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Thursday, February 7, 2019

Never Underestimate the Power of Software to Fix a Picture

When I worked on the Voyager mission at JPL in the 1970s, an acquaintance was part of the Viking imaging team.  He showed me a raw image from the lander.  It looked a marshmallow with a few smudges.  After blem removal and contrast enhancement, it looked like a Martian landscape.

The following picture was taken through my big telescope of a distant mountainside with too long of an exposure.

And after using AutoAdjust in IrfanView:


3 comments:

  1. If you haven't already, you should see "They shall not grow Old" the WWI movie by Peter Jackson...

    He took ~100 hours of more or less original WWI film, overexposed, underexposed, scratched, dirty, multi-generation dupes, and stitched it together into a remarkable film.

    Several more impressive points: The theater for the limited release I saw was completely full - every single seat. Old people (like me, I guess), young people, kids, male, female. All sat there, attentive and silent, for the entire movie. And everyone sat through the documentary at the end.

    The best part though was the separate documentary at the end, where he explained the process. In it he showed an exposure that was almost totally black..well overexposed; and another where the exposure was mostly white, and turned them both into quite good pictures.

    This was the only movie I saw last year. It was in very limited release. I check every day to see if they will be showing it around me again, it's worth a second look.

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  2. It's out again - the ever-indulgent wife and I saw it last weekend. The documentary at the end shows a hint of just how *much* other footage they have. I wouldn't be surprised to see a whole series of documentaries produced, each showing yet another thread of the vast tapestry.

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  3. This movie just released in the Treasure Valley. The Edwards chain has it. Just saw a commercial for it over a week ago. Been wanting to see it. My grandfather and great uncle both served in that war.

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