As promised in my last blog I am showing you how I converted the image sequence into the video. When I took the photos of that Oriental magpie Robin I was not planning to do the image sequence. Ideally a tripod mounted stationary camera would have been excellent for such an image sequence. If you plan to do time lapse series then tripod mounting is a must. The following method works well with time lapse sequences too.

Since I had the photos handheld I needed to align the main branch where it was sitting in perfect alignment. So after processing all Raw photos in Adobe Lightroom I chose the right click menu Edit in -> Open as layers in Photoshop.

Open as layers in Photoshop

This will export the photos to Adobe Photoshop and arranges all the 15 photos as layers of a single file. To align images this is ideal method.

Photoshop with photos exported as layers

I chose all the layers in Adobe Photoshop and from the Edit menu -> Auto Align Layers.

Auto Align Layers

Under the Auto Align Layers options dialog box I chose both vignette removal as well as geometric distortion under the lens correction option. This may not be necessary if you have kept the aperture constant.

Auto Align Layers options

Now Adobe Photoshop will churn away depending on the speed of your machine aligning your images.

Aligning Layers

Aligning Layers

After a short wait you will be presented with perfectly aligned images. As you can see the edges of all the images will not be aligned.

Perfectly aligned layers

Next you need to crop all the images so that they will be of the same size and will not have transparent borders. This is accomplished using crop tool in Adobe Photoshop.

Cropping the edges

Now we will explore a hidden gem in Adobe Photoshop. If you plan to export all the layers as separate files you need to go to File -> Scripts -> Export Layers to Files option.

Scripts to export layers to files

Now you will get 15 jpeg files out those 15 layers which were aligned perfectly using auto-align option. You can re-size these jpeg files to the final size of the video you want. I also added the matte frame and copyright info I usually add to all my photos. I use ImageMagick to accomplish this task as a batch file from command line.

Layers exported as JPEG files

Now since you have 15 perfectly aligned images you can started porting them to video. If you already had the aligned images by using the tripod while shooting you will start from this point onwards. Even though many would like to use Apple Quicktime Pro for creating video, my preferred software is ImageJ. ImageJ is a powerful image analysis program that was created at the National Institutes of Health. ImageJ is open-source program written in Java, which allows it to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. You may download this program from the source (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/). After installing ImageJ choose File -> Import -> Image Sequence from its menu.

ImageJ to import files as Image sequence

Once you point it out to the fist file in the image sequence ImmageJ will import all the 15 files and starts processing them.

Opening the Image sequence

Following is the dialog about sequence options. You can leave it default like as I did or you can change them as you wish.

Sequence options

Next you will see the image sequences presented as video for you to watch in a inbuilt ImageJ player.

Imported images as video

To save them as video file you need to choose File -> Save as -> AVI.

Export as AVI

Next dialog will give you frame rate setting option. As I wanted file to have 1 frame per second option I chose such a slow frame rate. For time lapse sequences you need to choose faster frame rates.

AVI frame rate setting

Once you choose the name for the AVI files all your image sequences will be saved as a single AVI file.

Save as AVI

I exported this AVI file to You Tube server so that it hosted for all to enjoy. Hope this tutorial will be useful for all the image sequence & time lapse enthusiasts who wants to make it into a video.

Jeffrey's Lightroom Geoencoding Plugin

New high end point & shoots and almost all smartphones have Global Positioning System (GPS) built into them. They allow you to incorporate latitude & longitude of the location where the photo taken into the Exchangeable image file format (Exif) header of the photo. But more costly and sophisticated Digital SLR’s lack this simple tool. How will you incorporate this information is subject of my short tutorial. I will make it as simple as possible with bare minimal tools which I have incorporated in my workflow. I hope this information will be useful for all who want to include GPS info into their photos.

I make it a point to display Exchangeable image file format (Exif) on all my photos. I consider it a duty of a every responsible photographer to inform his viewer what parameters he has used while taking the particular photograph. I have seen many discussions on the secrecy of techniques which are not supposed to revealed to anybody.

