Anyone Heard of Piccure+?

Hi Dudley: My plan is to grab a couple of raw images and a) process them in Lightroom to the best of my ability, with sharpening, and b) process them in Piccure+, then compare the results, especially in the corners. Unfortunately, I won't have any comparisons any time soon, as I have run into a couple of unusual install issues on my Mac (I was prompted to install Xcode, and Piccure+ wants to create a folder that requires admin privileges, but quits without giving me a chance to authenticate). Once I get these issues sorted, I will do the comparisons and post the results here.

piccure said:

Hi Bill, thanks for the comment.

Here is the RAW file:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/piccureplus/Images/VP__1251_50mm_f1.4_iso100.CR2

We don't exclude anybody on purpose. But since RAW processing itself can lead to very different results we uploaded the TIFF. piccure+ also works with RAW files.

Best,

Lui

Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH - Hintere Grabenstr. 30 - 72070 Tuebingen - Germany
CEO: Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder
Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 740303

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Finally got some time to play with this. I'm impressed. Piccure+ did do a better job than DxO on this picture, at least for me.




piccure+ crop




DxO9 crop





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- Bill

FYI, they are offering a 30% discount if you already own DxO or Topaz sharpening tools. Waiting on my discount code...

Richard Drdul said:

I won't have any comparisons any time soon, as I have run into a couple of unusual install issues on my Mac.

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Well, I managed to get Piccure+ running on my Mac, only to encounter yet another error, which prevented me from using the app. By this point I had had enough, and decided that I would never pay $100 for software this error-prone, so I deleted it from my system.

Richard Drdul said:

Richard Drdul said:

I won't have any comparisons any time soon, as I have run into a couple of unusual install issues on my Mac.

Click to expand...

Well, I managed to get Piccure+ running on my Mac, only to encounter yet another error, which prevented me from using the app. By this point I had had enough, and decided that I would never pay $100 for software this error-prone, so I deleted it from my system.

Click to expand...

R D

Curious . . . installed flawlessly on my PC . . . no issues whatsoever.

You should contact their customer support . . . very thorough responses although I think they are in Germany so there may be a time zone difference to deal with depending on your location.

I have exchanged many emails with Customer Support Lui and he has been extremely helpful with answering my questions and guiding me through use of the program while I am testing with the trial version and learning the program's nuances.

So far seems to be doing a very good job and in default settings at least comparable with or better than my DxO default settings so very encouraged so far.

Again . . . check with customer support . . . there may be a simple fix to get you up and running and I think the program is definitely worth testing and checking out . . . it seems to perform very well.

Best,

V G

Van Griff said:

Curious . . . installed flawlessly on my PC . . . no issues whatsoever.

You should contact their customer support . . . very thorough responses although I think they are in Germany so there may be a time zone difference to deal with depending on your location.

I have exchanged many emails with Customer Support Lui and he has been extremely helpful with answering my questions and guiding me through use of the program while I am testing with the trial version and learning the program's nuances.

So far seems to be doing a very good job and in default settings at least comparable with or better than my DxO default settings so very encouraged so far.

Again . . . check with customer support . . . there may be a simple fix to get you up and running and I think the program is definitely worth testing and checking out . . . it seems to perform very well.

Best,

V G

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Same here both in terms of installation and customer service. Happily ponied up for the purchase after testing since release.

Best,

Dudley

Richard Drdul said:

Richard Drdul said:

I won't have any comparisons any time soon, as I have run into a couple of unusual install issues on my Mac.

Click to expand...

Well, I managed to get Piccure+ running on my Mac, only to encounter yet another error, which prevented me from using the app. By this point I had had enough, and decided that I would never pay $100 for software this error-prone, so I deleted it from my system.

Click to expand...

I think your system needs a thorough checkup. Piccure+ runs fine on my Mac. It's dead slow, but it doesn't crash and doesn't cause any other inconveniences. I probably won't buy it because it seems my lenses are of high enough quality that I do not see that much improvement on most images to justify spending $100 on it, but that's another matter.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions regarding the difficulties I encountered running Piccure+ on my Mac. I did report the problems to the dev, and Lui was very good in following up with me.

I am posting this information here as a FYI for others intending to use Piccure on a Mac. It turns out the primary source of the problem is that the Mac app can only run in an Administrator account, as it creates files and folders in the Applications folder. Apple and others recommend using a non-Admin account for day-to-day computing, which is what I do, but when Piccure is run from a non-Admin account it causes a number of problems, and the software is unusable. I have provided all the details to the dev, as well as a suggestion as to how to resolve the problem, so hopefully an updated version will be able to run from non-Admin accounts (as all other software is able to do).

I am greatly impressed with what it can do to increase the acuity of an image, especially at the edges and corners.

I evaluated it using my own D800 and D810 images. Works opening D800 NEFs but when opening D810 the images are a pale pink. Possibly they do not have the latest DCRAW installed. No problem as I can open the D810 images in LR5.6 with no adjustment and export a Tiff directly to Piccure+. I have exported to Piccure+ from LR5.6 as well as PS CC 2014 with no problems.

