Photos with tag 'hdr'

Posts with tag 'hdr'

BrightSide got bought

I can finally say it. We've been bought by Dolby. I'm beyond excited. Not a whole lot more details I can provide than what's contained in the press release, which is pasted below.


Dolby Signs Agreement to Acquire BrightSide

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dolby Laboratories (NYSE:DLB) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire BrightSide Technologies Inc., a privately held provider of high dynamic range (HDR) image technology, for cash consideration of approximately $28 million. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed prior to the end of the third quarter of Dolby's 2007 fiscal year.

BrightSide is a development-stage technology company focused on enabling the capture, distribution, and display of more vibrant video on mass-market LCD TV sets, as well as front-projection and rear-projection TVs.

"Dolby has built its strong reputation and brand by delivering products and technologies that make the entertainment experience more realistic and immersive, and BrightSide's HDR image technology complements that strategy," said Bill Jasper, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dolby Laboratories. "Acquiring BrightSide reflects our long-term focus on delivering innovative technology solutions to our licensees and their customers."


About Dolby Laboratories

Dolby Laboratories (NYSE:DLB) develops and delivers products and technologies that make the entertainment experience more realistic and immersive. For more than four decades, Dolby has been at the forefront of defining high-quality audio and surround sound in cinema, broadcast, home audio systems, cars, DVDs, headphones, games, televisions, and personal computers. For more information about Dolby Laboratories or Dolby technologies, please visit www.dolby.com.

Certain statements in this press release, including statements relating to Dolby's expectations concerning its ability, and Dolby's expectations concerning how BrightSide's HDR image technology complements that ability, to deliver innovative products and technologies that make the entertainment experience more realistic and immersive and to deliver innovative technology solutions to its licensees and their customers and the benefits that may be derived therefrom are "forward-looking statements" that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations, and as a result of certain risks and uncertainties actual results may differ materially from those projected. The following important factors, without limitation, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements: Dolby's ability to develop and deliver innovative technologies in response to new and growing markets in the entertainment industry, including markets using imaging technologies; Dolby's ability to expand its business into non-sound technologies, including imaging technologies; competitive risks; risks associated with integrating and operating BrightSide's business; and other risks detailed in Dolby's Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including the risks identified under the section captioned "Risk Factors" in its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Dolby disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Dolby and the double-D symbol are registered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. S07/18042

Posted on February 27, 2007
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Photocamp presentation

Photocamp presentation

Well, this took me slightly longer to put up than I thought it would. I was pretty short on sleep last night and needed some time to take a nap, collect my thoughts, and finish some touch-up on the slides for my talk at PhotoCamp.

Talk slides

Speaking of my slides slides, there's a special deal at the moment: 2 talks for the price of one. We were short on time, so I didn't have the chance to get into any of my notes on high dynamic range (HDR) photography. In addition to the slides I had covering color photography for the web, I cleaned up the HDR slides and included them, figuring someone might find some use in them. In those slides, I mention a lot of different software, all of which you can find under my hdr tag on del.icio.us.

All in all, I think the session went quite well. Kris got stuff off on the right foot, and all those that presented had very informative talks. Roland gave a quick overview of the features in the newly-released Adobe Lightroom, Warwick had a very informative overview of the workflow of a professional photographer that has to work through a lot of photos, while Dave Olson gave some good tips for taking good macro and product shots on a budget. Tim Bray gave a very useful overview of high-end pocket cams, something I am currently in the market for. Finally, in my opinion, I think the field trip afterwards to see the HDR display was well-received.

The only disappointment was that even though we booked up 2 slots for it, we made it through about 50% of the content we planned on. I ditched on of my topics (though I admittedly had more than I should have), and we didn't get to any of the audience-suggested topics. People also kind of trickled out after seeing the HDR display and dispersed before any motion was made to have a photowalk. Some of that could have been fixed with better organization, but a lot of it simply required a bigger block of time. The comment that we really need to dedicate a whole day to PhotoCamp really rings true. I know Thomas Hawk already mentioned something like this, but Vancouver seems to have a pretty strong lineup to hold one itself.

