FAQ
From qtpfsgui
Q: What is the meaning of the name Qtpfsgui?
A: The name can be decomposed in 3 parts: Qt-pfs-gui.
- Qt: the program uses Qt4 (http://www.trolltech.com) to show its graphical widgets.
- pfs: the main backend library and original sourcecode base.
- gui: this stands simply for graphical user interface.
Q: I installed Qtpfsgui using the zip file, now I want to uninstall it, what are Qtpfsgui's entries in the Windows registry?
A: You can manually remove all the entries listed here (usually only the first path is used):
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Qtpfsgui\Qtpfsgui
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Qtpfsgui
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Qtpfsgui\Qtpfsgui
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Qtpfsgui
Q: What is the meaning of the various settings for operator X?
A: To answer precisely this question one would have to explain the inner workings of tone mapping operator X, in terms of the original research paper.
At the end of the day all that matters (to some people, at least) is to fiddle with the settings until you obtain a nice result.
Q: Why can't Qtpfsgui transfer the exif tags to TIFF files?
A: Because the library Qtpfsgui uses to perform this task (exiv2) doesn't support writing to tiff files yet. This feature seems to be in the working, though.
Q: Should I use JPEG or RAW files to create an HDR?
A: Both give the same result, provided you capture all the dynamic range in the scene. This means that with RAW files you may need to capture less files than with JPEGs. On the other hand creating an HDR with JPEG files is more "lightweight" process (reduced memory footprint).
Q: Where can I get information about all the various HDR formats?
A: An overview (rather technical) can be found here.
- OpenEXR: Industrial Light and Magic format, widespread use, best compression ratios.
- LogLuv TIFF: see wikipedia's article and author's page.
- Radiance RGBE: see wikipedia's article
- PFS: This format stores the binary internal (float) representation of images. It is very size demanding, and it supported only by pfstools/pfscalibration/pfstmo and Qtpfsgui. On the other hand it is a lossless format and supports metadata (tags).
- Float TIFF (aka 32 bit TIFF): very size demanding (similar to pfs above).
Q: Can we have the tone mapping dialog apply its settings as soon as the user changes a value? In other words, can we avoid having an "apply" button?
A: Given how the tone mapping panel is implemented right now, this possibility has been discarded.
