Adobe shares the unusual chain of events that led to a key feature in their new compositing tool.
The journey from having an idea to making it a reality isn't always a straightforward one. In fact, serendipity is often the secret ingredient that turns a concept into an innovative product.
That's definitely the case with the Upright tool for Project Felix, which is the subject of Adobe's new Labs to Features blog that explores how popular project features came to be.
Photographers will already be familiar with the Upright tool, a feature that enables users to straighten out images and reduce or eliminate the keystone effect in buildings. However they probably don't know that an improvement to the tool's core functionality stems from a challenge that faced Adobe scientists in 2015.
Image 1 of 2
Swipe across to see how Upright fixes a wonky image...
... by straightening it out and fixing the horizon
The team needed to find a way for graphic designers with no 3D skills to composite 3D assets with 2D images in a way that looks natural. This workflow already existed as part of more complex 3D design software platforms, but the Project Felix team wanted a version made specifically for graphic designers.
Upright seemed like the ideal tool for the job, but it still struggled when working with 3D objects. That's because Upright would quickly lose track of the camera's relationship with the rest of the 3D world when aligning objects on three different axes.
The solution was for an additional feature that would generate a confidence metric that would help Upright know when it has finished aligning the camera. It's a brilliant example of how a collaboration of unlikely tools can come together to produce a feature neither engineers or researchers had in mind when working on their own independent projects.
Head over to Adobe's Labs to Features blog to get the full story on how the Project Felix team used this tech transfer to improve Upright's capabilities.
Dom Carter is a freelance writer who specialises in art and design. Formerly a staff writer for Creative Bloq, his work has also appeared on Creative Boom and in the pages of ImagineFX, Computer Arts, 3D World, and .net. He has been a D&AD New Blood judge, and has a particular interest in picture books.
