On that, I will be testing it out for myself and will likely have some videos explaining some of the differences and how to use some of the new features. Look for that soon!

Download the Beta here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

However, I recently had the chance to try out the best of the best, though that may be disputable to some. But regardless of how you see it, the Phase One IQ180 IS CURRENTLY the megapixel and image quality winner, hands down. The IQ180 is just part of the “kit” that makes up the amazing camera that I had the luxury of using hands on. Phase One formally only made the digital backs for “other” camera manufacturers, thus you would use their digital back on a Hasselblad or Mamiya camera body. However, since Hasselblad began making their own digital systems, Phase One was left with Mamiya. So, they joined forces (technically, Phase One bought a controlling interest in Mamiya) and are now offering what is the highest megapixel count medium format digital system in the world.

And then I woke up…

Combine the Phase One IQ180 digital back and the Mamiya (now Phase One) 645DF along with a dash of high-quality medium format lens (such as the Schneider-Kreuznach 55mm LS f2.8 lens) and you get one unbelievably fantastic digital capture in one unbelievably expensive package. I was actually told that the setup I was using was roughly $47,000 which is probably 10x the value of my current Nikon setup. But when held, rather than looking like a tourist with a fancy camera, instead I had the feeling that I should hold it above my head He-Man style and yell “I have the power!” but refrained from doing so considering all things.

While the Phase One setup IS a digital camera, that’s nearly where the comparisons stop with a “standard” DSLR. Ok, ok, I exaggerate a bit… The controls are actually very similar, the grip feels much the same, and although it’s no featherweight, I was quite surprised at how light it really was, thus making hand-held shooting quite possible in the right light. However, to really open this baby up and take advantage of the best parts, you really need a sturdy tripod, remote release and even better yet, switch it to mirror-up mode to get that out of the way before the capture starts to eliminate any possibility of even the slightest shake. As the megapixels climb, even the slightest of movements can cause the most tiny blur, thus a horribly out of focus image. (It’s not THAT bad, but it makes a huge difference when taking longer exposures.) I’m somewhat amused after reading so complaints from Nikon fans about the rumored 36 megapixel Nikon D800 that “oh that’s too many megapixels (referring to the D800), give me this and that instead.” But after using the IQ180, I must disagree… More IS better, as long as you can put them to proper use! However, I do wonder how many Nikon lenses can actually take full advantage of a 36mp sensor.

100% Crop on Full Image

Being somewhat limited on where and what I could do while I had access to this megapixel monster, I set myself up for what *to me* is a critical test of the system… A scene with a great deal of dynamic range, contrast and bucketfuls of detail to be had. Needless to say, a unique variety of buildings down a busy, downtown Denver street yielded the test parameters I desired. Thus, the test image with 100% crop sample to the right (click the image at the top of this post to see the photo without the crop sample). Sure, it’s not artistically appealing (actually I kinda like it to be honest), but it gave me everything I needed to put this thing through it’s paces. And it captured everything, and then some, with dead accurate, flying colors. Despite the strong contrast of the setting sun reflecting off the glass building windows to the dark shadows between buildings and on the darkest of objects, nearly every bit of the image has detail to spare. And it should considering the 16bit RAW captures, 13.6 EV dynamic range and unbeatable color depth (based on DxOMark test results). While several Nikon and one Pentax camera have a greater dynamic range, I feel that the Phase One gives a better “unmodified” RAW file.

With the below sample, I took these shots minutes apart using a similar focal length, position and equivalent exposure. The IQ180 sample is from a 100% crop, the Nikon sample is from the same crop, scaled up to match. Detail anyone? This is only a tiny fraction of the full image. The full size file is a jaw dropping 10328×7760 pixels! That’s more pixels HIGH than many of my multi-shot panoramic composites are WIDE, and that’s just ONE shot! For comparison sake, that would be a nearly 35″ x 26″ print at a full 300ppi. (Or roughly a 70″ x 53″ print at almost 150ppi still!) Click thumbnail for full size sample.

IQ180 at 100% crop, D300 scaled to match.

