I’ve just uploaded version 1.2.1 which is just a bug fix release (no fancy new features this time I’m afraid), but it should hopefully sort out the really annoying bug in 1.2 which could cause the image to appear black or as a random jumble of colours for some people. Plus a couple of other bugs stomped on too. Grab it now from the download page!

The main changes from 1.1 are:

• New multithreaded image processing engine. This means if you’re lucky enough to have one of the new intel macs, or an older G5 with dual core processors, it should work much faster than before.
• Enabling and disabling of actions. Each action has a check box that lets you turn it on or off without needing to remove it.
• Rewritten display engine. Should be more efficient, and also provides nicer looking preview images when you’re zoomed out.
• A load of bug fixes and other minor updates.

DNG support hasn’t yet made it because, as mentioned in the last post, the demosaicing algorithm that the free Adobe SDK uses is pants. So rather than ship it with something that doesn’t look very good, or delay 1.2 until I can replace it with something better, I’ve decided to drop it for the time being. It will be back tho!

• DNG support. I was using the free Adobe DNG SDK to make this work - unfortunately, after a bit of testing, it turns out the demosaicing algorithm they use in the SDK is, erm, not very good. I don’t expect them to give away the same algorithm they use in Lightroom or anything, but it’d be nice if what they did supply was useable. So I need to replace that before it can be released (I could have a big rant here about how if they want DNG to be a universal format they ought to release a decent free SDK, but I’ll resist!).

• A new job. I work on PhotoComplete in my spare time, and I’m in the middle of moving jobs (and probably house too!), so that’s had an effect on development. Hopefully that’s nearly sorted now tho, so we’ll be back to normal soon.

All that said, 1.2 is nearly done, and I’m still hoping it’ll be out before the end of the month, but it’s possible it’ll slip into next month - so hang in there!

• Support for RAW files. Well, DNG files anyway - you can use the free Adobe DNG Converter to convert a RAW file from practically any camera out there into a DNG file, which can then be loaded into PhotoComplete.

• The ability to turn actions on and off - probably the most requested feature we’ve got! That little check box by the side of the Color Saturation action in the screenshot above enables or disables the action, so you can easily see what effect it’s having on your photo without having to remove it.

I’m aiming at getting 1.2 out sometime in the middle of next month, and it should have both these goodies in it :)

Here’s our starting photo:

It’s already been cropped and resized, but other than that, it’s not yet been altered. I tend to crop first, then resize, as I’m usually editing images to stick on the photoblog (quick plug - photo.funkypixels.com !), so know the final size I want. Resizing to a smaller size at the start makes the following actions run much faster.

First thing to fix is the contrast - looking at the histogram it’s all pretty bunched up in the middle, so adding some contrast spreads things out a bit more. I added a ‘Brightness & Contrast’ action, and upped the contrast level:

Whilst that’s made things better, the image is still very dark. The sky looks reasonable, and we don’t want to risk blowing it out, so rather than adjust the brightness (which will make the sky too bright), the ‘Shadows & Highlights’ action is the thing to use. This allows me to make the shadows brighter without affecting the sky:

The overall contrast looks much better now, but the colours are very muted. The ‘Color Saturation’ action is your friend here. I’ll add one and move the blue slider right the way to the right:

Much better - no longer looks like it’s black and white! I’m quite happy with the colours and contrast now, but the image isn’t very sharp. ‘Unsharp Mask’ action to the rescue. The settings are a fair amount of voodoo sadly. What seems to work here is to decrease the radius by about half and increase the amount slightly, but it’s totally dependent on the photo…

Almost there, the only final thing I notice is that the sharpening has brought out a bit of noise in the sky (although it might not show up on these JPEGs). So I’m going to add a ‘Noise Reduction’ action, but rather than add it after the sharpening (which tends to blur the image again), I’ll add it before the sharpen:

And that’s our final photo. If you want to play with the PhotoComplete file, here it is - starting from the full size original photo, right down to the final image. Enjoy :)

Anyway, I’m currently working on trying to get version 1.2 of PhotoComplete together (the World Cup keeps getting in the way tho!). It’s a pretty big step up from 1.1 - lots of big changes behind the scenes to make things much easier to add in the future, which has had the nice side effect of making it run faster too. I’m hoping to squeeze in a new action or two, and some additions to a couple of the existing actions to make them a bit more flexible.

I’m aiming for a start of August release at the moment…

Don’t expect posts three times a day, but once or twice a week I’m hoping I’ll have something to say about the latest goings on with PhotoComplete and the funkypixels world in general.

We’ll see how it goes :)