Can I combine several low quality pics into one higher quality picture?

Question

Is there an easy tool to combine low quality pics taken from a mobile phone, all of the same thing but taken within a few seconds interval from one another, mostly suffering from slight out of focus issues? How can I combine them into higher quality?

EDIT: Apparently the concept is stacking: "focus stacking is taking several images of the same object(s) which are partially in focus and combining them in such a way as to keep the sharp parts and get rid of the blurry ones"

Asked by 130490868091234

Answer

I found a piece of software in Linux that does stacking of images: ale

ale IMAG0626.jpg IMAG0627.jpg IMAG0628.jpg output.jpg
Output file will be 'output.jpg'.                                                                                                                                        
Original Frame:                                                                                                                                                          
 'IMAG0626.jpg'.                                                                                                                                                         
Supplemental Frames:                                                                                                                                                     
 'IMAG0627.jpg'*** okay (92.930228% match).                                                                                                                              
 'IMAG0628.jpg'*** okay (94.896616% match).                                                                                                                              
Re-filtering incremental results.                                                                                                                                        
Iterating Irani-Peleg.                                                                                                                                                   
Average match: 93.913422%                                                                       

Answered by 130490868091234

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What is Interoperability Index R98?

Question

In the uploaded pictures from my mobile phone, I get a line with the following information: Interoperability Index = R98? What is this Index?

Asked by 2134464321

Answer

Quote from www.exif.org/dcf.PDF (Design rule for Camera File system):

With the rapidly growing popularity of digital still cameras, there are increasing demands for file interchangeability, which will allow images captured on one camera to be viewed on another, or output directly to a printer. ExifR98 is a set of compatibility recommendations designed to meet such needs, by strictly defining the range of Exif application, and by setting out detailed rules for recording and playing image files not specified in the Exif format.

Basically it's a set of rules for the file names, directory structure and mandatory meta-data for digital camera so that all compatible viewers and printer will be able to read the memory cards of all compatible cameras.

All cameras that are compatible with ExifR98 are required to add the interoperability index tag to the EXIF data with the value "R98" (among other things).

Answered by Nir

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What are the technical camera specs for the HTC Wildfire S?

Question

I am trying to do some CGI manipulations on pictures I've taken. In order to fake reality with some 3D object inserted in the picture, I need some information to configure my virtual camera so it can match my real one.

The problem is that I'm using the camera of my Smartphone, which is a HTC Wildfire S. There are no specs concerning the camera in the manual nor on the Internet.

I need to find out the focal length and the width of CCD sensor (and maybe some other things I might be asked by the CGI software later on). Is there a good and simple way to find these?

Asked by Oltarus

Answer

• Focal length: 3.5mm
• ISO: 75
• Aperture: f/2.2 ?
• Sensor is probably 1/6" 2.4mm x 1.8mm
• Resolution: 2592x1944

Answered by MikeW

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How many megapixels are needed on a smartphone to take above quality photos?

Question

Just regular above quality photos for Facebook and normal things.

Asked by designparadise

Answer

Facebook images are usually displayed at around 720×540 pixels. That is about one third of a megapixel, so for that use, anything you can buy is overkill in terms of megapixels. This is perfectly fine for almost all online display, and will even make decent small-sized prints.

However, megapixels do not accurately represent image quality. The answers to Why do some DSLRs have fewer megapixels than some pocket cameras? provide some of the explanation as to why. You can't really use that as a way to make your decision.

Answered by mattdm

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Is the iPhone 4S camera good enough to serve as one's “everyday-carry”?

Question

I'd like to have a camera with me at all times, but my DSLR is often too bulky. For some time now, I have tried cell phones as a compact camera substitutes, but with limited success. Often, the picture quality was dismal and the setup/app loading time really too high for snapshots - especially with iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G.

I've heard about the sensor and lens improvements of the iPhone 4S, as well as the possibility to access the photo application directly from the unlock screen, all of which sounds pretty interesting.

Is this finally a cell phone camera that can substitute a separate compact to an acceptable degree?

Answer

The iPhone 4s alongside iOS5 makes a very compelling argument against a standard point and shoot camera in addition to a phone.