As with any super-high performance product, it has some drawbacks other than the cost. (Hey, a Ferrari is a terrific car for going around a track or to get a drink at the overpriced bar down the street, but it’s not exactly something I’d drive to the hardware store.) With that said, the drawback list is short, in my opinion. The ISO performance, compared to modern DSLR cameras, is considerably lacking. Then again, this isn’t your typical “chase brides around in a dimly lit church” type of camera. Odds are, you won’t be taking it to photograph from the sideline of a sporting event either. (If you are, more power to you!) However, they do offer several features to help when you do need to push the ISO. The first is “pixel binning” which combines the information of several neighboring pixels into a lower resolution, but lower noise final image. It also has the usual “dark frame” (frequently known as High-ISO noise reduction) which “captures” another dark-frame shot to allow the camera to calculate and remove excess noise. The last “drawback” is the fact that the RAW files are easily 50+ megabytes EACH! Process that with Capture One (Phase One’s version of Lightroom or Aperture) and export a 16bit TIFF at a full 80 megapixels and you get a computer seizing 480 megabyte file! Even my fairly up-to-date Mac Pro tower with power to spare had an issue once I took these into Photoshop, making editing quite a slow process. Don’t even think about loading these on your laptop to edit. In fact, I wouldn’t even begin to edit these without a dual processor system with at least 16GB of memory or more. (Even then you’d probably still be waiting on the Photoshop swap disk frequently.)

Phase One IQ180 on 645DF, processed in Capture One 6 Pro

What I DO really like about this system is the fact that as a photographer, it *SLOWS YOU DOWN* to think about your capture two or three times before you even reach for the shutter release. At which point, you inspect the file on the touch screen after capture to be sure it is sharp, in focus and their are no other artifacts. Their is absolutely no point in going rapid fire with this, it’s about careful planning before the shot and inspection after the shot. Honestly, I almost wish I could find the reason to do that with my DSLR, but it’s to easy to simply over-shoot and cull them later. (Even my modest 8MB CF cards hold 300+ 12mp 14bit RAW captures from my Nikon.)

My final thoughts… Well, I wish I had $100,000 or so to invest in a setup like this plus a nice array of lenses, a considerably faster computer and some travel money so I could come back with a handful of images worthy of Peter Lik. (Then wake up from the dream.) It’s far from being necessary for *MOST* photographers. In fact, unless your clients are paying you handsomely, chances are this isn’t for you. But if I had money burning a hole in my pocket, you bet I’d get one!

Since then, Adobe TV has put out their own high quality video which CLEARLY shows how well the module works (watch in full screen HD), and I’m clearly impressed. Obviously this works best with images blurred due to a motion path rather than being entirely out of focus. However, one image they demonstrate at the end does appear to be more OOF rather than motion blur, and it is recovered very well.

Personally, this could save some of those “almost perfect” shots that I had to skip due to the focus being just a bit off. Or while using a long telephoto, I end up with a tiny bit of camera shake which translates into a huge amount of motion blur. Which honestly is VERY difficult to avoid, even with the most sturdy of tripod and mounts.

None the less, here is the link to the Adobe TV video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-sneak-peeks/max-2011-sneak-peek-image-deblurring/

As with any program in it’s early stages, their are things that got “left out”, as well as a number of changes that came up after the initial designing of the application. As such, I’ve been working hard to get those into the latest version of Color Cloud. In addition, the feedback and feature requests have been coming in, so I made it a point to try and get a few new requested features into this update.

First, I’ve added the check box which enables you to collapse the application down to just the title bar and menu so that you can work on an image or use an application without having to close the application entirely, while retaining the window settings (color preference, reference image and window scaling).

In addition to that, I’ve added the ability to hide the control menu entirely so that the app takes slightly less space while using it, and you get a more direct “connection” between the reference image in Color Cloud and the image you are editing. You do this using the “Hide Controls” option in the Color Cloud menu (Mac) or the Help menu (PC). Re-enable the menu the same way. I have also eliminated the border around the reference image so it fills the application. On a PC, the frame around the application is retained, on a Mac it now floats with no borders. Again, slightly less cluttered and a better connection between your image and the reference image.

Lastly, by request, I have added the ability to scale the application both 15% smaller all the way up to almost 70% larger, which makes the application easier to fit onto your screen, regardless of the size or resolution. Plus it helps to get a larger comparison as necessary.

Things I’m still working on include the ability to load your own images into the application, which will come in a future update.

Check out Color Cloud and try the demo: www.ModifiedPhotoGraphics.com/color-cloud/

Without going into tons of detail, I will let you enjoy the link to the page with the video here:

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/11/adobe-demos-incredible-unblur-feature-for-photoshop/

So these questions, comments and complaints came up pretty frequently in the discussion about the D800, here is my take on them:

“It’s $4000, that’s too much!” – Really? Because I’d GLADLY pay $4000 for better than D3x performance. In fact, that’s nearly half price for 12MP more, full HD video and a smaller body camera. (Which is a plus for some people.) And if the price is too much, you’re probably not making enough money with it to justify buying one in the first place.

