[Digikam-users] enfuse to blend images - [PanoToolsNG] A christmas present (fwd)

[Arnd Baecker]

Hi,

below is a forwarded message for those who are interested
in HDR style blending of several images.

I tried it with some examples and it produces very nice results!
(You will have to install the dev versions, see
http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin#Supported_Platforms
for links to detailed descriptions for many platforms)

Apologies to those who already know about this.

Best, Arnd

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:11:14 +0200
From: Erik Krause <erik.krause at gmx.de>
Reply-To: PanoToolsNG at yahoogroups.com
To: PanoToolsNG at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [PanoToolsNG] A christmas present

Hello,

Andrew Mihal (developer of enblend) and the hugin development team
around Pablo d'Angelo have a christmas present for the panorama
community: enfuse

The program uses the multi resolution spline blending technique known
from enblend to fusion (hence the name) a stack of exposure bracketed
images - not to HDR but to a exposure blended LDR result.

I tested it on some cases and it yielded results wich are the closest
to perfect I ever saw. Even the 17 EV lamp example from my page
http://www.erik-krause.de/blending which no recent tonemapper was
able to process satisfactorily looks really great:
http://www.erik-krause.de/lamp_enfuse.jpg

And the best is: this runs fully automatic, without need to tweak a
load of settings. The syntax is similar to enblend, hence it might be
possible to use one of the enblend GUIs:
http://wiki.panotools.org/Enblend_Front_End or even PTGui if you
specify enfuse instead of enblend or smartblend in the Options
-> Plugins menu (don't forget to set it back, since enfuse is *no*
panorama blender).

Enfuse is part of the enblend 3.1 pre release. Hence be warned: There
still might be bugs - this is for testing only. Please read the
README and the NEWS file from the ZIP before. Please report any bugs
or oddities here or better on the hugin-ptx list at
http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx

Enblend 3.1 reports are welcome, too!

Enfuse f.e. shuts down if it is called with wrong parameters. Here is
a list (output of enfuse if called without parameters):

Usage: enfuse [options] -o OUTPUT INPUTS

Common options:
 -h                Print this help message
 -l number         Number of levels to use (1 to 29)
 -o filename       Write output to file
 -v                Verbose
 -w                Blend across -180/+180 boundary
 --compression=COMP Set compression of the output image.
                   Valid values for compression are:
                   For TIFF files: LZW, DEFLATE
                   For JPEG files: 0-100

Extended options:
 -b kilobytes      Image cache block size (default=2MiB)
 -c                Use CIECAM02 to blend colors
 -g                Associated alpha hack for Gimp (ver. < 2) and
                   Cinepaint
 -f WIDTHxHEIGHT+x0+y0   Manually set the size and position of the
                         output image.
                         Useful for cropped and shifted input TIFF
                         images, such as those produced by Nona.

 -m megabytes      Use this much memory before going to disk
                   (default=1GiB)

Fusion options:
 --wExposure       Weight given to well-exposed pixels.
 --wContrast       Weight given to high-contrast pixels
                   (unimplemented).
 --wSaturation     Weight given to highly-saturated pixels
                   (unimplemented).

The Fusion options parameters have no effect so far since only
--wExposure is implemented and hence default. -c works only if the
source images contain a color profile.

Ok, did you read all? Then for the link (currently only Windows
version):

http://hugin.panotools.org/testing/enblend/enblend-3.1_win32_pre2.zip

best regards and merry christmas.

--
Erik Krause
Offenburger Str. 33
79108 Freiburg