imaging
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Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 flexes its imaging muscle (video)
While we already know that Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 will offer a quad-core variant, incorporate LTE and use a 28nm manufacturing process, the company posted an article to its media blog ahead of Mobile World Congress showcasing the new features provided by the chipset's Image Signal Processor. You're likely familiar with some of the imaging functionality available in Qualcomm's existing Snapdragon processors -- technology like Scalado's Rewind (pictured above) which we've covered before. The new SoC cranks things up a notch with support for up to three cameras (two in the back for 3D plus one front-facing), 20-megapixel sensors and 1080p HD video recording at 30fps. In addition to zero shutter lag, the Snapdragon S4 includes proprietary 3A processing (autofocus, auto exposure and auto white balance) along with improved blink / smile detection, gaze estimation, range finding and image stabilization. Rounding things off are gesture detection / control, augmented reality and computer vision (via Quacomm's FastCV). Want to know more? Check out the source link below, then hit the break for video demos of the S4's image stabilization and gesture-based imaging chops.
AR goggles take crime scene technology to CSI: Miami level
Dutch researchers are looking to catapult crime scene investigation into the 21st century through the use of augmented reality (AR). The prototype system, designed by the Delft University of Technology, employs a pair of AR goggles, two head-mounted cameras and a portable laptop rig to allow investigators to build virtual crime scenes by tagging evidence and placing objects they are viewing. After mapping an area, additional law enforcement personnel can review the investigator's work and request additional information -- asking the CSI to define or place additional objects. Researchers hope that the 3D renders will be used as court-admissible evidence in the near future; the technology is set to be tried on a real Dutch crime scene later this year. We can see it now: Lieutenant Horatio Caine whips off his shades and tosses on a pair of (equally stylish) crime-fighting goggles... YEAAAAAAAAH!
GoPano 360 degree camera with new app updates, case at CES
We originally took a look at the GoPano lens attachment from EyeSee360 last year when it was released -- the lens sits on the back of your iPhone, and allows you to take a full 360 degree picture with a free iPhone app. Since the project went live (it was funded by Kickstarter), EyeSee360 tells TUAW at CES that it's sold very well, and there are updates coming for both the product and the app. For the app, the company is planning an update soon that will add some social sharing options. Already, the app will upload 360 degree video to the main GoPano.com site, which it would like to be seen as "The YouTube of 360." These videos don't need an iPhone or any special software to be viewed, so while the original video may be warped (the lens basically shoots a circle of video on the iPhone's screen, and must be put through the company's software to be seen correctly) users can both save and share their videos online through the main site. The app will be updated in a few weeks, however, and that update will bring options to send the videos directly to Twitter, Facebook, or services like Dropbox, so we'll see more 360 videos than ever online. There will be a Facebook app for embedding the 360 videos, too. "The goal," according to the rep from EyeSee360, is to eventually "take it to broadcast" television, so the company was also showing off a prototype version of a full lens made for a high-end Red camera as well. The RED camera rig Finally, the company is also planning an update to the lens, though all they had to show us so far was a very early model, not anywhere near ready for release just yet. The new model follows what they said was a whole lot of customer feedback -- customers are worried that the lens (which currently is just inserted into the custom iPhone case) might fall out, so EyeSee360 is working on a version that instead slides and locks in to a slot over the iPhone's camera, meaning that even if the phone is moved around, the lens should stay securely fastened on there. Again, that model isn't set for release just yet. But it's clear EyeSee360 has plenty of ideas on how to improve its lens, and plenty of orders post-Kickstarter to fulfill. As more and more users upload and share 360 degree videos created with the GoPano, it'll be interesting to see where those videos end up and how they're used in the future.
Kodak sues HTC, Apple
In a desperate bid to keep itself afloat, Kodak has filed another lawsuit against HTC and Apple. The struggling company is now claiming that Apple and HTC infringe on four patents related to the transfer of digital images. A previous lawsuit against Apple focuses on technology for previewing images. In this latest legal skirmish, Kodak filed both a complaint with the ITC and a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. Kodak says it doesn't want to halt the sales of Apple and HTC products. It's only looking for "fair compensation for the unauthorized use" of its imaging technology. Kodak is struggling financially and this "fair compensation" may prevent the company from declaring bankruptcy.
Scientists scan damaged audio discs, resurrect fresh beats
Digitizing your analog archives? Vinyl to CD / MP3 / iPod turntables might do well enough for your old 45s, but the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory prefer to listen to their old beats by taking pictures of them. More specifically, restoration specialists are using a system called IRENE/3D to snap high resolution images of damaged media. The cracked discs -- often made of wax on brass or composition board -- are then repaired digitally, letting researchers play the digitized discs with an emulated stylus. So far, the team has recovered a handful of 125 year old recordings from a team in Alexander Graham Bell's Volta laboratory. The all digital system gives researchers a hands-off way to recover audio from relic recordings without running the risk of damaging them in the process -- and no, they probably won't let you use it to listen to that beat up copy of the White Album you've had in your closet since eighth grade. Hit the source link to hear what they've recovered.
