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November 17

Looking for an automatic exposure blending tool

I've recently found a large lot of my family's vintage photos in a garage and I'm currently scanning them. Most of these are snapshots taken throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but turns out that a number of these paper prints are actually exposure bracketing sets of even older photographs, where photographic plates taken c. 1900-1930 (an educated guess rather than a broad one, based not only upon wardrobes and hairdos, but especially the specific ages of family members portrayed which make it clear that some of the photographs are definitely pre-WWI and going up until the late 1920s) were photographed again in order to transfer them from plates to paper prints. Because the images lost a lot of dynamic range in this crude optical copying process, the photographer did exposure bracketing shots of two or three per original plate with a different f-stop each, so that one exposure has good shadows, one good mids, and one good hi-lights, whereas the rest is lost to the single shot.

So now I'm looking for a free exposure blending tool which would combine the dynamic range for every exposure bracketing set (so that it would use the optimal exposure for every area) and export me a tone-mapped regular BMP, TIFF, or JPG on the other side. I've spent three very frustrating hours tonight trying out FDRtools [1] and Enfuse [2] after seeing reviews with rather good example results from these two. But FDRtools always crashes on me with a runtime error when I'm trying to load the images, or, at the very latest, when I'm clicking 'Edit', and Enfuse should rather be called *CON*fuse because it's not really a program, but more of a weird programming language that is *WAY* beyond me. I can't even tell how to make this Enfuse thing operative or access my image files somehow. So, what else would be out there to do this kinda thing? --84.180.255.151 (talk) 00:38, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know about FDRtools but I found Enfuse pretty simple “ just stupidly followed the instructions”. Are you using Windows or Linux? Think I got the know-how from [3] which is currently down for maintenance so I can't be sure. On (say) Ubuntu's OS (Linux) one just downloads it and it's good to go. Have another try. As the Buddhists recommend: Start with a quite and peaceful mind. More hast equals less speed. --Aspro (talk) 01:52, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm on Windows XP here. Spent 90 minutes on Enfuse now after your encouragement and reading your linked page by means of Wayback. All I manage to do is make Enfuse.exe tell me on double-click that it's not a 32bit application, and when I'm trying to use the droplets, it says it can't find Enfuse.exe anywhere, even if they're in the same folders. --84.180.255.151 (talk) 02:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Uhm. It is well known that Microsoft doesn't like people like you, to use free software! Microsoft would rather you spend £500 on a photo-shop application. So, create a live Ubuntu Linux memory stick and run Ubuntu Linux. That will not affect your XP installation at all . Oh, and the weird programming language your referring to is probably BASH. Forget it. On Ubuntu, just make sure you have the Huggins suite downloaded and installed on Ubuntu then follow this tutorial: Creating HDR Images with Enfuse & Hugin. No programming skill required on Ubuntu. Just switch XP Windows off and then back on again, if anything doesn't go to plan.--Aspro (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, you could use a Ubuntu LiveCD [4].--Aspro (talk) 03:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But wouldn't I need a 64bit hardware machine to begin with in order to run such a 64bit application such as Enfuse? --84.180.255.151 (talk) 03:13, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Enfuse and Hugin have both 32 and 64 bit versions. I currently use them on a 32 bit Dell desktop. --Aspro (talk) 03:23, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

