OnOne Software Releases Liquid Resize Preview

OnOne Software has released a preview of the Liquid Resize technology that they purchased sometime ago. Liquid Resize is a way of resizing images in a way that is different from any other technology available. Since it is hard to explain what it does, I am going to show you. I have included a small sample video. This video shows the current Liquid Resize interface, a photo that comes with the preview and my having resized the image down by 50%, watch as the photo shrinks, it is quite interesting.

It is important to note that anyone can download the preview from the OnOne Software site. This is a very early almost alpha copy. The interface will change and the tools will change. In the end they plan to have this as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. The preview isn’t very stable at least it hasn’t been for me. It only works reliably on images 1000×1000 pixels or smaller. If you use the keep or remove paint brush to paint areas you don’t want altered or to select areas you do want altered you will most likely get a crash.

However, this technology is very interesting and once the bugs have been worked out and the technology fleshed out it looks to be a very promising technology.

OnOne Software\’s Liquid Resize – A Demo

Infrared Photos As Promised

I have had a chance to take my Fuji A900 that I bought pre-converted to Infrared Only out for a day of photo taking. Here are some of the shots I took. Overall I feel the camera does a nice job. It is lacking some of the features I would like to have in an Infrared only camera, but all of those features are easy to take care of in post processing. The biggest missing feature is manual white balance control so that I have a better control over the picture at the time of photographing it.

My one big complaint about the Fuji A900 is that it has no viewfinder, just the LCD screen on the back. Because this can’t be seen in sunlight it is very hard to frame, zoom and make sure that you are getting the picture you want. This problem however is not limited to the Fuji A900, it will be a problem with any camera that doesn’t have an optical viewfinder.

I purchased the camera pre-converted from http://www.maxmax.com and I am quite happy with not only the camera, but their conversion. I chose the Fuji A900 because it was the cheapest Infrared only camera that they had. I am now looking to convert one of my old dSLR’s which should give me more control and even better quality pictures.

I chose Infrared only instead of Infrared and Visible for several reasons.

1. I didn’t want to have to fool with lens mounted filters.
2. I had no intentions of ever wanting to use this camera for visible light (regular) photography.
3. It allows you to see on screen what your actual image will look like.

The big problem with the lens mounted filters that is not only throws off the cameras metering (by about 2 stops for an R72 Infrared filter), it can throw of the camera focusing and you can’t see anything on the LCD screen or the viewfinder (in the case of dSLR’s). However, if you have the camera converter internally (they remove some of the stock filters in front of the sensor and replace them with an Infrared filter) these problems go away.

Well any ways here are the photos. You can click on them to see the full size images. These were all taken in Tiburon and San Rafael (North of the Golden Gate Bridge, Northern California).

Adobe Adds New Room to Lightroom

Adobe recently announced the public availability of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta. This beta offers a look at some of the features that will be in Lightroom 2.0, but according to a post on the Adobe forums not all of the features that will be available in 2.0 are in this public beta. Time will tell. The improvements that are in there are quite nice.

Improvements include:

Photoshop CS3 Integration:

• Open files in Photoshop as Smart Objects.  (This way you can tweak your Lightroom adjustments within Photoshop just by double-clicking the Smart Object layer that contains your raw file.)
• Select multiple images to merge as a panorama
• Merge multiple exposures into a single Photoshop HDR image
• Load multiple files (or virtual copies of a single file) into Photoshop as separate layers in a single document

Selective image editing that rocks:

• Lightroom 2 adds a Retouch tool in the Develop module, that means you can paint regions of the image to dodge, burn, saturate/desaturate, adjust contrast, and more. And, all edits are storied in the metadata and are non-destructive.

Library Module:

• Streamlined Library layout
• Smart Collections (based on search criteria)
• Powerful Filter Bar to search and refine images
• Suggested Keywords for simplified keywording
• 10,000 pixel size limit raised to 30,000 pixels
• Output-based collections

Multiple monitor support:

• Four flexible modes for an alternate window: Grid, Loupe, Compare, Survey
• Live Loupe mode

Export functionality:

• Auto-add exported images to the Lightroom catalog
• Auto Output Sharpening for images on export

Develop Module:

• Non-Destructive Localized Correction for dodging and burning specific areas of an image
• Post-Crop Vignette
• Basic Panel Keyboard Shortcuts
• Improved Auto Adjustment
• Improved memory handling through 64-bit support on OS X 10.5 and Vista 64-bit.(Not limited to develop module)

Print Module:

• Picture Package for multi-page layouts
• Print Module output directly to JPEG
• Enhanced Print Sharpening based on PhotoKit Sharpener algorithms
• 16-bit Printing for Mac OS X 10.5

As you can see there are some very nice, useful and important additions to Lightroom 2.0. If it is true that the public beta doesn’t reveal all of the new features and improvements one can hope that we will also see much more powerful noise reduction as well as distortion correction tools.

I am totally thrilled that the 10,000 x 10,000 pixel image size limit has been raised to match that of Adobe Photoshop, that being 30,000 x 30,000 pixels. This means now I can catalog my rather large collection of panorama images.

The availability of a 64-bit native version is also good news, though 64-bit as far as I am concerned is still in its infancy and it will be a few years yet before I jump on that band wagon, however I am glad to see Adobe leading the way in 64-bit application development.

You can download the public beta from the Adobe Labs site. One thing to keep in mind is that this is a time limited beta. If you don’t have the current release of Lightroom installed your trial period will be limited to 30 days. If you have the current version installed this beta will expire at the end of August 2008.

Finally, the 2.0 beta WILL NOT import and/or convert your Lightroom 1.3.1 catalogs. You will need to re-import your images to get them in to the 2.0 beta. Adobe has done this to protect you. The Lightroom 2.0 beta is not production level software. Please make a backup of any images you plan to import in to it before you import them. Image loss or corruption isn’t likely to happen, but there are no guarantees this is beta software.