Light field photos offer so much more data, making them tricky to work with under older paradigms.
Lytro has introduced a major update to the desktop software that ships with its revolutionary light field camera, to make it easier to edit and process the depth and dimensionality available in Lytro’s “living pictures.” Lytro Desktop 4.3 is a free download for all Lytro camera users.
Light field cameras (also called plenoptic cameras) capture information about the intensity of light in a scene as well as data about the direction the light rays are traveling in space. Lytro is the first company to bring a light field camera to the general market.
The company says feedback in its first year on the market led them to focus on editing and image usability. Increased integration with Adobe Photoshop was high on the list of requested features, as was the ability to work with raw light field data.
Lytro Desktop 4.3 allows export of Lytro images as editable image stacks, with individual layers, in one step. Once edited in Photoshop, those changes are automatically propagated back into Living Picture in Lytro Desktop. Once a Lytro living picture image is modified in Photoshop, its editability in Lytro Desktop is limited.
There is also new capabilities working with grayscale depth maps created from the light field data. Photographers can use depth map editing for image touch-up, such as cleaning up the contours of objects in the scene, artifact removal, or fixing cloud and sky scenes. Lytro Desktop 4.3 includes direct editing of depth maps with a set of user adjustable brushes. Change the settings to control brush size, softness and hardness, and opacity. There are also new blur brush and history brush tools for undo. Results from depth map editing can be seen instantly without ever leaving Lytro Desktop.
Other features in this update include:
Fast Import: It is now possible to simply import images to your computer without immediate processing. Unprocessed images are shown with a thumbnail preview, and can be selected later for processing individually, or in bulk. Combined with the new interactive player support in the ILLUM 2.0 firmware update, users can preview all attributes of a living picture in camera, including focus, depth of field, and perspective shift. Fast import saves the photographer time by separating taking images in the field from processing them for further use.
Side-by-Side 3D Animation: Create stereoscopic side-by-side 3D animations directly from the export menu. The animations are initially keyframed in Lytro Desktop. Stereoscopic Left/Right parallax views are generated automatically from the Living Picture, suitable for playback in VR goggles such as Oculus Rift, Samsung GearVR, Google Cardboard or stereo viewers.
Lenticular Printing: Lytro Desktop can now automatically export a series of images with the captured focus range that can be provided to a lenticular printing service for the creation of 3D lenticular prints.