YES!!! A thousand thank yous! I had to google a bit to find the 32bit version (because it's not linked directly from the Enblend-Enfuse main site nor Sourceforge), then fiddle a bit to find out that (other than for instance Mencoder) it only works if both Enfuse.exe and the photos are in the C:/Documents and settings/user directory that I'm prompted in the DOS prompt...but now it *WORKS*! It's amazing to see what tonal range Enfuse can recover by combining three basicly two-value hi-contrast exposures from 70 years ago of the same original plates that in turn were taken a hundred years ago! :D It's just that aligning several paper print scans is a bitch compared to aligning several digital shots taken with a tripod... --84.180.255.151 (talk) 04:16, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, you could use the Hugin GUI which does link to the 32 bit version on the Hugin sourceforge site and comes with Enblend and Enfuse. Nil Einne (talk) 04:53, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, you appear to be correct that the Enblend/Enfuse website doesn't seem to link to 32 bit version in any real way. The simplest way when this is a problem on Sourceforge is IMO to look for it yourself. An easy way to find it is if you click on the download link, this will normally take you to a download page which will tell you the download is starting soon. Click on the project name (Enblend in this case). This will take you to the project reprository e.g. [5] for 'Enblend'. You should see some links like 'summary', 'files', 'reviews' along a line somewhere in the middle or middle top of the page (below the non project Sourceforge stuff). If you click on 'files', you will be taken to the reprository. Sometimes the reprository may be a bit confusing, but you can often tell by the date and name where to look. Don't be afraid to use the back button if you end up at the wrong place. Alternatively, if you hover over the link for the latest version, you can see where that is and guess where to look. In this case if you click on 'enblend-enfuse' and then 'enblend-enfuse-4.1' you will end up [6] where you can find the 32 bit and 64 bit. I found the Hugin 2014.0 and 2013.0 links the same way before I noticed the 2013.0 was linked on the main Hugin page and it isn't unheard of for software to only provide the source tarball even if a precompiled binary exists and sometimes you may be looking for older versions, or RC version or whatever which often aren't well linked, so it's helpful to know how to navigate the Sourceforge reprository in any case. Nil Einne (talk) 05:08, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) You can download a 32 bit Windows binary of Hugin here [7] or here [8] depending on whether you want a an RC version or the latest non testing version. The later link BTW is under the "Pre-compiled versions" section under Windows: Official 2013.0.0. I don't have a Windows XP install to test, but I'm fairly sure it will just work if you get the right version. Considering the details here, I would suggest the non Python installer (i.e. RC4 or latest nontesting).

BTW, the reason why it didn't work here doesn't seem to have anything to do with any Microsoft dislike for free software (unless you count the lack of a package manager or simple way to compile stuff from source, but I think even many non technical *nix users find compiling stuff from source often isn't so simple hence the proliferation of package managers), but all to do with the fact Sourceforge didn't provide the right version. From my own testing, I think it doesn't detect whether you have a 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows only that you have Windows and so provides you the 64 bit version, I'm guessing based on the choices of the Hugin sourceforce maintainer as the default version for Windows. The reason may be because while there are ways to try and detect 64 bit (whether browser is 32 bit or 64 bit) vs 32 bit Windows via the useragent these may not be entirely reliable.

You can perhaps partially blame Microsoft here in that while they did stuff a certain way in IE e.g. [9] & [10] and many followed, I'm not sure if they ever published this as a recommendation for others to follow. Also it seems there are some cases when even IE may provide no clue the OS is 64 bit, although I'm not sure that people using Enterprise mode are likely to be a significant concern for providing the right version for software install. And I'm not sure whether Apple would have followed Microsofts recommendations in Safari Windows even if they did exist. Or for that matter, even if there was an entirely reliable way to detect Windows bitness from the useragent, SourceForge would use it.

You can perhaps also fault Microsoft for not allowing universal binaries, but there a number of reasons why they may have chosen not to do so, and it's unlikely free software considerations even came in to them. (And I'm fairly sure software providers could simply use a 32 bit shim which chooses whether to install a 64 bit or 32 bit version.)

Edit, oh except for the links, this seems to mostly apply to Enblend/Enfuse as wellNil Einne (talk) 04:51, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. image alignment !

If the OP has many photos, then it would be worth installing GIMP (free) and then the Gimp Plug-in for Image Registration (free). Both are a must have if one can not justify the cost of Photoshop.--Aspro (talk) 20:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Google Chrome's sound tracker for noisy tabs

http://chrome.blogspot.ca/2014/01/everyone-can-now-track-down-noisy-tabs.html

What ever happened to this feature? I remember seeing it run nearly a year ago, but then forgot about it. Has it been dropped or made to require manual activation? I'm using the Dev release, which should have the same content than the Beta one. ~Matt714 (talk)

I use the current consumer version Chrome and I see it all the time. Maybe its a setting on your end? KonveyorBelt 02:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can you tell us a little more about the exact version of the dev Chrome and your environment? I have these icons showing right now by default on Chrome 38 in Windows 7. Freedomlinux (talk) 03:02, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7 64 bits - Chrome: Version 40.0.2214.6 dev-m (64-bit) - Nevermind, it still works. However it's not as clear than when it was animated. Matt714 (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]