I come from a Medical profession which also was filled with secrecy. Latin & Greek words doctors were used is mainly to either to confuse or hide facts from the common man . Prescriptions were totally unreadable except to the chemist and the doctor himself. All this has changed now. Internet and information revolution has given most of this hidden information to common man. This has been boon as well as bane to common man. On one hand he is bombarded with good information which is equally mixed with quackery as well marketing. He will be in a dilemma how to differentiate one another. Let us leave medical profession to guide a path through this mess.

Photography also suffered from the same irony, with digital camera everybody has become photographer. The basic knowledge as well as foundation of photography is lacking. I feel openness is the way forward in spreading awareness about photography. When I started this blog I had lot of trouble trying to display EXIF info as well getting that info into the photograph. WordPress engine I am using was not really had any effective tools which could read and display EXIF information in the way I wanted. I had to hack with several plugins to produce satisfactory result. GPS is one tool I relied upon to add location information into the image. Canon as opposed to Nikon has been neglecting the need for a GPS with DSLR’s.

Qstarz BT-Q1000XT GPS Travel Recorder

First you need to get a GPS tool. There are some dedicated GPS taggers which sit on the hot shoe of the camera and add the location information directly onto the photo. Nikon camera has quite a few solution. But since they tie you up with a particular software and hardware combination, I don’t recommend it. Get general GPS logger which log at regular interval GPS info onto a log file. After searching many alternatives I chose Qstarz BT-Q1000XT. It is a GPS Travel Recorder also known as a data logger (or track logger). Q1000XT is capable of recording up to 40 days, which is very reliable and powerful for long trip arrangement. You can log up to 400,000 waypoints as you like. I ordered it from a GPS shop in Delhi called Groovy GPS Store who specialize in selling GPS. On their website only older model (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) is listed. But the Newer model (Qstarz BT-Q1000XT) is what I got from them.

Your GPS position at each point in time (intervals vary e.g. every 5 second or so, as set by the device) is recorded as a track point. Digital cameras also time-stamp your images, so the two time stamps can be compared. Wherever the time stamps match (the clocks in both devices should be synchronized), the associated GPS coordinates can be linked to a particular photo. You can use any GPS logger, even your smartphone, so far as they have logging function and can produce a log in a format called GPX. GPX (the GPS Exchange Format) is a light-weight XML data format for the interchange of GPS data (waypoints, routes, and tracks) between applications and Web services on the Internet.

Here is an example track log of my Pelagic Bird watching Trip in GPX format (opens in a text editor). You can also check the map it renders on Google map below.

Click here for the map

The actual “matching” of track point to photo is done by the software. Before we look at accessing the logs and photo-matching, let’s take a quick look at the alternative, manual method of geo-location. You don’t need to buy a dedicated photo tracker to use the automatic method; you in-car navigation GPS device may suffice (with appropriate software), as could a GPS trekking product. What matters is the ability to record track logs.

Before getting this data logger I was using manual method of adding GPS coordinates. I used to locate my location manually on Google earth using my memory of the area where and when I took photo, and incorporating that into the photograph. It was not very accurate but an approximate way of GPS tagging your photo.

There are plenty of software, some come with the GPS device and few 3rd party GPS tools. I will not go through all of them as I have little experience using them except during early days of evaluating which was good for my purpose. Many of them failed to add GPS info into the Raw files I shoot (not directly into Raw file but xmp side car file). My workflow revolved around Adobe Light room & Photoshop. So I wanted to use a plugin to Adobe Light room which I can use easily on number of photos.

Because the Adobe Lightroom 3 doesn’t support geoencoding natively, you need to use a plugin, Jeffrey’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom. It is released as donatioware. using this plugin you can geoencode your photos either using GPX log file from your GPS Logger, or by pinpointing your location on the Google Earth manually. You can also manually enter latitude & Longitude. It can batch process huge number of photos without a sweat.

This has been my workflow incorporating Geoencdng photos. So all you need is this plugin, GPS logger and Adobe Lightroom. When we export photos out of Adobe Lightroom they will be tagged with the GPS info. So next time you want to know location of any of my photo just expand it to the large size and have a look at the Exif info along with location on Google map.

If you want to learn further on geoencoding, check the following links.

