Start small, think BIG Do It Yourself (DIY), How To... and a lot of Photography tips.By Rui M. Leal
Honestly, I doubt they have any real technology behind these images. Everyone familiar with Photoshop knows what Lens Blur filter does. The most tricky part (and time consuming also) is creating a depth map for the photograph. Especially if the photograph wasn't taken using hyperfocal distance (i.e. if it already has "natural" blur). And if you are using HFD, you lose in sharpness (and detail) on entire image.They don't say a word about how their technology work. I looked carefully on their examples and I think these tricks are made with Lens Blur, manually creating the depth maps. Some of them look even composited (like the one with girls and many tree branches). Most interesting part is how do they think they can take a depth map of a scene in a snap and without any special equipment.I used to work with depth maps to emphasize natural blur, here is an example (sorry for funny English, the page is originally in Russian). When I first saw the Lens Blur filter in Photoshop, I thought just about the same: how to shoot first and focus later. The only way I thought out was "scanning" a Z-axis with your lens. Put your camera on a tripod, make sure nothing in frame is moving and take many-many pictures while slowly changing focus from closest distance to infinity. And then you need some software, which will analyze the photos and make you the depth map along with "everything-in-focus" image. But the fact that you can't use this for moving subjects makes the whole theory pointless :-)
Dear Rui: the technology behind this type of cameras has been investigated by a group of Stanford University students, a couple of years ago, called by them "Plenoptics camera" and light field photography. You have some information about there work here: http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/Um abraçoLuís Bravo Pereira
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2 comments:
Honestly, I doubt they have any real technology behind these images. Everyone familiar with Photoshop knows what Lens Blur filter does. The most tricky part (and time consuming also) is creating a depth map for the photograph. Especially if the photograph wasn't taken using hyperfocal distance (i.e. if it already has "natural" blur). And if you are using HFD, you lose in sharpness (and detail) on entire image.
They don't say a word about how their technology work. I looked carefully on their examples and I think these tricks are made with Lens Blur, manually creating the depth maps. Some of them look even composited (like the one with girls and many tree branches). Most interesting part is how do they think they can take a depth map of a scene in a snap and without any special equipment.
I used to work with depth maps to emphasize natural blur, here is an example (sorry for funny English, the page is originally in Russian). When I first saw the Lens Blur filter in Photoshop, I thought just about the same: how to shoot first and focus later. The only way I thought out was "scanning" a Z-axis with your lens. Put your camera on a tripod, make sure nothing in frame is moving and take many-many pictures while slowly changing focus from closest distance to infinity. And then you need some software, which will analyze the photos and make you the depth map along with "everything-in-focus" image. But the fact that you can't use this for moving subjects makes the whole theory pointless :-)
Dear Rui: the technology behind this type of cameras has been investigated by a group of Stanford University students, a couple of years ago, called by them "Plenoptics camera" and light field photography. You have some information about there work here: http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/
Um abraço
Luís Bravo Pereira
Post a Comment