“Why no 60p video?” – Honestly, full HD at 30fps is fine. Quite frankly, if you NEED 60p video, buy a real HD video camera. I realize the “DVSLR” or “VSLR” are blurring the lines between video camera and still camera, which is great for some, but I’d much rather have a very good still camera with reasonable video capability than a mediocre still camera with good video capability. Worse yet, paying extra for both functions when I really only want a good still camera in the first place.

“I don’t need 36 megapixels” – Why not? After all, this means you could crop the image significantly and still have plenty of megapixels to spare. On top of that, with super-large prints becoming popular options for studios to sell for big profits, the more resolution means better, sharper, more detailed finished prints. I see no drawbacks here. As for storage, hard drives are so considerably large and cheap these days… I have at least 10TB of storage on my Mac alone and still thinking about adding more.

“I bet ISO is going to be terrible” – How so? Lets not forget how GOOD the D7000 ISO performance is, and that’s a DX factor 16MP camera. Scale that sensor up to full frame and quite honestly the ISO performance could be as good. And lets not forget what I said above, do we REALLY need ISO 25,600 that often? (Or even near that?) In fact, I checked my Lightroom catalogs and less than 2% of my images total were taken over ISO 800. Even then, the ISO performance from 800 to 3200 would be considerably better than my 5-year-old D300 making THAT range good enough for practical use. On that, Nikon hasn’t released any official specs yet, so what’s to say the ISO will be bad?
In addition, if you are using a 36MP professional SLR, odds are you also have a selection of F2.8 zooms and/or F1.8 or faster fixed lenses. In which case, high ISO would rarely be a necessity anyway.

“Only 4FPS oh noes!” – Cry me a tear and turn on the video function if you want to capture action. After all, those 8×10″ sports prints of the Jr league football team you sell, you can just capture the best frame out of the video and use that. Problem solved. You think you NEED 36MP at 8+ FPS? Only if you’re shooting the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA, NASCAR, NHRA or some other pro sport and are being paid handsomely to do so… In which case, get a D3s which was designed for speed. (Correction, I suppose you could add in pro college teams too.) Even then it will have a “DX Mode” when combine with the battery grip, which will boost it to 6FPS. Sounds like a fine compromise to me.

With my thoughts on peoples gripes out in the wind, here are my only thoughts that I hope Nikon has or will address with the D800:

Can we please get more dynamic range? Seriously, I’d trade a few stops of ISO performance for a few more stops of DR.
Video is nice, but PLEASE don’t mess up the controls for the still functions to make room for video features.
Lets get mirrorless already! (or translucent mirror)
Give me the ability to wireless tether without expensive add-ons or proprietary software.
Build in a GPS, I’d love to geotag my files but I’m not going to spend another few hundred dollars on an attachment that just adds to the bulk.
Make it lighter. I’m all about a big, full size camera. I have big hands, I need a big camera. But lighter will always be a pleasant surprise.
Thunderbolt connectivity please! Granted, my Mac Pro tower doesn’t have it yet… The next one I buy will if I can help it. (USB 3.0 does Mac users little good considering Apple doesn’t support it or plan to do so.)

Anyhow, with my list of demands to Nikon out of the way, I’d GLADLY ‘test’ one out before they hit the market… *wink wink* Aw well, I tried!

Due to all of the time spent on the sites and application, I’ve had to postpone releasing the Adobe Photoshop Actions until I can make some changes to clean up the functions and to create proper tutorial videos on how to use each one. However, the Color Cloud™ application is nearly ready to release (hopefully before October) and meets or beats all of my initial expectations for the application. Having spent MANY YEARS as a professional color technician for multiple professional labs around the country, I found myself looking for an application that would allow me to work in the way that we do at professional labs. Despite my expert level of color judgement, the chromatic adaptation of our eyes (ability to “adjust” incorrect colors to what we know) caused me to have less-than-great color and consistency when correcting my own images at home. Basically, our eyes “see” what we know the color should be, thus we cannot properly judge the color and exposure correctly, even with a perfectly calibrated display. This problem is solved with the Color Cloud™ application which “floats” above Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture or any other application, allowing us to make comparisons to known good color and exposure skin tones as well as other sample images so that we waste less time, have fewer “surprise” images and in turn our CLIENTS are more satisfied which makes us happy and rich. (At least we hope so.)

I will have a demo video up of the application very soon, please check back here for that YouTube link.

