First some summary notes and links on new AI desktop imaging apps-- and then a detailed discussion of HDR workflow with Aurora HDR and its AI aided exposure blending and deghosting. And then workflow notes on stereo fisheye to aligned equirectangulars (PTGui), vertical disparity corrected (After Effects). depth equalized VR180 (Evil Twin 3D) VR 180 stereo pairs. .
AI desktop imaging
A considerable number of AI plugins and apps for masking, HDR exposure merging, noise reduction, sharpening and resizing, scene analysis and object detection and tracking and depth map extraction have appeared recently:
eg. Topaz's AI Clear, AI Sharpen, AI Resize, and OnOne's ONI Photo Raw and Skylum's Luminar and Aurora HDR.
https://photofocus.com/software/why-im-loving-topaz-studio-a-i-clear/
https://petapixel.com/2019/03/04/review-topaz-sharpen-ai-is-amazing/
https://skylum.com/blog/ai-sky-enhancer-a-breakthrough
https://skylum.com/newsroom/aurora-hdr-2019-introduces-aipowered-quantum-hdr-engine
https://www.on1.com/blog/new-ai-quick-mask-tool-on1-photo-raw-2019/
and ...
Matterport has AI powered photogrammetry cloud processing for 360 2D panorama scene capture of interiors. Autodesk's Flame 2020 has added AI-aided human face modeling from 2D video and scene segmentation for depth mapping. Kognak has impressive AI masking of a large variety of video sequences via scene analysis and object detection. Arraiy enables realtime AI aided virtual set camera and object tracking.
http://360rumors.com/2019/01/matterport-insta360-ricoh-theta.html
http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/04/autodesk-unveils-flame-2020/
https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/flame-embraces-deep-learning/
https://kognat.com/
https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/rotobot-bringing-machine-learning-to-roto/
https://www.arraiy.com/
http://vfxvoice.com/the-new-artificial-intelligence-frontier-of-vfx/
AuroraHDR
Some (very technical) notes to self. If you have 3 exposures say, you can choose one to be the reference for deghosting purposes. That exposure will not be changed scale-wise in the blended result. Say the exposures are +2, 0 and -2EV. And -2EV is the deghosting reference. Then other possible blends eg, +2 and -2 and 0 and -2 will similarly be the same dimensionwise as the 3 exposure combo. But with slightly different croppings. By canvas sizing them to the same dimensions you will now have 4 images, the original EV (-2) image, and the 3 possible exposure blends (-2, 0, 2) (-2, 0) and (2, -2) that are very closely aligned. All can be very exactly aligned by using the AutoAlign feature of Photoshop as layers, one or two times, -- using the choose align method automatically option. So you have plenty of options for compositng different parts of the blends or original deghost reference exposure.
to be continued ...
