Intelligent Imaging Solutions have released its piccure+ software, billed as "a revolution in computational photography." Designed to improve the quality of photos taken with both high-quality and consumer-grade lenses, piccure+ can apparently "determine the optical aberrations from the image itself," the company says. “The advances in computational photography will have a dramatic impact on image formation in general. Image formation will no longer be just an optical process, instead it will be a combination of both optical and computational processes. The boundaries between software and hardware will become blurred,” says Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder, CEO of IIS. “This development will allow cheaper, lighter, and smaller optical systems. We made the first radical step in this direction with piccure+." The software is now available as a standalone application with powerful batch processing and raw image file support, priced at €109.

Intelligent Imaging Solutions Press Release

“Upgrading your photographic equipment has never been cheaper! piccure+ can significantly improve image quality by correcting optical aberrations in a revolutionary new way.”

Germany, October 2014: A revolution in computational photography has just been released! It is now possible to have a high-­‐quality, ultra-­‐sharp picture even if taken through a lens with average or poor optical quality. Use piccure+ to make your pictures great. Unlike most investments in photographic equipment, this investment will not render your existing equipment obsolete. In fact, the opposite is true. Using piccure+ will be like giving your lenses and images a significant upgrade easily worth several thousand dollars. piccure+ supports all cameras and lenses and combinations thereof because piccure+ does not rely on any predefined lens profiles. It takes your specific lens into account to help deliver the best results possible.

piccure+ differentiates itself from other solutions through several key features:

• More complex and accurate modeling of optical aberrations through non-­‐parametric “point-­‐spread-­‐functions” instead of relying on a few parameters
• Optical aberrations are determined for your equipment and for each image individually instead of relying on poorly defined lens profiles
• Sophisticated deblurring -­‐ routines reverse optical flaws piccure+ has the capability to automatically correct the unique optical imperfections of a lens without relying on any predefined lens profiles. As a result, piccure+ can even be used for analogue film archives.

piccure+ is the only software solution that can determine the optical aberrations from the image itself and is therefore capable of accounting for lens-­‐to-­‐lens deviations caused by manufacturing tolerances. This can have a tremendous effect on the cost of lenses in the future as cheaper design and manufacturing will become possible. piccure+ has the potential to be one of the biggest revolutions in photography in the past decade “The advances in computational photography will have a dramatic impact on image formation in general. Image formation will no longer be just an optical process, instead it will be a combination of both optical and computational processes. The boundaries between software and hardware will become blurred,” says Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder, CEO of IIS. “This development will allow cheaper, lighter, and smaller optical systems. We made the first radical step in this direction with piccure+, but even bigger opportunities lie ahead. Lens manufacturers still do not recognise the full potential of digital photography and still treat lens design the same way they did fifty years ago.” piccure+ can be the catalyst for generic lenses—cheap, mass produced lenses that are based on expired patents. Even though twenty-­‐five-­‐year-­‐old lens designs may not be on par in terms of optical quality with their younger siblings, computational photography could deliver the same image quality in post-­‐processing. Companies could literally save hundreds of millions in R&D, materials, and manufacturing. We believe that such an approach could cut prices for quality lenses by 50-­‐90 percent for consumers—without compromising image quality. With the recent announcement of a Chinese company to offer exactly such a lens as a replacement for a well known 50mm/1.4 lens this possibility seems more realistic than ever. Even though the software was designed for improving the images produced by high-­‐end camera lenses, it will come in handy for the average photographer because the improvement in images taken with lower-­‐priced zoom lenses can be even more impressive.

How piccure+ works

The idea of correcting images for optical imperfections is not new. However, existing software solutions require profiles for specific lens/camera combinations that capture information about their optical system. Plus, existing software could only correct certain image flaws.

piccure+ is different. piccure+ adaptively determines a virtual lens, which represents the optically flawless equivalent of the actual lens used, and then corrects the image through a sophisticated deblurring -­‐ process. The picture is corrected with the aim of reconstructing the scene as if it was taken through this optically flawless lens.

The approach of correcting optical flaws through a process called deconvolution is not entirely new though: through this process, NASA was able to correct the flawed mirror of the Hubble space telescope and save their $ 10bn project from failure. However, with piccure+ no calibration of the photographic equipment is needed.

The disadvantage of existing software solutions is that deviations from the modeled optical system over the true errors in the image often lead to disappointing results. Lens-­‐to-­‐lens deviations due to manufacturing tolerances cannot be accounted for. In addition, if no lens or camera profile is available, no correction is possible at all.

piccure+ can account for an infinite number of unique lens settings affecting the optical system without using pre-­‐measured profiles and is the only solution to use sophisticated deblurring -­‐ algorithms to improve image quality . Photographers do not need to rely on third parties to provide lens or camera profiles as all relevant information is retrieved from the image itself. The team behind piccure+ has found a novel way to render existing calibration techniques through predefined lens profiles unnecessary and developed an easy-­‐to-­‐use software solution that seamlessly integrates into the workflow of photographers. piccure+ is now available as a standalone application with powerful batch processing and full RAW support. piccure+ also seamlessly integrates into Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe® Lightroom® 3, or Adobe® Photoshop Elements®.

Availability

We are now offering a fourteen-­‐day, free-­‐trial period of piccure+. After the trial period, piccure+ can be purchased for 109 EUR. For more information and a free trial download, please visit www.piccure.com

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