Staggering quality improvement using AI Gigapixel on MP2 Files

[Bussty]

I haven't purchased the MP2 yet. Still waiting. To be honest I'm waiting to see if he Phantom 5 releases next quarter and hope to compare stills quality and will then make my call.

Anyway I have been hunting the internet for RAW MP2 files, have found a few, but haven't been hugely impressed. Quite noisey even at 100 ISO and harder to work on in post. Anyway I found what looked to be a pretty sharp and detailed DNG MP2 file and ran it through Topaz Labs AI Giga Pixel. I was quite amazed. Results below. This is quite a small crop out of the original. Original on left and Gigapixel on the right. Anybody wanting a bit more out of the MP2 DNG's this could be a good way to go. I recommend a fast computer and get ready for big files but you can save out as JPEG or PNG, and it won't suit every scene as Gigapixel trys to invent detail and occasionally gets it wrong.

 

[Kilrah]

Original on right and Gigapixel on the left

Umm I hope you got that backwards? Everything that could be is worse on the left one...

 

[Bussty]

Umm I hope you got that backwards? Everything that could be is worse on the left one...

Yup very backwards, thanks, fixed now

 

[FiShBuRn]

Can you post the full original photo? It seems out of focus...

About the noise..yeah..even at 100 ISO we have a lot of noise...lets hope DJI can some how fix that or improve...

 

[Bussty]

Can you post the full original photo? It seems out of focus...

About the noise..yeah..even at 100 ISO we have a lot of noise...lets hope DJI can some how fix that or improve...

Found the image here link the sample I used was a straight convert to tif using Affinity Photo with no adjustments.

 

[FiShBuRn]

Well we need to zoom in it a lot to get that "detail" and it was shot at f7.1, after f5.6 M2P loses a lot of sharpness...

 

[Paul2660]

As AI Gigapixel is designed for uprezing did you up the overall resolution? or did you just run the image through the program? I fully agree that the uprezing abilities of Gigapixel are pretty powerful, best solution I have seen so far.

The MP2 files need a lot of work in post, if shot as raw dng, for sure and a good sharpening algorithm at base resolution is really very key. And I have found that the amount of lens distortion that is being corrected in Adobe is huge and also tends to add softness to the edges. Just open the images in Capture One and look at them. C1 doesn't see the built in lens corrections and you can see how much distortion is really in the files. If you aim up or down at all the curved horizon is quite noticeable. There is also a lot of vignetting that is being corrected by Adobe, that Capture One doesn't correct (unless you process out a LCC) The amount of vignetting at F 2.8 is quite extreme even at F 4.0.

Paul C

 

[kilomikebravo]

And I have found that the amount of lens distortion that is being corrected in Adobe is huge..

Really? In my experience with Premiere, it is only a -4 or -5 correction, hardly “huge.” I am also a user of many Topaz apps although I haven’t tried the new AI upsampling version but I will take a look. Even so, as was mentioned, the AI app is not designed for what we are talking about. I used Genuine Fractals for years and loved it but do need to get a replacement for it.

KB

 

[Paul2660]

Huge was a bit overstated, however the more you angle up the worse it gets, thus if you are attempting a pano, out of 9 horizontal images, 3 across each down, middle and top, the bottom and top have pretty extreme horizon curves, unless processed out in LR or ACR, but I don't find I prefer the colors, and overall lens correction in Adobe for MP2.

Paul C

 

[kilomikebravo]

..but I don't find I prefer the colors, and overall lens correction in Adobe for MP2.

To each his own I guess but FWIW, both corrections that you mentioned are all about user preference and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of possible combinations to get the look you want. That said, if you can find or you know about any other video editing application that is better than Premier Pro or FCP, I for one would certainly like to know what it is.

KB

 

[Paul2660]

I am referring to stills not video. Sorry for the confusion.

For video I agree Premier is good but I am moving more to DaVinci resolve.

Video is a totally different animal.

Paul C

 

[CanadaDrone]

You should be able to get all those same details back with 30 seconds of PP if you don't want to run it through Topaz.

You're essentially comparing a RAW (no sharpening or adjustment whatsoever) with a processed RAW, so of course the processed version looks better

The straight out of camera RAWs from the M2P are pretty bad, as is expected - they are designed to be fully processed.

 

[sar104]

You should be able to get all those same details back with 30 seconds of PP if you don't want to run it through Topaz.

You're essentially comparing a RAW (no sharpening or adjustment whatsoever) with a processed RAW, so of course the processed version looks better

The straight out of camera RAWs from the M2P are pretty bad, as is expected - they are designed to be fully processed.

Exactly.

 

[Bussty]

You should be able to get all those same details back with 30 seconds of PP if you don't want to run it through Topaz.

