Writing Image Distortion Maps

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‌Writing Image Distortion Maps

Once you've determined the lens distortion inside SynthEyes, you can create the forward and inverse image distortion maps using the Shot/Write Distortion Maps menu item.

You'll be prompted for the location and name of the (un-distortion) image map to be written. The re-distortion image is always written also; the file name is the same, but with "Redistort" tacked onto the name. (This suffix has a preference setting.)

You'll have to select the file type to be written, either DPX, OpenEXR, PNG, SGI, or TIFF, all of which support either the 16-bit or floating-point format required for image maps.

There are preferences for each file type in the Image Output section. A preference selects 16-bit or floating images (if both are supported), and whether to use RGB only, RGB + non-pre-multiplied alpha, or RGB + pre-multiplied alpha. Some file types have a second preference to set the compression method.

Important! Do not use lossy compression methods for image distortion maps! Even slight alterations will produce artifacts in distorted images produced from maps with lossy compression.

There is also a preference “ID Map Margin” (in the Image Output section) that allows the outer boundary of the map to be extended slightly to minimize potential artifacts around the edge of the resulting image.

An additional preference “Don’t clip EXR ID Maps” (Image Output section) allows out-or-range color values (greater than 1.0, less than 0) to be put in the map, so that some down-stream compositing apps may be able to pull pixels from the overscan portion of EXR images. Important: you must use a float-point image format for the image distortion map , as out-of-range values must unavoidably be clipped due to the nature of usual fixed-point formats.

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