Year: 2021

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dot frank

DNG Support for DJI Mini 2 in Corel AfterShot Pro 3

I’ve made a few posts in the past about how much I like my DJI Mini 2. I was never a master photographer, but the tools they provide make it fun to learn. While the jury is still out on if there is any real benefit to using the DNG format vs JPG with my model and camera, I wanted to see any differences with my own two eyes.

This post isn’t about any comparisons between the two formats. It’s more about viewing the DNG files in my current photo editor of choice, AfterShot Pro 3 from… Corel.

Yes, I understand it is no longer the mid to late 90’s so the name Corel doesn’t have as much sway in the creative world as it used to, but this is the lengths I will go to avoid using an Adobe product. AfterShot Pro, for an amateur digital photographer, isn’t that horrible. It has all of the features I have needed for my attempts at digital photography when working in other raw formats like CR2 for my Canon. Plus it is a pay once and own license and not a subscription.

Although I think with the lack of updates the product has had the past couple years, it is safe to say, on its final legs.

Anyway, the main problem I am having is that the DNG files written out by the Mini 2 are not read at all by AfterShot Pro 3. They are getting scanned, as the AfterShot Log shows, and no errors are coming up. But something is stopping them from actually appearing in the browser as Exhibit A here shows:

The folder in Finder shows the DNG’s but AfterShot Pro 3, draws a blank

So I decided to see if there was something I could do to fix support. The main idea of what I did, was originally documented by someone else here on GitHub for enabling support for another camera type when you know that the compressed format is the same. Because of this, I think this fix will work for a number of different DJI drone cameras that may currently not show up in AfterShot Pro 3. When originally searching for an answer to this problem, I did come across a few forum posts complaining about the lack of support.

The first step was I installed the only DJI camera plugin that was listed for me inside AfterShot Pro 3. It is for the Inspire 1, but that doesn’t really matter for what we are doing. Download, install it, and then quit out of AfterShot.

  1. The first step was I installed the only DJI camera plugin that was listed for me inside AfterShot Pro 3. It is for the Inspire 1, but that doesn’t really matter for what we are doing. Download, install it, and then quit out of AfterShot.

2. Next you will want to navigate to your Camera Plugins folder for AfterShot Pro 3. This is wherever you have designated your User Folder within AfterShot. After installing the plugin from 1, you should see a folder called dji_inspire_1.afcamera. Duplicate that folder and rename the duplicate to dji_mini2_1.afcamera. I am sure you can name it whatever you want too. In your plain text editor of choice, open the Info.afpxml inside the mini2 folder.

3. Before editing the Info.afpxml text, open one of your DJI created .DNG files in your EXIF previewing tool of choice. For me, it is plain old Preview.app in macOS. You are going to need to get the camera model number from the EXIF tags. In preview for me it was available in two different panels. The DNG panel and the TIFF panel both listed the model number.

4. With that model number (FC7303), I can go into the text editor and replace all the other references to previous (FC350 in the case of the Inspire 1 preset) with the model of my drone, and then save out all of the changes. It should only be two times. I am sure the other fields can provide useful information too when filled out, I just have no clue what to put in them.

5. Once you have saved out the Info.afpxml, you should be able to launch into AfterShot Pro 3 and go to a folder of DJI drone shot DNG files and view them to your heart’s content. This also applies when sending photos to HDR Merge and other features.

If you have a DJI Mini 2 drone and don’t want to do any of these steps, you can download the plugin I made to use in this post. Unzip and put it in your Camera (64-bit) folder in your AfterShot Pro user folder. No support provided, not responsible for anything NOT working. 😅

Folder and AfterShot Pro 3 browser are both showing DNGs. We are good to go. 👍

And as a bonus here is an overexposed foliage shot that I processed with DNG inside AfterShot Pro 3.

Categories
dot frank

More Pictures – Sept 2021

I must have 20 something revisions on this post and I am still not fully satisfied with it. Not because of some poetic reason like the words being used to describe the photos, but because I am fully realizing how much I dislike the block editor that is now the default in WordPress.

While admiring this processed black and white drone shot of New York City by way of New Jersey, know that I have never liked the built-in Media Library of WordPress. For a platform that seems to market itself towards media-centric projects, the built in asset management of the WordPress Media Library seems to have not changed one bit since the original release of the platform. The only search and organization is a tag based search system. What I wouldn’t give for a built in folder system to organize media with.

Yes I know that like any other open platform, there are a series of plugins that could potentially make my life easier. And to that I say, if you look up there is a nice drone shot of a small Jersey town festival over Labor Day weekend. It was taken with automatic exposure bracketing and I processed it afterwards in AfterShot Pro. Along with that I’ll say that I already have my share of WordPress plugins running that manage to make my shared hosting slow to a crawl.