BU wizards find success in unconscious neurofeedback learning, announce plans for secret lair
You will learn French this week, even if you're not aware that it's happening. Neuroscientists at Boston University have discovered that patients can quickly learn new skills while having their brain patterns modified via decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging. The group found that pictures gradually build up inside a person's brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas with the brain then filling in greater details as needed to complete the object. From there, a correlation was confirmed between increased visual learning and fMRI neurofeedback, repetitions of the activation pattern leading to long-lasting performance improvement. Interestingly, the approach worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning... which is why that sweater you unconsciously knitted last night should fit Johnny Boy like a glove.
Researcher brings modified Touchpad into the MRI room, breakthrough ensues
Yes, the Touchpad is officially dead, but that hasn't stopped Stanford researcher Andrew B. Holbrook from using HP's tablet in a somewhat unexpected setting: the MRI lab. Holbrook, it turns out, has been developing a new, webOS-based system that could make it a lot easier for doctors to conduct interventional MRI procedures. Unlike its diagnostic counterpart, this brand of MRI can only operate within highly magnetic fields, thereby posing a threat to many electronic devices. Holbrook, however, may have found a way around this barrier, thanks to a modified Touchpad. With the help of HP engineers, the researcher stripped his tablet of metallic components, including its speakers and vibration motor, resulting in what the manufacturer calls a "minimally metallic device that could be used almost anywhere within the magnet room." With his Touchpad primed and loaded with apps for data manipulation, Holbrook went on to successfully integrate the device within an MRI system. He also developed a series of apps that allow technicians to monitor and manipulate an MRI procedure on their devices, regardless of whether they're in the magnet room itself, or outside. Holbrook says he's already started applying the same approach to webOS phones, in the hopes of providing doctors and researchers with an even more compact way to keep track of their patients. For more details on the system and future developments, check out the source link below. [Thanks, Mina]
Daily Mac App: Hydra Pro 3
HDR photography is a technique that produces images with a very high dynamic range. To produce an HDR image, you take several shots at varying shutter speeds and combine them using a technique called tone mapping to produce the final photograph. Hydra Pro 3 will allow you to combine up to seven exposures of a scene to wring out the most dynamic range so skies don't get overexposed and shadow details aren't lost. This new version has a 12-preset tone mapper, ghost artifact removers, cropping tools, batch processing and export to Facebook, Flickr, Lightroom, Aperture and OS X Mail. You can create a frame around your image, but the color options are limited. I've been testing the app for a few weeks and found it easy to use and getting solid results. You do get extensive control of your image, and you can make it as realistic or as surreal as you like. If you play with the HDR setting on the iPhone, you can get a taste of the technique, but HDR comes into its own when you work with a higher-quality digital camera and more exposures than the iPhone can provide for combining. I compared Hydra Pro 3 to my first choice in HDR programs, Photomatix Pro. In each set of images I processed, I preferred the Photomatix output. There was more control, and I thought the images had better depth and color. You can see a comparison in the gallery. Hydra Pro 3 failed a few times to automatically align photos. I switched to manual alignment, and that worked fine. Although there is a help menu it did not bring up help, but instead took me to the Creaceed website, where there was no manual for Hydra 3 Pro there either. The company says the manual will be online next week. Swing and a miss. Hydra 3 is roughly half the cost of Photomatix, and you can sample most of the features of Hydra Pro 3 using Hydra Express 3 for US$24.95. Hydra Pro 3 also includes plug-ins for Aperture and Adobe Lightroom, which is a price advantage over Photomatix which charges for those plug-ins. Hydra Pro 3 has a pleasing and clean interface without a lot of arcane sliders. Of course, simplicity is a trade-off for control, but the end result is good. Hydra Pro is US$49.99 for the next few days, which is a 50% savings over the normal cost. %Gallery-136129%
Nikon announces that it has announced nothing
Actual report: "Nikon understands that some article appeared in the media regarding Nikon's imaging product. Please note that Nikon has made no announcement in this regards." Translation: "We don't always reject rumors. But when we do, we reject ones you've never heard of." The exhaustive press release can be found in its entirety after the break. [Thanks, PJ]
Wacom Inkling digital sketch pen hands-on (video)
Wacom's new digital pen can't help but stand out from the competition. It's a specialized device that makes no apologies for catering to graphics enthusiasts at the expense of casual note-takers. Moreover, it does something pretty amazing: instead of just turning your sketches into simple bitmaps, it can also export them as vector-based images with multiple layers, which means they can be directly used as the basis for more complex and final art. The Inkling will cost £150 ($230 converted) when it reaches European stores in October, but in the meantime we've got some early hands-on impressions right after the break. %Gallery-133144% %Gallery-133182%
Occipital announces investment, new hires
Occipital, the company behind the popular iPhone and iPad app 360 Panorama, announced on Wednesday that it received US$7 million in venture funding. 360 Panorama lets you take panorama pictures by shooting a series of pictures at one and stitching them on the phone before saving them to your camera roll. Besides a healthy infusion of cash, Occipital is also expanding beyond its iOS application to create a computer vision platform that other developers can use. Occipital will create the backbone and developers will use their creative skills to produce innovative apps with advanced imaging and camera features like eye tracking. Occipital has also added four new members to its board of directors including Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld of a venture capital firm Foundry Group, Manu Kumar of venture capital firm K9 Ventures and Gary Bradski, the creator of OpenCV, an open source computer vision library.
