One of the star features of Adobe Photoshop CS[TM] and now of Photoshop Elements 3.0[TM] is the Shadow/Highlight image adjustment. Now a new company by the name of Intrigue Technologies, Inc. has introduced a plug-in filter that in most cases offers superior performance than Shadow/Highlight. Shadow Illuminator[TM], currently available for the Windows platform, is compatible with most popular image manipulation programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements, Jasc Paint Shop[TM], and others.
Intrigue Technologies, Inc., is a spin-off from The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University that invents and develops adaptive image sensor chips and imaging systems that deliver visual information not obtainable with conventional image sensors. From their research activities, they have developed an image processing plug-in software that intelligently restores details in shadows. Through physical modeling of light and surfaces, Shadow Illuminator compensates for common illumination problems in photographs. Shadow Illuminator has been developed to enable robots to approach the visual capabilities of the human eye. They say that users will find that the results of Shadow Illuminator resemble what their eyes would see if they viewed the environment instead of a camera.
As you can see, the original photograph taken recently at the new Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, FL, is typical of photographs taken in bright sunlight, even though I moved the young lady under a tree to try and minimize the contrast. The Shadow/ Highlight image was adjusted using Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight Adjustment. The Shadow Illuminator image is the original adjusted in Photoshop CS using Intrigue Technologies' Shadow Illuminator plug-in.
