LensFun: a project you want to keep an eye on

I stumbled upon an announcement on the CREATE mailing list the other day of the first alpha release of LensFun.

This library aims to offer lens optical defects correction. Think about it this way: our lenses (however expensive) all have optical glitches, be it color aberration, vignetting, distortion or color contribution (overall blue or yellow rendition). The goal of LensFun is to offer a database with measurements of these defaults for each lense allowing other programs (Ufraw, Hugin…) to automatically correct an image.

In the commercial world, DXO is the most powerful example of this approach – this software actually provides a measurement of each body coupled with each lens and optimizes gazillions of parameters; and it is priced accordingly…

Now the task is big: sorting out the maths, measuring all the lenses, implementing the library in other programs… But if OSS can produce a Linux kernel, a Gnome (or KDE) desktop environment or a Firefox, there is no reason this would not be achievable – great days ahead in the Linux photography world!