Richardson-Lucy deconvolution

Where can I ask questions about and possibly obtain this software-Richardson-Lucy deconvolution?
Does anyone use this software and how steep is its learning curve?

Thanks in advance

Larry Shuman

Raw Therapee (free program) includes RL deconvolution.

I just went to the Raw Thereapee site and they do not show a phone number.
Have you used the software? Does it work with both Nikon raw and Jepg?
Is it very diffucult to use? Is it a photoshop plugin? If you have used the software
does it work well with CS6? What about customer support? If they do not show a phone number
how good is their customer support.
I am an idiot with a lot of this computer stuff and I might need to held by the hand as I
wade through all this.

Yes, I use it. It is a raw converter. And editor. Install it and play with it. It's very easy. The RL D is in the sharpening tab.
There is also an extensive manual (RawPedia) that you can download.

Unless I am missing something, the RawTherapee RL deconvolution seems limited. I tried it a couple of months ago, and it did not have the flexibility needed for good deconvolution. Rawtherapee is free so does not cost anything but time.

I use ImagesPlus ( http://www.mlunsold.com/ ). ImagesPlus is like a Mac OSX is to a windows users: quite foreign; ImagesPlus is quite foreign for a photoshop user. I do my work in photoshop, write a 16-bit tiff, open it in ImagesPlus, run RL deconvolution and write results as 16-bit Tiffs. Back in photoshop you may need to reassign the color space.

For deconvolution of an image, say a typical bird/wildlife image where depth of field may also be an issue, I try different Gaussian radii and different numbers of iterations. I watch for halos as each iteration completes. If halos appear after just a few iterations, the radius is too high. If you see no change after hundreds of iterations, the radius is too low. Different parts of the image may be best with different radii and iterations. Depending on what I want, I'll run several tests, put them as layers in photoshop and erase all but the best portion of each layer. There is no magic formula, but after some experience, one gets a feels for what works with one's images.

You can get some ideas from my sharpening series. Here is the bird's section:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/image-restoration2/

Roger

rnclark wrote:Unless I am missing something, the RawTherapee RL deconvolution seems limited.  I tried it a couple of months ago, and it did not have the flexibility needed for good deconvolution.  Rawtherapee is free so does not cost anything but time.

I use ImagesPlus ( http://www.mlunsold.com/ ).  ImagesPlus is like a Mac OSX is to a windows users: quite foreign; ImagesPlus is quite foreign for a photoshop user.  I do my work in photoshop, write a 16-bit tiff, open it in ImagesPlus, run RL deconvolution and write results as 16-bit Tiffs.  Back in photoshop you may need to reassign the color space.

For deconvolution of an image, say a typical bird/wildlife image where depth of field may also be an issue, I try different Gaussian radii and different numbers of iterations.  I watch for halos as each iteration completes.  If halos appear after just a few iterations, the radius is too high.  If you see no change after hundreds of iterations, the radius is too low.  Different parts of the image may be best with different radii and iterations.  Depending on what I want, I'll run several tests, put them as layers in photoshop and erase all but the best portion of each layer.  There is no magic formula, but after some experience, one gets a feels for what works with one's images.

You can get some ideas from my sharpening series.  Here is the bird's section:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/image-restoration2/

Roger

Very informative. Thanks Roger.

Do you use other features of ImagesPlus, or you just use it as an image sharpening tool? I am thinking about getting one but I am not sure if it contains other features that are useful for landscape photography.

Yiming

Yiming Hu wrote: Very informative. Thanks Roger.

Do you use other features of ImagesPlus, or you just use it as an image sharpening tool? I am thinking about getting one but I am not sure if it contains other features that are useful for landscape photography.

Yiming

If I have high iso data, and want to produce a smaller lower noise image, I use the binning function which averages pixels and is very effective at improving S/N and produces a sharper downsampled image as long as there are no narrow parallel lines that might create moire (I have yet to encounter any).  It is interesting to run the saturation enhancement tool as imagesplus does the math in 32-bit floating point and produces a much better result than photoshop's 15-bit math.  Otherwise I use photoshop.  I use imagesplus for aligning and stacking my astrophotos.

Roger

rnclark wrote: If I have high iso data, and want to produce a smaller lower noise image, I use the binning function which averages pixels and is very effective at improving S/N and produces a sharper downsampled image as long as there are no narrow parallel lines that might create moire (I have yet to encounter any).  It is interesting to run the saturation enhancement tool as imagesplus does the math in 32-bit floating point and produces a much better result than photoshop's 15-bit math.  Otherwise I use photoshop.  I use imagesplus for aligning and stacking my astrophotos.

Roger

Thank you!

Yiming