Could someone spend 30 seconds and try and get that result using a RAW convertor cos even though I'm using Affnity Photo I can't seem to come even close...

 

[kilomikebravo]

Could someone spend 30 seconds and try and get that result using a RAW convertor cos even though I'm using Affnity Photo I can't seem to come even close...

Busty: Perhaps I missed the answer to this question (and if so, my apologies to everyone) but, why are you trying to find software that will "convert" a RAW file to anything? The point of using RAW image files is to AVOID pre-processing by the camera.

Even if your choice (or finances) are not to use apps from the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, the "lite" vesion of Lightroom (which is Lightroom CC,) supports RAW files (DNG, CR2,) and I feel you would be much better off starting from there. The complete Lightroom app, (Lightroom Classic,) isn't expensive either and will give you more editing options than LR CC. Additionally, there is Photoshop Elements, Corel's Paintshop Pro, ACDSEE and I'm sure others that are not coming to mind at the moment.

KB

 

[Lady Rover]

Affinity can process RAW files when you use the develop persona...

 

[CanadaDrone]

Could someone spend 30 seconds and try and get that result using a RAW convertor cos even though I'm using Affnity Photo I can't seem to come even close...

Sure - post the original RAW file somewhere I can download and I'll see what I can get out of it.

I also think that maybe you don't fully understand what RAW files are intended for, and please don't take that in a negative way, it's just in the way you worded your reponse. RAW files are just that - the RAW data. On the surface you might think they should be higher quality (and technically they are) but not straight out of the camera. They have no correction to them whatsoever with regards to levels, sharpening, saturation, distortion correction, vignetting, etc. and that is the way they are intended. When you shoot a JPEG with the drone or your cell phone or whatever else, the camera is processing a RAW image for you. A RAW image on it's own is always going to look flat, soft, and dull compared to the processed version. Further to this, simply taking a RAW image into a RAW converter and saving it does nothing, unless that program has presets that get applied - the RAW files have maximum malleability and are designed to have numerous corrections applied while giving you the most leeway to do so. Hope that makes sense. Feeding a RAW file though up-res software and nothing else is not going to yield the best results.

 

[FiShBuRn]

You can find it here: https://www.imaging-resource.com/manual-update/news/mavicpro2/DJI_0021.DNG

 

[Bussty]

Busty: Perhaps I missed the answer to this question (and if so, my apologies to everyone) but, why are you trying to find software that will "convert" a RAW file to anything? The point of using RAW image files is to AVOID pre-processing by the camera.

Even if your choice (or finances) are not to use apps from the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, the "lite" vesion of Lightroom (which is Lightroom CC,) supports RAW files (DNG, CR2,) and I feel you would be much better off starting from there. The complete Lightroom app, (Lightroom Classic,) isn't expensive either and will give you more editing options than LR CC. Additionally, there is Photoshop Elements, Corel's Paintshop Pro, ACDSEE and I'm sure others that are not coming to mind at the moment.

KB

Hey KB

Thanks for your post. Sorry probably didn't make that very clear, I have no trouble with RAW images, have used Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, DXO and current convertor of choice is Olympus Viewer 3 for my OMD files, does such a great job. I currently convert to TIFF then make fine adjustments in Affinity which I find really great.

https://andrewbusst.wixsite.com/mysite

My whole purpose for the post came about as I'm almost ready to buy a MP2 but have not been blown away by the stills quality so have been trying to see what I can get out of a MP2 RAW file. I have found them quite "thin" if you like and also quite noisey even at 100 iso. So I have just been playing around with the DNG's available on line (actually they are really hard to find! If anybody has a fully lit, sharp, lots of detailed DNG from the MP2 they would be willing to share at say f5.6 I would love to see it)

Moving on, I stumbled on AI Gigapixel and thought I would run a couple of sample MP2 RAW's converted to Tiffs through it and got the result at the start of the post. I was amazed as I couldn't get close to that using a standard RAW converter in terms of sharpness, detail and noise reduction and thought anybody else struggling might find that useful. I hear the term "pixel peeping" on here a bit and for screen size shots you don't need to pixel peep. But what's your most taxing use of the image likely to be? If it's blown up to a big print it's no longer pixel peeping it's just making sure it looks good at that size. Nothing worse than someone loving an image and they want it blown up then any issues start to appear...

Cheers

Bussty

 

[Bussty]

Affinity can process RAW files when you use the develop persona...

Thank's Lady Rover, yes that's what I used to get to a TIFF then ran that through AI Gigapixel. I couldn't get as good as results just using Affinity (or any RAW convertor for that matter) so I'm thinking maybe AI Gigapixel is a useful software for pushing MP2 files a little harder. Cheers Bussty