started in Perfect enhanced (which is where cropping and straightening are normally undertaken. Whilst there I couldn’t resist using their wonderful content aware magic  perfect eraser to remove the two light poles (which would have bee a very time consuming task with a cloning tool on the second post behind the tree). I also finished with perfect effects, a natural Dynamic Contrast, A fall enhancer Colour Enhancer bought back to 60% layer opacity and a soft darker vignette

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten (Levelling) in Perfect Photo Suite

If you are looking for a straighten tool in Perfect Photo Suite it could prove frustrating because it is called levelling and only shows up when you select the cropping tool, either under perfect layers, perfect enhance, perfect resize. Once you select the crop tool from the left hand tool bar, a levelling tool shows up un the middle of the tool bar above the image, You can either enter a rotation angle, or click on the small triangle to get an interactive slide that will tilt the image or better still click on the little bubble level icon and the cursor will change into the level tool. Move to one convenient place on the strong horizontal (such as the horizon) and click and drag a line across your photo that want to be level (ie the other side of the horizon) then click again.

When you release the mouse the photo will be adjusted by the desired angle. The cropping marks will automatically be adjusted to the best fit cropping of the rotated image to avoid blank edges. All very simple once you find it.

There is also a rotation tool in the layer transform tool within Perfect Layers which allows both the speciation of the angle and the interactive slider but it does not display the levelling tool.

A Beautiful Dawn and being Accustomed to My Camera

Even though I was still half asleep and had not put in my contact lenses, I couldn't help but notice the magnificent sunrise. So I quickly grabbed my camera, despite being dark and not being able to see clearly I was able to get the camera in Exposure Priority and dial up what I thought might have been a higher ISO (I got both right) But I could tell the exposure would be way to slow (ie 1/4 second) to be hand held (click on the image on the right to see how blurry the resulting photo turned out). I didn’t even check the screen and cranked the aperture wheel down a few notches (not knowing or being able to see). These sounded better, possible quick enough, and I took a couple of overlapping images to make a panorama..

The image above is just a quick collage created with picasa. I think my beloved Pentax has done a great job even though I wasn’t able to visually check the setting or button I was pressing. Naturally I could see enough where to point the camera in the right direct and could hear the autofocus tracking my lens back and forth.
This story continue (I took a few sets of bracketed), after using my muscle  memory to select my user programmed mode on the main dial (which is preprogramed to create a series of EV values)

I had breakfast and put my lenses in, upload the photos and like the initial pano set. So I have taken it though Autostitch and used Perfect Enhance to hold down the digital noise.

The exercise of using your camera without looking at the dials, and just taking the picture is highly recommended. (Even in the Dark)

Not all is harmony in the XMP World

Whilst many software applications can share metadata via XMP files, the situation is far from a recognized standard.  XMP is an extensible XML style format, which means it can be customised.  Applications that read this data, need not be able to understand everything.  They just need to honour (and not modified) any such data.  Adobe itself use the XMP the file to store details of proprietary Post Processing methods within Lightroom, These methods are unlikely to be known by the software, and that software should not be expected to reproduced the exact Lightroom process.  Corel’s Aftershot Pro also uses its own proprietary XMP format for its processing, but also offers the opportunity to save standard XMP files by which it means just the metadata.

Is in the area of metadata that there does seem to be good agreement between packages.  Specifically key wording, star ranking and the colour flags/patches or classifications do seem to be reliably exchanged between programmes.  Most of the EXIF data seems to be so exchanged, when exception might be camera settings and lens identifies (usually of read from RAW files) that don't always make it into XMP files. Some some software does not acknowledge IPTC metadata.

Finally I don't expect to be told what isn't read from and XMP file.  Anything that isn't under stored get ignored.  So for example you may have set the Likes and Dislikes in OnOne's perfect photo suite, but they will not be interpreted as Flag as Pick or Set to Reject  in lightroom so they just don’t show up.

Getting my Toshiba laptop to use the right graphics driver

I’ve recent upgradeg to version 9.5 of OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite, but instead of the browser becoming faster it had become decidedly unreliable and prone to “hanging”. Checking the compatibility requirements in OnOne support had me puzzled I had enough memory and a Nvidia graphics card also with required memory. Updating the cards drivers didn’t help. Finally the penny dropped, my Toshiba has two graphics card, one an Intel CPU (for standard widows stuff) and a Nvidia Card (for games and advanced video) and supposedly some intelligence to let the application find the right card and driver. Well basically the latest version of Perfect Browse was trapped in the standard Intel graphics card, when it actually wanted the more sporty Nvidia, Yes now I remember a similar issue long ago but how to fix it. Don’t bother with manuals, The answer is buried piece by piece across a number of forums. Here is my simplified approach for those with a Toshiba laptop with dual graphics cards.

The Nvidia control panel does allow you to select the programs that you wish to start with its drivers (and overrides the supposed automatic select of the most appropriate driver). On the Toshiba laptop with dual graphics card you need to go into the control panel then double click on the Nvidia Control panel. Here you just need to select the desktop item in the main menu and check that the item called Add "Run with graphics processor" Option to Context Menu. Now the final step is to right click on the Prefect Photo Suite icon on your desktop, which will bring up the context menu, now with the run with graphic processor option, and this will bring up a submenu.


You can then select to run the perfect suite under the Nvidia driver for just one run. or better change the default driver associated with this program. Changing the default brings up the Nvidia Control panel again this time in a dialogue that lets you select the Nvidia processor as the default driver for a given program and the Perfect Photo Suite will be selected. Make sure the Nvidia processor is associate with it and then press Apply.

I realise this is a kind of double loop but you seem to need all these steps and  it worked for me, I now have a speedy photo browser in Perfect Photo Suite 9.5