[Digikam-devel] [Bug 144593] New: New High Dynamic Range (HDR) plugin

[Arnd Baecker]

There is an interesting article on HDR with linux
  http://lwn.net/Articles/225652/
Another good overview  of the techniques
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/pfstools/papers/mantiuk07hdr_pipeline.pdf


Concerning the software side:
- http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/pfstools/
- A step by guide using pfstools:
  http://www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/72157594155731025/
- examples of tone-mapping algorithms (follow the links):
  http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/tmo/
- Comparison of different tone-mapping algorithms:
  http://dativ.at/logmap/index.html
- on qpfstmo, tone-mapping
  http://theplaceofdeadroads.blogspot.com/2006/07/qpfstmo-hdr-tone-mapping-gui-for-linux_04.html
- Maybe this is presently the best all-in-one solution:
  http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

For images taken without a tripod one can use hugin
to get them aligned:
http://chris.quietlife.net/2006/09/06/hdr-and-tonemapping-in-linux/

Concerning integration in digikam:
I am not sure whether this is really a good idea;
the main strength, in my opinion, of digikam is
the administration of images + some simple manipulations.
For other tasks specialized tools should be used, i.e.:
- for image manipulation: gimp, krita, ...
- for building panoramae: hugin
- for HDR images: the above tools

For example for constructing panorama pictures from
single shots, I wrote a small script (showing up as a menue
on right-click in the album view), which copies
all selected images into a separate folder in /tmp
where I then start hugin, create the pano,
and then finally copy (using an automatically generated script)
them back into the corresponding digikam folder.

What about making the integration of external tools/scripts (even into
digikams menus + association of short-cuts) possible?

Of course, adding support for viewing HDR images
(e.g. OpenEXR format etc.) might be nice.