Tone Mapping

[Ankin]

Hi, I would like to read something about Unit White Balance (UniWB) on this site. I did a quick search but could not find the subject. I know there is a lot of information on the other sites, but I wish I would like to read on Cambridge in Colour Thank you in advance.

[Colin Southern]

Hi, I would like to read something about Unit White Balance (UniWB) on this site. I did a quick search but could not find the subject. I know there is a lot of information on the other sites, but I wish I would like to read on Cambridge in Colour Thank you in advance.

Hi Ankin,

I can't say I've heard the term before - would you be kind enough to post some links to some of the information you've found on other sites so I can read up about it?

PS: Welcome to CiC - great to have you with us.

[Ankin]

Hi Ankin,

I can't say I've heard the term before - would you be kind enough to post some links to some of the information you've found on other sites so I can read up about it?

PS: Welcome to CiC - great to have you with us.

Hi Colin please see below;

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=35114614
http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutori...b/index_en.htm
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=35144096

thank you for your kind reply

[Donald]

Ankin

I see, in the second link that you provide,:
"A few days after publishing this article I knew that Iliah Borg, a regular participant in the Nikon DPreview forums, had already investigated the way to cancel the white balance on Nikon cameras. In them the user can directly load the white balance coefficients, being this technique named by him as 'UniWB' (Unitary White Balance). In fair credit to his contribution I will keep the same name to designate the procedure valid for any camera that is presented here"

This tells us that 'UniWB' is not a generic photographic term but the name ascribed to an action developed by the person referred to (Iliah Borg). Some other members on here might be aware of this and be able to comment, but it is not something you will find being featured in more general discussions.

[inkista]

This is sort of a diversionary sidenote, but for those for whom tonemapping is a PITA and who want more naturalistic HDR, have you considered using enfuse instead?

My understanding (which might be off-if someone knows better and can correct this, feel free) is that enfuse is simply selecting pixels from the member images for the final image, based on specific selection criteria (contrast, saturation, or exposure of the specific), therefore no special file formats or tonemapping is needed, and the results tend to be more naturalistic with enfuse than you get out of HDR techniques, since the tonemapping settings can get kinda bonkers (e.g., the default Photomatix look), but with enfuse, you're never going to get pixel values that weren't in the original images. If someone can correct/augment this description, I'd really like to know. I've been too scared to attempt working my way through the PDF of the conference paper on the Mertens-Kautz-Van Reeth exposure fusion algorithm. Here's an example:



Canon 50D, EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 II (non-IS kit lens), three exposures at 2EV intervals. LR/Enfuse with curves and slight clarity/vibrance/saturation adjustments.

The interesting thing with enfuse is that, since you can weight the selection criteria, if you select for exposure, you get exposure fusing, but if you choose for, say, contrast, you can also use it to do focus stacking.

I'm mostly using enfuse via the LR/Enfuse Lightroom plugin, but if you're budget crunched or a Linux user, I've also used it via that open source swiss army knife of panostitching and image stacking, Hugin, and I believe there are a fair number of GUI front ends that can plug into it, since enfuse is an open source command line tool.