Kodak may sell image patent in Apple lawsuit
Kodak may sell the image previewing patent that is the subject of a US$1 billion infringement lawsuit filed against Apple and RIM. This patent is one of 1,100 patents that Kodak is looking to sell as it tries to raise cash. Analysts estimate these patents may be worth more than $650 million, the market value of the company. In the past, Kodak has used patents to fund its struggling imaging and printing business. It has licensing agreements with 32 companies including Samsung and LG which have collectively paid Kodak $950 million to use the technology in Kodak's image-preview patents. Kodak was hoping to cash in on the RIM and Apple lawsuit, but this potential influx of cash has stalled. Kodak was handed a setback earlier this year when the ITC delayed its ruling on the Apple/RIM lawsuit until August 31.
HDR Darkroom Pro is a fast and inexpensive app for creating impressive landscape images
It's nice to see more awareness of HDR (high dynamic range) photography. The iPhone has a built-in HDR mode, and more and more software is supporting the combining of images shot at different shutter speeds, combined to create an image that captures more shadow detail without blowing out the highlights. HDR Darkroom Pro for OS X is on sale at a rather dramatic introductory price of US $19.99. It's a 75% off savings. Most HDR apps hover around $100 so this app qualifies as a good bargain while it is on sale. To use the app, you import 3 or more images show at different exposure settings. HDR Pro Darkroom will align the images, and produce a tone-mapped image that will almost always be more pleasing to the eye than a single image with standard exposure. Of course, like anything, HDR can be overdone, and I've seen some pretty horrible examples of photos that were over-saturated and surreal. On the other hand, that may be the effect you are after. HDR Pro Darkroom allows multiple methods of tone mapping, and then gives you control over white/black points, noise reduction, color balance and more. The app is very fast, easily 2-3 times as fast as my reference app, Photomatix, although it should be noted that the preview displays are very fast, the app is slow to save because that is the stage at which it renders the image. Most apps render for the preview, then do a quick save. It's not all roses however. After processing several images, I never saw output as clean as I was getting with Photomatix, or even the built in HDR feature on Photoshop CS5. I especially saw some very rough gradients (check the gallery) when the sky faded from blue to a a bright white on a sunrise shot. Photomatix rendered the transition perfectly. On less challenging material, HDR Darkroom Pro did quite well, but the interface is not intuitive and when you go to the help menu you are taken to the developers site and you have to hunt around for a PDF manual. If you can work around the limitations of HDR Darkroom Pro and want to get your feet wet in HDR photography I think this app is worth a purchase at the sale price. On the other hand, it has a lot of rough edges that simply don't exist in apps like Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro. Note: There are a bewildering number of photo apps at various prices from developer Everimaging. Be sure to go the the Mac App Store on your OS X computer to get the sale price of $19.99. %Gallery-129327%
Cornell University's microscopic camera makes photos with mathematics
Megapixel, megaschmixel -- we're more impressed when camera tech goes the opposite way and shrinks down. A happy byproduct of his neural mapping research, Patrick Gill and his Cornell University team have engineered a cam so microscopic it could fit on the head of a pin. The lensless creation is only one 100th of a millimeter thick, looks more like a miniature CD and doesn't require any budget-breaking parts. Named after the Fourier transform that inspired it -- a mathematical operation that breaks a signal down into various frequencies -- the Planar Fourier Capture Array translates pixel components into a fleshed-out image. Creators of the tiny camera tech stress that it won't be "[taking] family portraits," but you could probably count on having this nigh-invisible sucker implanted into your brain. It's definitely one small step for man, one nano-leap of the photographing kind.