• Adobe Lightroom 3 and geotagging: step by step how-to
• Jeffrey Friedl’s GPS Plugin
• GPS Photo GeoTagging I – Two Simple Solutions
• Using GPS Data To Geotag Photos: The Basics
• An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

We all supposed to shoot in RAW to get best result, or at least that is what is taught by all except guys like Ken Rockwell. RAW is the digital Negative, and JPEG is frowned upon as a inferior product as far as the purity of Information captured during Photography. But most of my friends don’t listen to my preaching that Raw is great. They shoot either with JPEG only or if I am around RAW + JPEG.

Let us see why JPEG is so favored. The file size is small, the generation of JPEG is fast, It does not need Post processing. It faithfully brings out the settings you dialed under saturation, contrast, color etc in the camera menu. You can fill lot of JPEGs per GB of card. So what is wrong with JPEG.

RAW on the other hand is huge and cumbersome. Needs post processing. It fills up your card fast. needs to be de-noised, sharpened and white balance corrected. So why shoot in RAW?

You will realize the potential of RAW once you shot using RAW. The information which is captured during shooting remains intact in Raw. Raw file is either 12 bit or 14 bit. So it will have more color information than JPEG which is 8it. Compression of JPEG is lossy, so if you start post processing JPEG file you will realize that resulting picture will be far inferior to that from a Raw. So if you want to post process shoot in Raw.

Most of my friends shoot both in RAW + JPEG. The reason they give is that that way they can give the JPEGs without post processing and when the need arises to do the post processing they have the RAW. What they don’t realize that this strategy is waste of space. Remember that there is an embedded JPEG within each raw file.

The ability to browse through raw files “instantly” in applications including BreezeBrowser, Irfanview, GarphicConverter, Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom and scores of others, is still based, either fully or in part, on the ability to extract the embedded JPEG within each raw file. When we view the raw file in one of these applications, one of 2 things happens. Either we are in fact viewing the embedded JPEG based on the camera settings, or we briefly see the embedded JPEG, until the raw conversion software is able to create a new preview file based on the default (or adjusted) settings from within the specific raw application.

Instant JPEG From RAW Free Utility

IJFR - Running on a RAW file

OK. So I am here to tell you about a free utility that extracts this mighty embedded JPEG file from a RAW file. But how is that going to help you in your 2009workflow ? Well maybe it will and maybe it won’t, but I am hoping that for at least some of you, it will make your day (and that is a tough thing to do on the day after Photoshop CS4 was announced)!

Let’s take this typical fictitious example. I am doing a  shoot for a client. I have to make great pictures, under great pressure, but have to deliver a flash drive with large JPEG proofs immediately after the shoot, as well as email small JPEGs to a web gallery. Time is of the essence. Of course I shoot in raw format as I always do. Although I know that JPEG proofs will be required immediately after the shoot, I do not shoot in RAW+JPEG because it is much too slow and cumbersome and fills my card fast.

The shoot is done, the files are uploaded to my old laptop, and the client is extremely pleased but is impatiently waiting to leave with the proofs. There are many ways that the JPEGs could be created, but why create the JPEGs, when they already exist with the raw files? Here comes our The Instant JPEG from Raw workflow utility. It churns out all the JPEG needed from the whole bunch of Raw file in a very short time. So you have saved space on the Card plus have theJPEGs too. I creat2 2 sets of JPEGs one for the client and other smaller one for my web gallery. Whole creation takes less than a minute on my rickety laptop. Clint is happy so is the viewers of my web gallery.

IJFR - Running on a Folder of Raw files

I believe that IJFR is the fastest and easiest way to go from raw files to high quality proof files, especially on low powered machines and without involving running an application. What is great is that you can get JPEGs in various sizes too thus eliminating the resize work afterwords, so now you can have a JPEG with full 10-12 Mega pixel and one for the web at 800×600 pixel dimension.

The IJFR utility is available for Win or Mac OS, and is fast, simple, has a tiny footprint (uses very little disk space or RAM) and is free, and easy to have on all of your desktop and laptop machines, no matter how slow, or resource challenged. Download for free (but you need to sign in to get download link) from RawWorkflow.com.