Some of you may remember that I have posted here some of my Hi-Res drone photos. One in particular, a shot of a town that ended up as a dining room table top, under toughened glass. Unexpectedly, this early morning sunrise snap turned out to be sharp enough to just resolve the rigging wires on yachts nearly a mile away. I showed the pic on here with an enlarged crop to prove the result. This was a few years back and more recently, I have stitched tiles of ground taken at 50 metres altitude to form highly detailed maps of military installations, long abandoned and lost to nature. These were used by experts and historians to map and uncover bunkers, trenches and graves.About a week ago, I thought I would try and capture an image of the island I live on, some 3 square miles in area. Many pictures exist of this small island, take by people in planes. As we all know, the higher and further away you can get, the more ground area you can capture in your shot. However, the downside is loss of detail, if that is what you want in the picture.
I can tell you that the average person will spend ages zooming in on their friends, neighbours and other people's gardens to see the sort of detail that Google Maps can't show. It surprised me!
Anyway, I was limited by two constraints. Altitude 120m max and distance out over the sea because of safe flight time (battery) and  good detail in the image.
The island tapers from cliffs along one edge down to the beach on the other side. Most of the interesting features are on the beach side so that dictated the side closest to the drone camera.
I took a 5 shot cylindrical pano and went home to see what I had got.
As you might expect, the extreme ends on the left and right of the picture were so far away that they were quite indistinct. True, Islanders thought it was sharp and amazing because they see the island as a whole picture and don't pixel peep.
Recently I bought some software that claimed to use AI to improve the appearance of photos. It is aimed at professionals although amatures like me who normally process their RAWs using Photoshop or similar would find this a dream. Think LUTs but appropriate to any snap.
You can make your pigs-ear photo into a WOW! in a minute or two.
I decided to put this 15000x9449 pixel 300dpi 218mb image through the software to see if the AI can do anything with the detail lost. Yes, lost detail. Blured is lost detail.
It is tru that you can crank up the sharpness in Photoshop and other software, but this only emphasizes edges where the pixel content changes. I believe it is called acutance. It is easy to over sharpen and even having done this, you haven't added detail, just created an illusion of more detail.
Initially, the image didn't improve or even change in any way. About half a minute later, the image suddenly  cleared from something bordering on fuzzy pixels of a low res, zoomed in image into something that looked like it was taken by a high quality lens. I admit, I was shocked, surprised didn't cut it.
Then I saw the downside. The smooth sky gradation looked like I had tried to sharpen and dehaze a noisy night shot. Totally rubbish!
But wait, there were two more sliders to fiddle with. Radius and masking. WTDickens are they? Long story to short, I made adjustments, waited a bit for the processing and back came the smooth sky that I thought had been sacrificed.
For those who are interested, I am uploading to ONEDRIVE so I can post a link to the before and after files for your examination.
In the meantime, here is the forum size image that just shows the island and NO DETAIL.
If a few of you have an image you want tarted up, I am happy to try and do something with it. Perhaps AI can help you show great photos.Before AI tweak
After AI tweak  Please note, this image is still oversharpened but it can be adjusted to personal taste.

Looks very good!

Quite the difference in the before and after shots.  

Looks great,  what AI software did you use?

Montfrooij Posted at 9-15 22:26
Looks very good!

DAFlys Posted at 9-16 01:49
Looks great,  what AI software did you use?

I am using Luminar Neo
A current sales ling

I recently took a snap into the sun. Bad idea! Of course the image was burned out and rubbish although the composition wasn't that bad, so I decided to keep it. I tried making improvements with Photoshop and this is the best I could do.

Then I tried Neo and although it is over colourful, I wanted it this way for Facebook, with a new sky (instant swap) this is the result. Obviously, most people would want to tone down the colour but at least there is substance to the image now.
Sadly, I overwrote the original snap, but it was the worst I had ever taken.
I thought I would try using the latest version of Neo and

AlansDronePics Posted at 9-17 00:36
I am using Luminar Neo
A current sales ling

I tried Neo and Luminar AI,  I found the slider to control the amount of the effect was needed.  

Here is another drone snap disaster.
First the original plus a touch of photoshop
Next we have a Luminar Neo tweak that took seconds to do.

DAFlys Posted at 9-17 00:50
I tried Neo and Luminar AI,  I found the slider to control the amount of the effect was needed.

Certainly a lot has changed with the product. I found the same in the early versions.
Perhaps it might be worth another try?
Because of habit, I do still head for Photoshop first and I do find that I get better results, especially with noise reduction. It is easy to get a noise effect in things like a good sky in PS that is easily cured in Neo.
Neo also has a better range of presets now that produce better results than a LUT (in my hands).

AlansDronePics Posted at 9-17 00:57
Certainly a lot has changed with the product. I found the same in the early versions.
Perhaps it might be worth another try?
Because of habit, I do still head for Photoshop first and I do find that I get better results, especially with noise reduction. It is easy to get a noise effect in things like a good sky in PS that is easily cured in Neo.

If you shoot raw,  the new version of DXO PureRaw is worth a look,  its deepPrime engine does a good job correcting distortion and bring in a lot more details and sharpness.

There's a thread here discussing it with examples.  

https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... &extra=page%3D1

It would be interesting to see what improvement that software could make to the aerial of the island?