What a nice panorama of the Catskill mountains, if only there was some way to pan through it and really take a look at it closer. Well there are various WordPress plugin subscription services I can use for the ++checks count++ one panorama I post each year. Even opening it up to a lightbox does nothing.

The final count was 25 revisions of this post as I tried to figure out how WordPress and images are handled with the block editor.

Categories
dot frank

HDR Test with DJI Mini 2

During the Pandemic, I have tried out all different types of hobbies and wore many different hats to prevent myself from going completely stir crazy while indoors and outdoors avoiding any interaction with other people. Probably one of the best sanity-maintaining purchases I made was that of the prosumer drone.

I have flown my share of those $30 – $50 drones you get off of Amazon that really go all over the place outside and last about two hours indoors before you hit a wall and shatter a few propellers in one go.

The Mini 2 from DJI is a whole different beast and it is priced accordingly for what you get with it. It is one of the few pieces of technology that I have used in recent years that actually felt like some kind of futuristic device for me as an average person to have. The range, the control at higher (safe and legal) altitudes, and the picture quality in both the live feed and the video and photos it takes and holds onboard.

There will be plenty of other posts with the video and other photos captured from it, including some really great built in panorama features. But I wanted to put something up about the HDR mode built into the device. Mostly because I wanted to use one of those nifty before and after scrolling things for the pictures.

The Mini 2 does not automatically create HDR photos like how the iPhone does. Instead, it takes 3 different pictures – one at normal exposure based on the sensor light reading, then one underexposed, and one overexposed, in rapid succession so that there is minimal drift. The feature is a common one on DSLR cameras – Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and can be enabled from the standard photo settings in the DJI app.

From there, you can drop your 3 photos into software that supports the merging of AEB style photos. Personally, I used Corel AfterShot Pro 3, because I have been a registered user for a bit, it’s a non-subscription license, and it has been helpful for managing my DSLR photos which I keep separate from my built in macOS/iOS Photos.app. AEB merging is also supported in Affinity Photo, Adobe Lightroom, and there are some other open source tools and freeware/shareware options available too.

The HDR photos are on the left of both of these pictures and the photos on the right are considered the normal exposure shot taken with the camera during the process.

I have no plans of taking every single photo as AEB, but it can definitely be the sazón for any good set of shots when I am out flying the thing around.

Categories
dot frank

Beaten Games – 2020

January 2020

Knack 2 (PS4) 1-5-20
Celeste (Switch) 1-20-20

February 2020

Far Cry: New Dawn (PS4) 2-12-20
Backspace Bouken (Mac) 2-15-20
Samurai Showdown – Haohmaru story (PS4) 2-15-20

March 2020

The Division 2 – Main Storyline (PS4) 3-24-20
Parappa The Rapper Remastered (PS4) 3-25-20
Shadow of the Colossus (PS4) 3-28-20
Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PSVR) 3-29-20

April 2020

Journey to the Savage Planet (PS4) 4-9-20
Hypnospace Outlaw (Mac) 4-19-20
Faerie Solitaire Remastered (Mac/PC) 4-22-20

May 2020

The Last of Us Remastered (PS4) 5-15-20
The Last of Us Remastered: Left Behind (PS4) 5-17-20
Good Job (Switch) 5-29-20

July 2020

The Last of Us Part 2 (PS4) 7-14-20
Halo Reach (PC) 7-19-20
Days Gone (PS4) 7-30-20

August 2020

Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath (PS4) 8-2-20
Wario Ware Touched (DS Lite) 8-2-20
Modern Warfare 2: Remastered (PS4) 8-20-20
Broforce (PS4) 8-22-20

October 2020

Control (PS4) 10-18-2

November 2020

Halo: Combat Evolved (PC) 11-8-20
Ghost of Tsushima (PS4) 11-22-20 [Platinum 12-18-20]
Observation (PS4) 11-29-20

December 2020

Carrion (Mac) 12-5-20
The Pedestrian (PC) 12-6-20
Untitled Goose Game (Switch) 12-12-20

The Superlatives…

Game of the Year and Generation – The Last of Us Part 2 – PS4: I say it with nothing but extreme compliments when I call this the most miserable game I have played. Every step along the way of the story had me filled with regret and dread. By what appears to be the end of the game, I was yelling at my TV for the main character to just give up their quest. Story ✅ Graphics ✅ Sound ✅ Control ✅. All aspects of TLoU2 are top tier. Releasing it with a pandemic happening in real life only added to the mystique. I am looking forward to clearing out my game backlog so I can hopefully revisit the game.

Honorable Mentions: Ghost of Tsushima was terrific and I even got the platinium trophy for it which I almost never do for open world games. Control was great but a little weird at times. Seems to be cut from the same cloth as Kojima games in regards to how bizarre it got. I played through all of Carrion on my Mac Mini and it was just as good as the demo I got to play many month ago.