Astronomers snap black hole murder in graphic detail (video)
We tend to imagine a black hole sucking everything around it straight into oblivion. The truth, however, is even more gruesome. Astronomers have just captured an ultra hi-res image of our neighbouring galaxy, Centaurus A, and it helps to reveal what actually happens. Matter is yanked helplessly towards a black hole at the galaxy's core, but it refuses to die quietly. For some unknown reason, it erupts as it falls, spewing out vast plumes of particles -- like blood from celestial murder. These death throes emit radio waves, allowing us to witness them using radio telescopes even though we are 12 million light-years away. If only we were closer; if only we could intervene. Alas, all we can do is watch the video after the break and hit the source links for a fuller explanation -- though, admittedly, none of those sound like awful options.
20 gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Wembley Stadium is among world's largest, most detailed
Jeffrey Martin is a busy man. Having already shot an 80 gigapixel panorama of London's skyline and a 40 gigapixel peek inside a Czech library, he has now turned his attention to England's hallowed Wembley Stadium. The recently rebuilt home of football served as the stage for a new 360-degree panorama, shot during the FA Cup Final this Saturday, which spans 10 20 gigapixels in total and has been made available online at the source link below. Recording was done using a DSLR mounted to a custom robot rig that would continually pump out imagery to an equally exclusive Fujitsu workstation equipped with 192GB of RAM and 24 processing cores. All that grunt was used to automatically stitch more than 1,000 high-res images together, earning the finished product the honor of being one of the world's largest 360-degree sports panoramic photos. Give the source a bash to tag yourself if you were at the Final or to check who else was there. [Thanks, Adam] Update: We originally had this at 10 gigapixel, going from information on the FA's website, but it turns out to be a 20 gigapixel pic. Its claim for being the largest sports panorama may actually be disputed by Essendon FC in Australia, who managed to pull together a 20 gigapixel image of their own at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in late April. You can see that jumbo pic here, or check out a couple more from Daytona and the NCAA Final Four this year.
StripeSpotter turns wild zebras into trackable barcodes
We've heard plenty of stories over the past few years about tagging animals with RFID chips, but we've never been particularly keen on the idea. Well, now a team of researchers has come up with a much less invasive way of tracking individual animals -- specifically zebras -- by essentially using their stripes as barcodes. StripeSpotter, as it's known, takes an isolated portion of a photograph of a zebra and slices it into a series of horizontal bands. Each pixel in the selection is then fully converted into black or white, and the bands are in turn encoded into StripeStrings, which eventually make up a StripeCode that resembles a barcode. All this information is stored in a database that allows researchers to directly identify particular animals without ever having to get too close. StripeCode may be a zebra-centric application for now, but its developers see it making a mark across the food chain with the inclusion of other distinctly patterned beasts, like tigers and giraffes. Animal tracking hobbyists can get their own free copy of the application by clicking on the source link below.
Visualized: Mercury
It may look like a spotty, monochromatic water melon, but we're taking NASA's word on this one -- the image above is the very first taken from an orbiting spacecraft of our solar system's innermost planet. Mercury has been snapped by NASA's MESSENGER probe, which is currently preparing itself to start on its elliptical trajectory around the planet and commence collecting data about it in earnest. Hit the links below to learn more about this bold exploration project.
Mac OS X, Microsoft Kinect create gesture-based MRI demo
A team of researchers from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland has developed a Kinect-based system for the touch-free control of medical imaging software. The group filmed an impressive proof-of-concept video showcasing their hands-free medical imaging system. It uses the Kinect to control OsiriX, OS X image software used to view MRI, CT, PET and other DICOM images generated from medical imaging equipment. The system would let doctors and other medical professional scan through a series of medical images as well as zoom and rotate individual images using only their hands or voice commands. One major advantage to this hands-free system is sterility. Because the system is touch-free, a doctor would not have to worry about contaminating his hands during surgery by tapping on a keyboard. While we have seen the Kinect used in a variety of clever Minority-report style hacks and even one OS X hack, this is one of the first Kinect hacks to have real-world application. Check out the video after the break and let us know what you think of Virtopsy's system.
ZScape 3D holographic prints take maps to the next dimension, sans spectacles
As the video above shows, Zebra Imaging's so called ZScape prints pull off some pretty amazing 3D visual effects despite being based on old school hologram technology. These prints are made using a variety of 3D data sources -- think AutoCad and the like -- that are then rendered as thousands of holographic elements by recording laser light onto a single film-based material. The resulting images are easily viewed without glasses or spinning mirrors, and just require a run-of-the-mill halogen or LED light source to reveal 360-degree, full color representations -- akin to what a physical model might look like. Fancier versions can also be made using overlays and layering techniques to show more information. To date, over 8,000 ZScapes have already been developed for the US military, but surprisingly their prices range between $1,500 for a 12- x 18-inch version to $3,500 for the largest 2- x 3-foot size, making them relatively obtainable for those not on Defense Department tabs. If the video of Seattle pulling an Inception above didn't impress you enough, be sure to check another embedded video after the break.
