Hugin and camera distortion
On Sunday, Pablo D'Angelo, lead developer and maintainer of Hugin presented his application to the LGM crowd. Cool stuff in itself, but the really cool thing was this:
Pablo proposes to develop a database that would contain characteristics for lenses like distortion and vignetting. Every lens is subject to those problems, and they are specific for specific types of lens. There's even a commercial company that sells a database with this information for lots of money, and there used to be a free database, too, but that was taken proprietary.
Together with that database would come a small library that applications like Digikam, Gimp or Krita could use to fix distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration -- based on the lens used for the input image. Applications could do that at the import stage, or, in the case of Krita, as an adjustment layer or effect mask.
Hugin, because it uses large numbers of shots and analyzes them, can provide the necessary information. There would then be a web app for photographers to upload the data, which could get checked and coordinated by volunteers.
Pablo is going to get this jumpstarted real soon now by getting the CREATE community involved. And as soon as we've got a prototype, Krita will add support. This is exciting stuff!
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