Retinex Imaging Processing Technology - Help and Hope for Digicam Users

Reader Ray Mickevicius sent me an email and told me to check out a Science Daily Magazine news story about a new imaging technology co-developed by the rocket scientists at NASA's Langley Research Center and Science and Technology Corp. (STC), both in Hampton, VA.

TruView Imaging Company, an affiliate of STC, has licensed the technology from NASA and plans to market it in the form of a software product for home, professional and industrial use by the end of the year.

To quote the article:

"What distinguishes this technology from existing image-enhancement technologies is that it makes corrections automatically, yet allows the end-user to manipulate the image as desired. As a result, the average photographer is more likely to use the technology and use it successfully.

It won't correct every image, but was impressive enough to win a NASA Space Act Award as one of the space agency's top inventions of the year for 1999.

"STC thinks consumers will find this technology so easy and gratifying to use that people who would never consider doing anything more than snapping a picture will let Retinex finish the job," said Zia-ur Rahman of STC.

From Steve: This could be one of the most significant software advances in digital imaging since the creation of PhotoShop. Maybe even more significant if it is incorporated into a reasonably priced piece of software with an easy to use interface. Check out these image samples - most impressive. This page is loaded (actually over-loaded) with images so it takes a little time to load, be patient, it's worth it.

I have a request in for more information from TruView and will let everyone know what I come up with in a future news item.

08/27/01 update: I received an email from Zia-ur Rahman, Vice President, Research & Development, TruView Imaging Company, that said:

"We are targeting mid-October/early November as a release date for our product.

The initial product is a Windows-based, stand-alone, image-enhancement package which will include several commonly used image enhancement functions in addition to the Retinex. The target price is to be below but has not been finalized yet.

We are also starting to work on a Mac-based version but do not yet have a release date for that."