So now that I am somewhat re-established again, I am currently working on several pet-projects and will have more details on those very shortly. One project took me WAY back to my High School and early College years as a programming major, and after brushing up on code, I will have my first Mac and Windows application available for photographers very shortly. (Stay tuned for more info on this!) The other project is still in the planning stages but will take a considerable amount of work to complete. I do hope to start on it before the fall as the long Colorado winters will be a great time to do some editing on this project.

And at a last note, yours truly received a wonderful honor from the Professional Photographers of America, 2011 International Print Competition in the form of a Silver Metal for “Excellence in Photography”. Congratulations to me!

For readers that happen to reside in the Denver or Aurora, Colorado areas, please feel free to comment here. I am looking to make some connections and LOVE to talk shop with other enthusiast in the area. Plus I’d love to hear about some of the beautiful areas to go and create art around this wonderful state.

On the same subject, look for my upcoming full-length DVD video tutorial showing how to do your own HDR blends based on my award winning recipe for amazing HDR images. I will post more information about that as soon as I am ready to share more.

Press release after the jump:

Oloneo PhotoEngine HDR Tone Mapping Preview

Paris, France – April 20, 2011 – Oloneo today announced PhotoEngine v1.0, the only High Dynamic Range (HDR) and RAW processing software offering photographers full control over light and exposure in real-time. PhotoEngine v1.0 for Windows is scheduled to ship on May 31st 2011 at US$149 / €125. Beta users who register with Oloneo before May 31st will benefit from a 25% discount to acquire PhotoEngine v1.0 at US$110 / €93.

Countless photographers have been enthusiastically participating in the public beta testing of PhotoEngine over the last 9 months. Their numerous feedbacks and suggestions have been key in making PhotoEngine a growing reference among professional photographers and amateurs.

“We have devoted our entire time discussing and implementing the requests received from the beta testers, thus ensuring that PhotoEngine perfectly suits their needs in terms of features, usability and speed,” said Antoine Clappier, President of Oloneo and main developer of PhotoEngine. “The number and quality of the images created by the beta users is a testimony to the potential of PhotoEngine.”

By offering an almost unlimited control over exposure and lighting in real-time, PhotoEngine provides photographers with a completely new way of handling, processing and improving digital photos.

“PhotoEngine has radically boosted my workflow and increased my level of creativity and excellence,” said David Giral, a professional photographer and longtime HDR specialist. “PhotoEngine is clearly miles ahead of the competition and manages to create stunning images efficiently.”

Oloneo PhotoEngine v1.0: Main Features

HDR ToneMap(TM): high dynamic re-exposure in real-time
A full real-time, high dynamic range (HDR) re-exposure module to merge and edit single or multiple RAWs, JPEGs or TIFFs. Capable of creating a wide range of styles, from realistic to artistic, HDR ToneMap includes four tone mapping engines, Natural HDR processing mode, auto-exposure correction with fine-tuning, auto-contrast, detail size and threshold controls, halo control, edge sharpening, ghost removal tools, auto-align, auto-orientation, batch processing with interactive mode, over 40 interactive factory presets and user-defined presets, and more. Users also have the possibility to modify exposure the traditional way by turning off tone mapping while still benefiting from a 32-bit, ultra-wide gamut and full resolution environment.

HDR ReLight(TM): take pictures then set-up lighting
An image-based relighting tool using merged RAWs, JPEGs or TIFFs to control in real-time the settings of individual light sources after the photos are taken. For each light source, parameters include white balance, brightness, temperature, tint and color. Other features are the auto-detection of ambient light and each light source’s color temperature.

HDR DeNoise(TM): remove noise and keep details
A powerful image noise and grain reduction tool using stacked RAWs, JPEGs or TIFFs, with the added benefits of full detail preservation, no smoothing and no artifacts, even with low-contrast and low-light photos.
Complete, high-end RAW photo processing
Oloneo PhotoEngine also features a complete RAW and image processing module including a customizable Color Curve Equalizer(TM) with hue/saturation, hue/luminance and hue/hue curves, a brightness curve, a unique color saturation curve, a color toning tool, an advanced white balance control and more. PhotoEngine handles most RAW photo formats, with thumbnail and preservation of key EXIF metadata, fully supports color management and uses the ICC profiles generated by most colorimeters on the market today.

Availability
The English/International version of Oloneo PhotoEngine v1.0 for Windows platforms is scheduled to ship on Tuesday, May 31st 2011 for electronic delivery directly from Oloneo at www.oloneo.com.

