[Digikam-users] Improving photos

[Julien Narboux]

Hi,
>
> In the future, i would to have a plugin to process HDR image in 
> digiKam using a serie of bracketed shots. It's not very complicated to 
> do.
>

This make me think of an idea I had. I don't know if it is something 
that has already been done and if it is possible at all.

Usually for a portrait, it is nice to have a blurred background.  This 
can be achieved by increasing the aperture using expensive lenses.
A cheaper way to obtain the blurred background is to apply a gaussian 
blur on the selection of the background of the picture using  gimp or 
krita. But the selection of the background is a difficult and tedious task.
Here is an example :
http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_51/essay.html

I think it would be nice to have a way to create automatically the 
selection (the depth map).

Maybe one could take several pictures of the scene with the smallest 
possible depth of field using different focus distances, then the 
pictures are compared to detect the part which are blurred or not. From 
this information one could  infer the distance.
At the end this could lead to a tool to select the depth of field 
afterwards.

Does anyone has ever seen a software or plugin to do such a thing ?

my 2 cents,

Julien