Atlas is a port of the pfstmo tone mapping operators to the Adobe After Effects plug-in format. This plug-in is free open source software licensed under the GPL.
Tone Mapping
So what’s tone mapping you ask? According to Wikipedia:
Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map a set of colours to another; often to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in media with a more limited dynamic range.
The technique is particularly useful if you have high dynamic range images, such as rendered CG-imagery in floating point color-depth (OpenEXR) or HDR photographs, and you want to bring their broad spectrum into a range more suitable for display on a computer monitor or television screen.
There exist numerous tone mapping operators that approach this problem from different angles and achieve varying results.
| Supported tone mapping operators |
|---|
| Drago |
| Ashikhmin |
| Reinhard ’02 |
| Reinhard ’05 |
| Mantiuk |
| Durand |
| Pattanaik |
| Fattal |
Lately, the effect has also become something of a fad in photographer’s circles, as a quick Flickr Search will show.
Still tone mapping is a very versatile technique that can be used for photorealistic as well as artistic effects.
Download Atlas 0.3 (Beta)
Download
Sorry, Windows only for now. The included source code may be used to compile a release for Mac OS X by someone with more time on their hands than me.
If you want to play with the code you will also need to install the After Effects SDK, which I cannot include for legal reasons.
Usage Notes
Atlas is designed to work exclusively in 32-bit floating point color-space. Applying Atlas in 8-bit or 16-bit projects will yield unpredictable and/or possibly unbelievably gross and ugly results. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
Donations
Developing free software costs time and money. If you appreciate my work and use it in production, please donate.
I will be more inclined to release cool stuff in the future if I see that my work is appreciated.