I have done many direct comparisons with developments using LR5.6, DXO Optics Pro 9 and CaptureOne 8. Piccure+ does an amazing job sharpening the edges and removing CA. Some have said the D810 is like lifting a veil from an image. While I do not see that comparing my D810 to a similar D800 image I do see what is like a veil being removed from a D810 NEF processed in Piccure+ especially on the edges. Be careful of the Sharpness setting because the default setting is too much for a natural appearance. This is not a general purpose image program and is specifically geared to improving the optical performance of a lens.

It does have noise reduction but I have not compared it to other programs I have. I specifically use DXO Optics Pro 9 for NEF noise reduction.

The only negative I see so far is it takes a verrrry long time to process the large D810 files.

They say it corrects average lenses to look like the very best. Having done the evaluation on photos using the very good Nikon Trinities I tend to agree it does improve the acuity of a lens across the image.

A very impressing program.

Hi all,

Considering getting this, but can't see the manual on their website.

Just curious: Where are you using it in your workflow? Instead of existing sharpening, or as an additional step?

Does it work best early on, i.e, an untouched file, or at the end after exposure, contrast, colour cast corrections etc have been made?

TIA and regards,

Max P

Max Pegler said:

Hi all,

Considering getting this, but can't see the manual on their website.

Just curious: Where are you using it in your workflow? Instead of existing sharpening, or as an additional step?

Does it work best early on, i.e, an untouched file, or at the end after exposure, contrast, colour cast corrections etc have been made?

TIA and regards,

Max P

Click to expand...

Their manual is not easy to find. On their main web page go to "Get piccure+", go down to the Support section and select the "Link" link. I suggest completely reading the manual (it is not long) because some of the important stuff is not where you would expect it to be. An example is how to define where to save the processed image.

How to fit it into my workflow is not completely obvious to me yet. Because it only outputs to a TIFF you lose the RAW capabilities after processing. I will probably do the development and most adjustments in DXO Optics Pro 9 and export a TIFF to do the final optical corrections in Piccure+. Even when they fix the D810 NEF problem with opening correctly, I will still use the many adjustments in DXO Optics Pro 9 or LightRoom 5.6 before I edit in Piccure+.

I think it will be best, from a workflow perspective, to do the exposure, contrast, color and other corrections that are not in Piccure+ before sending the image to Piccure+. I intend to ask them if any pre-processing inhibits their algorithms.

My one comment is how slow it is. It takes over 15 minutes on a fast computer to process a D810 TIFF image. They are not yet using GPU to help speed it up.

Hi,

I hope I can help a little here:

- Generally it would be the best to have piccure+ at the very beginning (on our homepage we state that "treating it as a RAW converter with ability to correct optical aberration" comes closest).

- If running Photoshop we would suggest to process the image with piccure+ right after importing it

- Same goes for the other editors - however, some other corrections may not be as easy then. Many software solutions do not permit to adjust a TIFF for image distortion, even though the EXIF data is still available. Per default they would only allow those adjustments on RAW files. This can be changed (and even overridden) and we are working on a quick wrapup on that issue. Having said that, one may the use piccure+ after correcting distortions if the way of "manually choosing a lens profile" is too tedious.

- We would generally not recommend to do any other adjustments, as the algorithms work best on data that is as close to the original as possible. However: the quality differences should be negligible in most cases if the changes aren't to big. So it it suits your workflow better - why not.

We'll update our handbook in this respect since we got some good feedback and many good thoughts on that. The handbook can be found when clicking "Menu/Handbook" on the GUI or directly loaded from our webpage.

The processing time always depends on the parameters - it can be from a few minutes to quite a few more minutes. In most cases, the default settings should give a pretty decent improvement and represent a decent tradeoff between computation time and quality.

We would generally recommend to leverage the batch processing capabilities of piccure+ and process images when the computer would otherwise be idle. We are working on improving the speed with top priority.

I hope this helps. We'll update the documentation and leave a note on the homepage when that has happened.

Best,

Lui

Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH - Hintere Grabenstr. 30 - 72070 Tuebingen - Germany
CEO: Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder
Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 740303

Thanks

Max P

I downloaded the trial version yesterday and have been working on an image from my D810/Sigma 85mm F1.4

I have tried following the instructions and running various different settings and for the life of me I cannot see any difference except for more grain in the processed image when zoomed to 100% At normal magnification I just cannot see anything.

I use DxO 9.5 and CC 2014 LR/PS Widows 64 bit.

TrevorR10 said:

I downloaded the trial version yesterday and have been working on an image from my D810/Sigma 85mm F1.4

I have tried following the instructions and running various different settings and for the life of me I cannot see any difference except for more grain in the processed image when zoomed to 100% At normal magnification I just cannot see anything.

I use DxO 9.5 and CC 2014 LR/PS Widows 64 bit.

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Trevor

Piccure tends to work best with images shot with the lens wide open . . . ie f/1.4 on your 85mm F1.4.

If you were stopped down 2 or 3 stops the lens was probably functioning at its peak and giving optimum results . . . while Piccure can improve results more when the lens is at a softer setting . . . shot wide open or closer to it.

