AmphiSoft Photo Detailer

If we take AmphiSoft Photo Detailer, we can easily finish off
the incomplete photo to turn it into a masterpiece.... - review at 3d2f.com

"AS Photo Detailer" is image editing plug-in filter for recovering details from underexposed or overexposed parts of images, fixing photos with uneven lighting and so on.

Below is an example of using "AS Photo Detailer" on digital photo:

Fig. 1	Fig. 2

Fig. 1 is casual indoor photo (scaled down to fit web page) without any correction; Fig. 2 - after running "AS Photo Detailer": Radius=20, Intensity=60, Fix color=40, other controls at factory settings. As can be seen on Fig. 2, "AS Photo Detailer" improved facial ditails and recovered underexposed cloth areas.

AmphiSoft Photo Detailer may be also used to clarify visually "flat" photos and give them some more detail and expression:

Fig. 3	Fig. 4

Fig. 3 - casual indoor photo.

Fig. 4 shows the effect of "AS Photo Detailer" at radius 10. The effect is a bit exaggerated since intensity was left at default setting for demonstration purposes.

Understanding filter controls:

In general, it is recommended to tweak filter control in "top to bottom" sequence, starting with "Radius" then proceeding to the controls placed below.

"Radius" is most important control. Unlike general image processing routines like "Levels", "Curves" and other forms of historgam adjustment, "AS Photo Detailer" not only takes into account source pixel signal but also analyzes pixel neighbourhood, attempting to segment image, locate details and improve their local contrast rather than change color in general. As a result, details smaller than certain size are improved for the price of long gradient being removed. For example, at the left an example of "Radius" set to 1 pixel is shown. As you can see, "AS Photo Detailer" improved tiny details, removing all the medium sized ones, turning the image into sort of line drawing, that is not probably what you want. So, tweak "Radius" before you switch to other controls until you get the desirable results. In some cases you may need running "AS Photo Detailer" twice; in this case, run it at high "Radius" first, then on low "Radius" - if you do otherwise, large details are likely to be removed at first pass before second pass can improve them.

"Effect intensity" group: "Intensity" slider contol overall intensity of the effect applied. "Fix color" attempts to improve color data partially lost in very dark or very light areas.

"Threshold" group: details with level (local contrast) above "High" settings are fully improved, details with level below "Low" are skipped, details in between are partially improved. These controls may be useful for noise rejection.

"Image range" group: "Highlight", "Midtones" and "Shadows" controls influence the amount of filtering applied to dark, light or midtone image areas. For example, setting "Shadows" to "0" will reduce the amount of effect applied to bottom left area of test image above, while setting "Highlight" will reduce filtering for "window" area.

AmphiSoft Photo Detailer plugin is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop and numerous other image editors for Windows (Macromedia Fireworks, JASC and Corel Paint Shop Pro, Ulead Photo Impact etc. etc. and freeware image viewers\converters like IrfanView and XnView) and work with 8 bit/channel and 16 bit/channel RGB(A) images (note that working with 16 bit/channel images require proper support of this mode in image editor).

Getting the filter

Now if you wish to test "AS Photo Detailer" yourself, please proceed to download page.

To obtain fully functional registered version of this plugin, use one of the secure registering options listed at download page.