georgevedwards Loc: Essex, Maryland.

I saw an ad for a free 30 trial...has anyone tried this? I mean is it a bona fide company like Topaz, etc, no malware? Also does it really accomplish much? I have a lot of experience but admit I am a little in the dark on this one about lens aberration/movement...I am downloading the trial now, how do you set it up? Any tricks to know?

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

It is very legit and not malware. It uses deconvolution to deconstruct the image and reassemble it back in a more perfect manner. It is leading edge technology and can work wonders.

It is very computational intensive and can take considerable time to convert an image. It works best with RAW images. I find it works good from Lightroom too. I may reduce the noise first if there is considerable noise, then send it to piccure+. It has built in noise reduction, but that is not its strong suit.

In use, I like to blow up the image to about 150% and try different settings on the image. Once I find something I like, then I can let it process the whole image. There is an option to reduce motion (with sharpening too) or an option to only sharpen.

There are also some training videos on the web site to help you see how to use it.

georgevedwards Loc: Essex, Maryland.

Thank you for your response. I have completed the free trial download and give it a shot!

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

I agree with Jim. Just a word from a prodigious PP Editor - I use it in my workflow for every image that I work on.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

http://piccureplus.com/
Is the reference and of course should have been in your post!! We forgive you... No! Not Sunday.. no forgiveness.

Please let us know how it works their claims may be an as they say "aberrations"... $100 is a bit pricy, considering that you can get the whole Topaz suite for same price.

One can not deny that their descriptive words are worth a $million.... wow .... deconvolution to reverse the blur.

georgevedwards inspecting some of the photos you submitted in UHH, there is no question that they display "spatially varying optical aberrations," what an embarrassment this must be to you. (humor)

Forgive me George, but I was fascinated by the verbiage they used. I Googled "photo edit tools to correct spatially optical aberrations" and there is a world of information. Seriously like the ads on TV educating us on diseases we never knew existed, or do they?

While attend grad school for chemistry, I was in the Art department.. lower floor was collection of student works. While standing looking a sculpture of "amorphous definition" two lovely virgin like coeds walked up and were confused by the work. I chimed in explaining balance, negative space, blah blah. They were impressed, as was a gent standing near... he was an instructor... amazed or humored by my ability (or gift of BS) to analyze and critique art. Say What??? Me??? I was just bulling the gals.

As a result of my joking, I was invited to attend a Friday night art department party, to give Mary a ride.. (adult comment omitted). In a discussion there another instructor, invited me to audit his nude drawing class. All because of words use well... all lead this poor chemist to a life of enjoyable depravity.

George, I really like the Picure+ descriptive ad speak language.. Thank you George. :thumbup:

Based on Bob's comments I will have to inspect and educate my self about this type of post processing. :idea: :shock:

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"\DxO Optics Pro" (DXO) also removes \lens softness" 1 relying on a previous calibration of a long list of lens/camera combinations referred to as \modules." Furthermore, Adobe's Photoshop comes with a \Smart Sharpener," correcting for lens blur after setting parameters for blur size and strength. It does not require knowledge about the lens used, however, it is unclear if a genuine PSF is inferred from the image, or the blur is just determined by the parameters" Will our education of optics never cease? From a tech pdf:
http://webdav.is.mpg.de/pixel/files/blind_lenscorrection/paper.pdf

Is Topaz "In Focus" an attempt at this correction?

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Where can you get that price??? I was on their website a few days ago, and they are asking over $400 for the complete suite.

zigipha Loc: north nj

In priciple, any blur can be "undone" if you know how it was blurred. the sw doe some magic in trying different unblurring methods and (I assume) has some parameter which measures how sharp the picture is and stops when it gets to maximum sharpness.

convolution is basically passing a signal (optcal image) through a filter (glass on your lens). No glass is perfect so it deforms (filters) the optical image in some way. deconvolution tries to guess what happened and then undoes its. btw the filter i refer to ISNT gels, or ND or CP filtering.

Lundberg02

There are so many contributors to blur that a Gaussian deconvolution works as well as knowing the exact transfer function. Motion blur is more easily defined.

dragonswing Loc: Pa

That's what I was thinking. I know I didn't get it that cheap.

melismus Loc: Chesapeake Bay Country

I bought on the last day of the 30% off deal; paid $69.30.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

The $99 total package of all 16 Topaz is at
http://www.topazlabs.com/store

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

That page is asking $414.99 for the full package - and that is 50% off! Quite a few of the individual programs cost $70 or $80 each...

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

That's probably just one of the applications... I have a couple, which cost me between $30 and $60 each. The whole package is listing for $414.99, and that is supposed to be 50% off!

ReMask alone is selling for $69...

marthamcc

I downloaded the trial version.
My first tests don't seem as good as using Topaz Denoise plus Topaz Detail.

I need to do more tests though,

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

It appears that one has to be signed in to their account to obtain the $99 price. I sent Bloke a Ashampoo Snap of the low price.