Aftershot Pro 3 is available & Z Series Plugins are back

Aftershot Pro 3, is already here and prompting itself as providing the world's fastest RAW processing. Aftershot pro 2 in the 64 bit version on my HP Spectre with the SSD drive is certainly already lightening fast. So I’m not sure about the need to upgrade right now but camera calibration interest me (as it is the one thing my lightroom is still more useful for). I will probably be cautious and try out the free trial first.

 

I really loved a couple of the Z Series Community developed plugins, but they where mainly 32 bit versions and didn’t work in the 64 bit version of Aftershot Pro 2. whilst I didn’t complain I missed them especially zPerspector. Well the good news they are back in 64 bit version ready for Aftershot Pro 3 (which I understand is only available in a 64 bit version). However is you have a 64 bit version of Aftershoot Pro greater than or version 2.2 you can install them now. zPerspector is a set of  perspective correction tools. It isn’t automatic like Lightrooms upright, but is actually more powerful because it gives the users many up and down and in and out adjustments, rotations and scaling. In this case just a couple of slight adjustments get the horizontal and vertical lines looking more natural

A different type of straightening

A perspective straighten is very useful manipulation for some situations where you cannot find a enough room to get back from your subject (a window or large painting across the room or a building across the road). With a wide angle you will get diagonals running in several directions. The edges may even be noticeable curved. Lightroom now has a Upright command to do this under the lens correction menu. I assume it is doing a fair bit of distortion transformation mathematics, but it can do a good job providing the distortion isn’t too large (and perhaps it needs to recognise the lens). I have found a marvellous alternative in a plug-in for AfterShot Pro called zPerspector which achieved much the same transformation via a set of four sliders that independently adjust the sides/quadrants of the photos. With a little experiment it is easy enough to fix even extreme diagonals. You can also use the plug-in to create your own extreme perspective.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten in Paint.Net

Paint.net is a really nifty little program, ideal for those that just working on jpeg files. However on first look it doesn’t seem to have a straighten tool (ie something to level the horizon), the image menu seen to have rotates (only 90° left and right or a 180° twist and horizontal and vertical flips, no obvious small and definable rotation! However a deeper look around will show you there is such a rotation tool under the layers menu item. Yet there is an even bigger omission, no simple levelling tool to help pick the horizon and overlay guides (like aftershot or picasa) of a drag to mark a second point to define the rotation (like lightroom or perfect photo). Trying to straighten a horizon is starting to look tedious, but it isn’t!

No need to panic, it is easy to use the layers to create your own temporary guides. Starting with the Layer item on the menu pick the add new layer item on the menu to create an empty and transparent second layer. Now mow to that layer by clicking on layer 2 in the layers window. Next using the shape tool from the main drawing tool bar and use and open rectangle, mark a suitable large rectangle on the screen. It will be easier to judge if you have this rectangle cross the horizon somewhere near the middle of the image. This rectangle becomes your level guide.

Now you can return to the background layer and this time select the rotate/zoom tool.It looks a bit complex (and it can do a lot) but we are only going to use the little rotation ring on the round shape tool on the upper left) As you rotate this by clicking the mouse on the reference mark on the outer ring and moving you mouse up and down. you will see the photo rotate, while the rectangle your created on layer 2 remains steady. Gently rotate until the horizon is parallel with the rectangle edge. Simple. If you want more control of the rotation you can enter an angle or use the little up and down adjusted beside the angle dialogue box..

To finish you will need to delete your temporary layer 2 (go back into layer 2 and select delete layer from the layers menu) and then crop the image to avoid the undefined edges, but that's a subject of a future post!

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.

PhotoEditTools :: Straightening in Lr CC/6

1. Before I finish the Lr CC trial I feel it is necessary to highlight a nifty little addition to the crop tool. It is the little Auto button over on the right hand side. It does a good job straightening horizons. It also automatically adjust the crop window to just fit the rotated image.
2. Those with previous versions of Lightroom, or those that like making their own adjustments (and of course when Auto doesn’t work) can use the convention straightening tools within the Crop tool. The simplest approach is the little level icon, you fix it to one point stretch the line to another point and click a second time. Very simple, it makes near horizontal things horizontal and near vertical things perfectly vertical (it does not however fix barrel like distortion from wide angle lenses). Alternatively you can use the slider which tilts the image according to the angle shown on the right of the slider.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten in Picasa & Google+ Photo

For me picasa was the first software to offer a seriously easy to use straightening tool. There were some tools with stretch out tilts but most only offered slides and or the ability to type in an angular change. They were not easy to use and generally didn’t show you interactively how the photo was being rotated. Picasa even in its early versions (pre-google ownership) included a straighten tool in the first basic enhance panel. By comparison the picasa straightener put a detailed grid over your image and as you move the straightening slider. Moving the slider to the right is a clockwise tilt and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt. The big improvement was that as you moved the slider the whole photo was moved on the screen so it was relatively easy to line up the horizontal or vertical straight lines in your photo.