Pricing: a Special 25% Discount for Beta Users
Oloneo PhotoEngine v1.0 will be priced at US$149 / €125.
In appreciation of their active participation during the beta testing, Oloneo will be offering a special, time-limited discount of 25% to the PhotoEngine beta users who register with Oloneo before May 31st:

US$110 (reduced from US$149)
€93 (reduced from €125)

To register with Oloneo and qualify for this offer, users need to sign up to the Oloneo Newsletter at www.oloneo.com before May 31st 2011. Special beta user offer valid from May 31st to June 30th, 2011.

System Requirements
Windows:
OS: 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista or Windows 7
Hard disk: 200MB of available space
CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel or AMD with SSE2, dual-core recommended
RAM: 1.5GB
Screen: 1280 x 720

Mac OS:
A Mac OS version of PhotoEngine is not available at this time. The product runs with good performance on a dual-core Mac with Parallels Desktop 5.

First off, I want to say that before I came across the Fixel plug-ins for the “Pixel Bender” plug-in for CS5, I only had a vague knowledge of the Pixel Bender myself. So now that we are all starting on the same page, lets get going…

Adobe Labs – Pixel Bender

Pixel Bender is a free plug-in from Adobe Labs. It is NOT included with any version of Photoshop, however it is a free download from Adobe at the Adobe Labs website. (Click here to go directly to the Pixel Bender page.) The plug-in is also available for CS4, but I cannot comment on how well that works as I am running CS5 now.

So with that cleared up, now I should explain what Pixel Bender does. I think of it as an accelerated “springboard” for plug-in developers to design plug-ins that work with the Pixel Bender plug-in, which utilizes the GPU (if enabled) and CPU power to supercharge sometimes complex filter actions. Basically, Pixel Bender is a plug-in for Photoshop and it takes OTHER plug-ins that do different things and runs them within the Pixel Bender interface. (Confused yet? So am I, but if you download and install it, it begins to make sense.)

Now that we are on the same page, slightly confused but hopefully intrigued, let me now explain what a Fixel is. Fixel is a small Plug-in developer that has taken the bull by the horns and wrestled some really cool Pixel Bender plug-ins out of it. Considering these are smaller, simple to learn, simple to use plug-ins, the cost is minimal and it makes them easy and fun to experiment with. (Unlike some plug-ins that I have which are overly complex, difficult and extremely expensive. I don’t think I even need to name them at this point.) Currently they offer four options, Fixel Contrastica, Fixel LightIT, Fixel EdgeHancer and Fixel Coloritivity. As with other Pixel Bender plug-ins, they run within the single, simple interface accessed through the Filter -> Pixel Bender -> Pixel Bender Gallery in Photoshop.

With that said, lets have some fun.

First off, Fixel Coloritivity. Although limited to only 5 presets, the slider to blend the Intensity allows for unlimited different looks by mixing the presets with the original image. The before/after results of one of these presets can be seen on my image “Oliver”. Personally, I like all of the presets and feel they work very well on any type of image, including portraits, stylized wedding image and more.

The Fixel LightIT plug-in is a little bit like the “Fill Light” slider in Lightroom, except it isn’t limited to working with your RAW files. Although I don’t have a sample here to share, I can say it does work and has an interesting way of being able to bring up shadow detail without affecting the highlights. Perfect for those images where the sky is “just right” but the subject isn’t lit quite well. It was able to bring out the color and detail lost in darker shadows without making the image look overly processed. (And we always want to avoid that “over processed” look!) But lets not mistake “shadows” with “complete blackness”. Nothing can recover color or detail that simply isn’t in the file. (Which is why proper exposures are SO IMPORTANT in photography!)

Next up is the Fixel EdgeHancer. This plug-in handles sharpening, with a twist. Unlike an overall sharpening filter such as Unsharp Mask, the Fixel EdgeHancer really boosts the edges of higher contrast areas while having little or no effect on areas of low detail. Meaning, you can really pump that sharpening with less artifacts or noise appearing across your image. Or push it further for more creative effects. (Click the sample image for a 100% crop of the before and after.)

And lastly, Fixel Contrastica. The name says it all really. It allows for local and global contrast manipulation, including realistic through creative levels of contrast BOOST or REDUCTION which is sometimes nice but difficult to do in Photoshop without hurting the color.

All of the plug-ins are fun and easy, each offers it’s own creative advantage but my favorite has to be the Coloritivity followed closely by the EdgeHancer. Hopefully we might see more fun Pixel Bender plug-ins from Fixel soon.