Posted on February 23, 2007
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PhotoCamp notes

Here are my notes from my PhotoCamp presentation I gave at BarCamp Vancouver over the weekend.

Idea

While we have used digital cameras much the same way that we have film cameras, digital photography has fundamental differences from conventional film-based devices. The ability to interact with sensors has opened up a number of opportunities for the capture of novel image types. The combination of different methods of capture with new processing techniques allows for new image forms. The umbrella term for this family of techniques is known in the research community as computational photography.

There is ongoing research in changing all the major clusters of the photographic process. People have investigated changes in lighting, camera optics, digital sensors, and image procesing. The point of the talk was to provide an overview of what interesting features might be available on your camera in the future.

Fourier slice photography

This paper presents a camera that samples the 4D light field on its sensor in a single photographic exposure. This is achieved by inserting a microlens array between the sensor and main lens, creating a plenoptic camera. Each microlens measures not just the total amount of light deposited at that location, but how much light arrives along each ray. By re-sorting the measured rays of light to where they would have terminated in slightly different, synthetic cameras, we can compute sharp photographs focused at different depths. This property allows us to extend the depth of field of the camera without reducing the aperture, enabling shorter exposures and lower image noise. Especially in the macrophotography regime, we demonstrate that we can also compute synthetic photographs from a range of different viewpoints.

Flash-no flash photography

This technique enhances the appearance of photographs shot in dark environments by combining a picture taken with the available light and one taken with the flash. It preserves the ambiance of the original lighting and insert the sharpness and more reliable color information from the flash image. It uses the bilateral filter to decompose the two images into detail and large-scale layers. It reconstructs the image using the large scale of the available lighting and the detail of the flash. We detect and correct artifacts due to the flash shadow. The output images provide the combined advantages of available illumination and flash photography.

Graph processing

This framework uses graph-cut optimization to choose good seams within the constituent images so that they can be combined as seamlessly as possible; and gradient-domain fusion to further reduce any remaining visible artifacts in the composite. The power of this framework lies in its generality; we show how it can be used for a wide variety of applications, including "selective composites" (for instance, group photos in which everyone looks their best), relighting, extended depth of field, panoramic stitching, clean-plate production, stroboscopic visualization of movement, and time-lapse mosaics.

Structured photography

Photo tourism is a system for browsing large collections of photographs in 3D. Our approach takes as input large collections of images from either personal photo collections or Internet photo sharing sites, and automatically computes each photo's viewpoint and a sparse 3D model of the scene. Our photo explorer interface enables the viewer to interactively move about the 3D space by seamlessly transitioning between photographs, based on user control.

High dynamic range imaging

One of the most interesting advances in photography and imaging is what is known as high dynamic range imaging (HDR or HDRI). In the context of photography, the purpose is to extend the dynamic range (or ratio of brightest to darkest areas) beyond it's current limitations. The goal is to capture all of the luminance data for later, and not have images that have areas that are overexposed or underexposed. For more information on HDRI and how it applies to photography, check out this article.

The process of HDR imaging follows the same basic flow as conventional photography. You capture the scene via some method, store and process it, then display it by some means, but all of the methods for HDR images differ from their conventional counterparts. On the acquisition end, there are several means of creating HDR images. For static scenes, an exposure sequence can be combined into a single HDR image, while new HDR cameras are also under development. On the display end, there are two categories, tonemapping and native display. Tonemapping is method of compressing the image contrast to the dynamic range of a conventional display. There is much more to tonemapping than the Flickr group and some operators work better than others, and you need to know what you want to do in order to pick the right one. The other option is to use a high dynamic range display, such as the ones by BrightSide Technologies (warning: shameless plug).

Posted on August 27, 2006
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