Camera Shake Reduction
By Stan Sholik
| PLUG-IN REVIEW: PICCURE |
With image stabilization lenses and high shutter speeds—not to mention tripods— available to photographers, unsharp im-
ages resulting from camera shake should be a thing of
the past. Nevertheless, we’ve all had that once-in-an-
assignment shot that’s not quite up to our personal
standards because of slight camera movement. I have
seen it in my own work with a Nikon D800E on a
FOBA camera stand photographing artwork with a
4-second exposure if I forget to use the mirror lockup.
Microscopic pixel sizes and high-resolution lenses
make even the slightest camera movement visible.
Adobe has recognized this problem and gone
ahead and incorporated its Camera Shake filter into
Photoshop CC. A few months prior to the release
of the latest Photoshop, though, Intelligent Imaging
Solutions GmbH, a small company located in Ger-
many, introduced piccure to reduce camera shake.
Piccure is a plug-in for Photoshop CS4 or later
and for Photoshop Elements version 7 or newer for
Windows 7 or newer and Mac OS X 10. 6 or newer
computers. No need to upgrade to Photoshop
CC and Adobe’s Creative Cloud to reduce camera
shake. Under development is the ability to access
piccure directly from Lightroom.
Installation is straightforward after you download
the software from www.piccure.com (there aren’t
any boxed versions planned by the developer). Once
you have an image open, you can access piccure
from the Filter drop-down menu. You can use pic-
cure with RAW files as well as TIFF and JPEG, but
RAW files must first be processed in Camera Raw,
then passed on to Photoshop, preferably as 32-bit
files for processing in piccure. However, I found no
difference in the results between 16-bit and 32-bit
files when I processed them in piccure.
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Above: Clicking “Advanced
Settings” in the basic piccure interface opens options in the right panel. The
Camera Shake Intensity
slider adjusts the amount
of shake reduction applied.
