The Internet let out a collective gasp back in October 2011 when Adobe gave an advanced preview of a crazy new image deblurring feature it has been working on. The feature can take a photo that’s blurry due to camera shake, calculate the movements that caused the blur, and “reverse it” to create a sharper photo.
It looks like the feature isn’t too far off now. Today Adobe released the above video that offers a sneak peek at what the tool actually looks like inside an upcoming version of Photoshop. Just as with the demo from two years ago, this video will drop many jaws. Read more…
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how I recently created two band photos that feature motion and blur. The premise for this shoot actually started as far back as a couple years ago. I was on the search for a fun and energetic band with which to create a couple of promo images that featured motion. It took 2.5 years to find the right band for the shoots, but when 604 Records recording artists Fighting for Ithaca came calling, the perfect fit had been found! Read more…
Photoshop CS6 will have a new Iris Blur tool that lets you quickly add blur to an image that fakes a shallow depth of field. It’s a one tool-process that eschews the traditional methods of using masks, layers or depth maps.
If you’ve ever tried shooting in a dark location without using flash or a tripod, you probably know how difficult it can be to remove camera shake from your photos. Alex Jansen — a photography enthusiast who’s an officer in the US Army — has written up an awesome tutorial on how you can apply some of the tricks used by rifle shooters to shooting with a camera:
I am by no measures a “pro,” but I understand my fundamentals very well, and this specific set has been drilled into my head so many times that it is now second-nature. I am going to teach you how to “shoot” your camera like a high end rifle because at the end of the day, the fundamentals stay the same in every aspect.
Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.
Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians, who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. Despite the megacity and its mega-commotion, their environment still maintains a human dimension. I present this by photographing busy locations from above. Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image literally focuses on the small story in question. Every megacity is a theatre and every city has a different stage and different actors, but in the end every single one of them is trying to make its way in today’s modern society. [#]
The project was awarded 1st prize in the 2011 World Press Photo competition in the category “Daily Life”. Read more…
Still think Adobe’s Image Deblurring technology is fake? Check out this before-and-after comparison showing what the feature does to one of the most famous camera-shake photos in history: Robert Capa’s D-Day photograph of an American soldier landing on Omaha Beach. Read more…
At the Adobe MAX 2011 event in LA last week, the company gave a sneak peek into an advanced Image Deblurring feature that may appear in an upcoming version of Photoshop. Provided with a blurred photograph, the feature uses advanced algorithms to calculate the camera movements that caused the blur, which allows the program to do a very accurate unblurring of the photograph. The video is a bit shaky and the quality isn’t the best, but judging from the audience’s reaction when the example photo is unblurred, the feature works extremely well and caused a lot of jaws to drop.
Nikon has a support page for people who wonder why the company hasn’t added sensor-shift image stabilization to its DSLRs. The first point is that stabilizing the image before it enters the camera allows the user to see exactly what the sensor “sees” through the viewfinder, and allows the autofocus and metering sensors to take advantage of this stabilized image as well. Secondly, they state that they can optimize the system for each lens to achieve finely tuned stabilization that gains extra stops of light over sensor-based systems.
Runners in broad daylight aren’t often captured as motion blurs, but that’s exactly how Flickr user Justin (just big feet) shot the London Marathon. Just stick a neutral density filter or two onto your lens to restrict the amount of light entering your camera, allowing you to shoot at slower shutter speeds. Read more…