The backside-illuminated CMOS sensor included in the iPhone 4s(iPhone) is the same sensor found in the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and the Xperia Neo. Both of these cameras have faired very well in low-light comparison tests. Recent question about the sensor: What are the advantages or disadvantages of a back illuminated CMOS sensor?

iOS5 has made some major improvements to make the experience with the camera more enjoyable. The lock screen has a new way to access the camera that makes opening it up possible without unlocking the device. Images can now be captured not only by tapping the on screen shutter release, but by using the volume up hardware button. In actual use I found found this to be a huge improvement in certain situations. For example, I was taking shots at a concert venue, and holding the camera above by head with one arm. To hold the phone and use the touchscreen at the same time above my head is very difficult, but to use the hardware volume button as the shutter release was very easy and worked well.

If you search online you will find articles outlining how high of a priority the camera operation and speed was to the Apple development team. They supposedly shaved every millisecond possible off of the cameras start-up time to limit the dreaded "aperture" waiting screen that many of us are familiar with.

The iPhone as a camera does have some downsides, the two biggest being that it lacks any optical zoom, and the flash is nearly useless.

Some examples of photography with the iPhone 4 that I did can be found in this answer: How do I get the best results with a cell phone camera?

Overall, I have found the colors, white balance, and speed of the iPhone 4s and iOS5 camera to be very impressive and overall capable in replacing the need for a pocket point and shoot camera.

Some images straight out of the iPhone 4(not as good as the iPhone4s):

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What's the professional approach to removing noise from a cell phone pic?

Question

I have a cell phone photo that's a bit grainy and slightly blurry. It's not the out-of-focus type of blur, but the blur brought on when edges run together due to lack of sharpness.

I have Adobe Photoshop CS5 and have used Filters > Noise > Reduce Noise. After playing with the options, I finally got a decent look. The options I used are Strength:5, Preserve Details:0, Reduce Color Noise:0, Sharpen Details:100.

Are there other more effective ways to remove grain noise and blur from a cell phone pic? What would the pros do provided they use CS5?

Answer

These days, I would think pros use tools like Adobe Lightroom as much as Photoshop. Lightroom 3.x specifically is particularly well suited to removing noise as it uses a newer, more advanced algorithm to do so. It may also be the case that the latest version of ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) for photoshop has the same noise reduction tools if you happen to be using RAW. Lightroom will work with JPEG images as well as RAW, however, so its advanced noise reduction should still be viable for a cell phone photo. Lightroom is quite a bit cheaper than Photoshop as well, currently listing at $299.

I would say a moderate amount of luminance noise reduction, 60-80, would be sufficient to clear up a cell phone pic to reasonable levels. I would still throw back in some sharpening, to offset the effects of noise reduction and the blur (which is probably diffraction softening, given that it was a cell phone photo...they tend to have excessively small sensors with extremely high MP count, which when paired with the incredibly small apertures for the tiny lens, usually results in a fair amount of diffraction softening.) As far as sharpening tools, Lightroom's is ok, but not superb. Photoshops Smart Sharpen filter is probably one of the better sharpening tools. There are also a variety of other manual sharpening techniques that you can find around the web that involve various layer duplications, inversions, filtrations, and blending modes to achieve. Some algorithms and procedures are better for some types of photography, while others are better for different types of photography (i.e. how you sharpen a landscape would be different from how you sharpen a portrait.)

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What makes a Carl Zeiss lens so special in a smartphone?

Question

There are smartphones on the market that have a focus towards photography. Some are equipped with a Carl Zeiss lens. I have looked into Wikipedia, which tells me that they are a brand who produces lenses. What makes their lenses so special?

What do you think about a 5MP camera in phones, one which is branded Carl Zeiss, versus another one which isn't? The device I have in mind is the Nokia N900.

Answer

Carl Zeiss is a very well respected lens maker, and very literally one of the reasons "German engineering" conjures images of precision and care. Camera phone manufacturers license the name (and, maybe but not necessarily, actual lens technology) from Zeiss in order to borrow some of that high-end image.

This isn't necessarily all chicanery: companies who are doing this are at least somewhat interested in appearing to be high quality, and the name isn't completely diluted, so you have a reasonable expectation that if the lens says Zeiss, it's probably above run-of-the-mill.

In the case of the N900, the lens is quite good for a smartphone, and more importantly, the sensor is relatively large. 5mpix is a decent resolution for that size of sensor — at this point in the technology, you're not going to get a lot out of having more.

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