Correct lens issues

[Jon Angelo]

It would be nice if future Neat Image versions could correct:

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Lens issues:

1) Barrel and pincushion distortion

2) Chromatic aberrations /purple fringing

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Chip issues:
3)Highlight recovery
Pure white blown highlights the image info is 'gone'
but some data remains in the the steps just before white say from
RGB 247,247,247 and up

4) Hotpixel removal (oldie but goodie )
hotpixel removal by profiling lenscap photo.

5) Vignetting and uneven color casts.
Vignetting/lens shading which typically is present when
shooting with flash. And images shot at very high shutter speed
(1/2000 and up) can show some uneven color casts often slight
purple/green.

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Algorithm issues:
6) Color interpolation stepping.
In a cam with a (CYGM) sensor filter it would be yellow/magenta
artifacts (color stepping) along lines of highlight in an image.
Suggestion color stepping detection with color edge smoothing(median)

7) Bayer interpolation Interference patterns and moiré artifacts.
A de-mosaic/antialias feature would be cool.

Halo sharpening artifacts
Halo edge detection and edge smoothing/re-saturation.
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Some suggestions probably doesn't belong in Neat Image. Some suggestions is points to lesser image problems and I imagine others are difficult or impossible to implement.

I am very exited about the new release4 and plan to purchase NeatImage within a month or so.

Keep up the great work

/Jon Angelo Gjetting
www.gjetting.com

[NITeam]

Thank you for the big list of ideas! Some of them indeed presure development of entirely new products for specific correction tasks. We will keep these in mind for our future projects.

Thank you,
Vlad

[andewid]

I would agree that these are many good points.

Perhaps lens distortions like barrel or fisheye correntions probably do not applly to NeatImage. Though I can see a cheat way to implement such a feature by having a target to photograph and then measure how much the target it distorted in the picture. The EXIF information often contain focal lenght that NI could use for this.

The vingetting, halo, highlight recovery and hot pixel fix would be very powerful addition to NI. In fact, target sheets that I suggested for the lens distortion can be used to determine the distortion for each colour channel. Then NI can effectively restore both colour accuracy and minimize distortions.

[andewid]

7) Bayer interpolation Interference patterns and moiré artifacts.
A de-mosaic/antialias feature would be cool.

Together with the dcraw code NeatImage could work directly with the bayer algorithm to prevent noise and remove it before (or during) rendering of the image - giving even higher resolution!

http://www.neatimage.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=762

[pc168]

If we can see that 'big' list of enhancement available in the next version, NI will sure be at the top of the list in the imaging software market.

Whenever a new feature is available, while manual control would be nice to have, automated process is the most desired mode of operation. To me, ease of use is very important.