The on-line end of picasa is now google+ photo (I’m expecting that name to change name soon) and it also has some good basic editing tools. Specifically a decent straightening tool. However it is somewhat hidden because the tile that activates it is called crop, but it does have a curved arrow above the typical crop icon. To find it firstly click on the edit item on the tool bar above your image, which appears above any single photo display. This the brings up a side panel which has a number of tiles representing various tools and filters. At the top of this panel are basic adjustments and these are all green tiles with “identifying” icons. The crop & straightening tile is on the lower right.

The crop/straighten panel (shown above) is then displayed and it has a number of tools to rotate the image. I’m using the ruler called straighten. Using it you first select one point, say on the horizon, click and then you stretch out desired the desired new horizon, and click on a second point on the horizon. The photo is then adjusted on screen and you set where the automatic cropping is also displayed (outside this the triangular salvages are still displayed but subdued). The two icons with the small rectangle and curved rotation arrows can be used to rotate the photo through 90° to right or left (ie correct for the camera held at 90°). The sliders also rotates the photo but only by a limited amount. Like the original picasa straightener moving to the right is a clockwise rotation and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straightening up in AfterShot Pro

Something that everyone seems to be an expert on is straightening when the horizon is water. Everyone seems to “know” that the horizon will be flat and can be harsh when it isn’t. However straightening is one of the tools that often get overlooked when learning photo software. Further straightening is one task that is handled very differently in different packages.

I am using AfterShotPro on my laptop much more, often in association with Picasa to review photos when I first load them. I find this is the best time to cull, rank, add the metadata and perhaps do some very basic edits. Whilst Straightening is never a high priority. I find that AfterShot Pro has a really wonderful straightening tool, it is the small tilted picture icon at the bottom left of the main image display. The tool displays a bold arrow, clicking and holding the mouse will then select this point as an anchor and as you move the mouse away from this point a circular target style image opens up which has a horizontal and vertical grid markings (useful in aligning both vertical and horizontal items) Movement of the mouse can rotate this target circle. As you move away from the target a bold line is draw on one of the prime directions (right. left, up or down) closest you you movement. If you move the mouse outside a certain size (ie the circle almost fills the shortest axis of your image), the circle no longer expands but the bold reference line continues as you drag the mouse further. In the example above I have anchored the first point on the horizon on the left and side and draw out my desired horizontal to the horizon on the right hand side. Releasing the mouse rotates the image to use this new horizontal.

Unlike most other straighten tools, the one in AfterShot Pro does not automatically crop your image. So you are left with triangular salvages (shown in grey On the left) along the sides. The crop tool is the two overlapping L shapes with a tiny scalpel icon, its is to the left beside the straighten icon. Clicking on it displays a small dialogue box, in the upper right hand corner is a button labelled fit, clicking on this will then automatically fits your rotated photo into the largest rectangle that it can generate without displaying the salvages, (ie it trims off some of the edges or your image). This basically matches the automatic cropping of other packages. However when you rotate the image the aspect ratio of that fill rectangle can vary, so being able to crop to a defined ratio instead of the best fit could be desirable in many situations. Finally for all the “pixel peepers” and/or folk with a micrometre, here is my straighten version of my contre-jour seascape

PhotoProject :: Straightening Out

“There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.” - David Hockney

I believe what David is highlighting here is that the camera’s view of the world is from a single lens with a specific perspective. We have two eyes and “see” a much richer three dimensional worlds and our vision can be influences by our expectations. For example when we are dwarfed by tall trees we know we are surrounded by a strong vertical world. Our camera however see a more curved representation (depending on the zoom) and we will probably notice wide angle views tend to show curves where we expect strong vertical lines. For this reason many architectural photographers go to some extreme length with special cameras and lenses to overcome this perspective distortion. The Tilt/Shift lens being very popular because they do allow control of this distortion. A number of tilt/shift filters are also now becoming popular because they can be used to create the effect of looking at a miniature world.
In this vertarama, made from three *HDR photos (created by google+ autoawesome) you can see the trees enclosing over me as the camera moves higher. Ok this is pleasing in some respects but I want to show the strong vertically of these pines, so I have Tried out a plug-in for after-shoot pro called zPerspector. There are a number of similar perspective adjustment plug in fro Photoshop, gimp & even paint.net. The all perform varaiable scaling  and/or warping to adjust the image. zPerspector has a very easy to pick up approach where you can stretch and pull at each of the corner edges of your photo to thus arrive at the expected view. In my example below I am not trying to get all the trees straight and vertical (because they weren’t really) what I was looking for for trying to reproduce the strength of the trees towering over me as I remember it.