Stopped down 2 or 3 stops you will prob not seem much improvement with Piccure.

I find it is not best with all images but is generally a little stronger at improving images shot wide open than other means of processing.

Best,

V G

Hello,

thank you very much for the question - and the answer

Van Griff said:

TrevorR10 said:

I downloaded the trial version yesterday and have been working on an image from my D810/Sigma 85mm F1.4

I have tried following the instructions and running various different settings and for the life of me I cannot see any difference except for more grain in the processed image when zoomed to 100% At normal magnification I just cannot see anything.

I use DxO 9.5 and CC 2014 LR/PS Widows 64 bit.

Click to expand...

Trevor

Piccure tends to work best with images shot with the lens wide open . . . ie f/1.4 on your 85mm F1.4.

If you were stopped down 2 or 3 stops the lens was probably functioning at its peak and giving optimum results . . . while Piccure can improve results more when the lens is at a softer setting . . . shot wide open or closer to it.

Stopped down 2 or 3 stops you will prob not seem much improvement with Piccure.

Click to expand...

Van Griff is completely right with his observation that piccure+ will show less improvement if the lens is functioning at its peaks (thanks for the fast response btw). We explain on our homepage that piccure+ will show the biggest improvements when the lenses "operate at the edge of their capabilities" and "suffer from optical aberrations". piccure+ thus entirely complements your toolset rather than replacing it. It will give the most obvious improvement for fast apertures close to the open aperture - at a situation most other solutions face some problems. Downside is: piccure+ is not as fast. We have added an entire new section on our website with respect to "how does piccure+ complement other tools" - it may be helpful for understanding the philosophy. At f5.6 with a sharp lens (e.g. portrait) other tools will give you a better "time for quality" performance.

If the optical quality of the lens is very high the improvement will also be smaller (e.g. a Zeiss Otus shot at 1.4 will not improve as much as a Canon 50mm/1.4 shot at 1.4).

Last but not least it depends on the subject: if you shoot a portrait and focus on the eye in the center (with everything else out of focus) at 1.4 the DOF will be very small and the lens will have its peak resolution right in the center aligned with the subject. piccure+ will be less effective in such a situation as "out of focus/out of DOF" can not be corrected and the "in focus area" is very small and already quite sharp. But then: optical aberrations will not be as much of a problem and may even be appreciated. We can't help then of course.

So testing piccure+ is most meaningful in "situations where you believe the optical aberrations have a negative impact on the image as a whole".

We found it's most effective in situations of fast/open aperture where a lot of the scenery is in focus (and potentially suffers). Especially wide-angles show quite large optical aberrations towards the edges - so piccure+ often helps for a wide angle photo shot at fast aperture...

Van Griff said:

I find it is not best with all images but is generally a little stronger at improving images shot wide open than other means of processing.

Best,

V G

Click to expand...

Best, Lui

Co-Founder

Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH - Hintere Grabenstr. 30 - 72070 Tuebingen - Germany
CEO: Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder
Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 740303

What are the main differences between Piccure+, Topaz InFocus and Focus Magic? Beside being twice more expensive? They all use deconvolution technique. I was disappointed to see the price of Piccure+ going up $30 as I was trialing it though ($120 was high I thought, but $150 is now a lot of money for a single function app), and the 14 days free trial time didn't really allowed me enough time to do comparative trials unfortunately.

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Roger

rogerstpierre said:

What are the main differences between Piccure+, Topaz InFocus and Focus Magic? Beside being twice more expensive? They all use deconvolution technique.

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The other two programs you mentioned claim to be able to restore sharper focus to missed-focus shots. Piccure+, on the other hand, claims to analyze the image for lens faults and attempts to correct them.

You might be able to use Piccure+ to restore bad focus to a limited extent, but I don't think that's its primary claim. At least that's the way I understand it.

They were offering a large discount to owners of DxO or Topaz a few months ago when this thread started. Too bad if that is no longer the case. I bought it because I was impressed by some early test cases I did. However, it seems like most of the times I've used it since then, everything seems way over-sharpened and crunchy, even if I back off on the sharpen amount considerably. Plus it is super slow. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't buy it, especially not for $150.
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- Bill

Phil Hill said:

rogerstpierre said:

What are the main differences between Piccure+, Topaz InFocus and Focus Magic? Beside being twice more expensive? They all use deconvolution technique.

Click to expand...

The other two programs you mentioned claim to be able to restore sharper focus to missed-focus shots. Piccure+, on the other hand, claims to analyze the image for lens faults and attempts to correct them.

You might be able to use Piccure+ to restore bad focus to a limited extent, but I don't think that's its primary claim. At least that's the way I understand it.

Click to expand...

Piccure+ claims to 1: reduce camera shake, and 2: improve the optical quality of lenses, especially lenses with optical problems.

I have not tested the "camera shake" aspect, but I found the "Lens+" optical improvement part to give some interesting results if I used conservative settings on the software.

They have a free trial; best to try it yourself to see if you like what it does.