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Free Digital Camera Enhancer
"The
whole process is so easy it's almost idiot proof." Jumbo! Program
of the Day
Note: Free DCE is a young (and free) brother of our commercial automatic enhancer and batch processor DCE AutoEnhance.
Free DCE does the hard job of noise reducing and automatic balance control for you. And it is free!
The program works
best if you have bad light condition (indoor, shadows etc..) and
your image is somehow off. So if some of your images are already
fine, you won't see much difference. DCE makes very delicate changes...
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One thing makes DCEnhancer different from other tools - reducing
the noise and skin smoothing algorithm. It makes DCE ideal for
making cool portraits and close-ups! |
First
you have to find out the optimal settings for your camera.
There
are just few sliders you will be changing more often:
Midtones
- if your image is too dark or too bright
De-Noiser - to reduce noise and skin artifacts from the
objects on the image.
Note:
This software is intended for advanced users. Most of the sliders
work in the default position. (As on the screen capture). You should
gently change one of the sliders just little and then see the effects.
Once you find your optimal settings, it should work on most of your
images from the same camera.
And you will always find images where it doesn't work...
Download:
This tool is free from mediachance.com
You have two choices:
-a Stand-Alone version or
-Photo-Brush XTR plug-in version.
Please read what
is the difference between Stand-Alone
and XTR version.
Read what's
new in 1.2 here.
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Photo-Brush XTR plug-in,
version 1.2 ( 100 kB)
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Read here how
to install XTR Plug-In files.
New: The dce 1.2 XTR is already included in the installation
of Photo-Brush so you don't
need to download 1.2 again
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| Stand-Alone
(EXE) version 1.3 ( 524 kB) |
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This version
improves sampling quality of saved JPG files - it uses now
the same quality as Photo-Brush.
- dcenhanc.zip
Mediachance USA
- Note: this has been recompiled in August 2008, because AVG flagged it as a false positive
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We
are giving you this tool free of charge. But you can also do something
for us: Please put our link or banner on your site. Get banners
or buttons here.
To
see even more cool tools go to our home
page.
See our 3D Spherical images from SIC 2000
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The image on the left is an original image with a little dark midtones, some jpg artifacts with noise and too pronounced skin details.
The Digital Camera Enhancer corrects the midtones, adds saturation and soften the skin.
Tips:
- Don't try to make magic with image which is already fine balanced. No software could add pixels. So if you don't see much details, it is the time to move to the 2.1 Mega Pixel...
- Don't boost the Color too much. By enhancing the colors you also enhance the pixel difference.
- Most of the cameras underexpose a little. That means you have to move the Midtones slide somewhere to the 3/4 (closer to the right) However some of your images could be overexposed (already too bright). Move the slider close to the left, make it darker.
- When you are using the Noise reducing select the type of image - Landscape, Mid Details and Close-up. If you for example use Close-up for image of landscape, it will smooth all the details of grass and trees and the image wouldn't look too natural.
- Do not take your shots from inside car. Just stop and get out. It is worth it.
- Don't replace the original images unless you have seen the image in your favorite viewer and you are fine with the result.
If your images have bad color cast see ColorCastFX for more info how to fix it.
If you need to batch process many images at a time with even greater control then our DCE AutoEnhance is a great investment.
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DCE
Auto Enhance |
Free DCE |
| Single Image mode |
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Basic Enhancing*
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| Advanced Enhancing** |
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No |
| Batch Processing |
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No |
| Fast, responsive preview |
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Partially |
| EXIF aware |
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No |
| Resize option |
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No |
| Optimize Size/Quality |
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No |
| Can add Text to image |
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No |
| Can add Date to image |
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No |
| Loseless rotation |
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No |
| Portrait De-Focus |
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No |
| HotPixels Removal+ |
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No |
| Blue Cast Removal+ |
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No |
| Keep Exif data in output |
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No |
| Trial Version |
Yes, 30 days |
N/A |
| Price |
$35 |
Free |
*Basic Enhancing include Auto balance, Gamma, Enhancing Colors, sharpness and basic De-noising
**Advanced Enhancing adjust all the parameters according to the EXIF metadata and include additional process to adjust the image
+ Available also as a free separate tools which you can use with a Free DCE, however unlike the DCE AutoEnhance each image would need to be recompressed again.
Mediachance web site has around 600 pages so look around, you may find more tools you like or great informations.
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