Version 8.3​

Our latest version is v8.3. An in-depth explanation of these updates can be found here. In summary:

• Our previous updates have been focused on data, so we focused on image file support in v8.3. We now handle the reading and writing of JPEG files, basic EXIF and other metadata support, and importantly also adds full color management support.
• We now offer color management support. This means that our SDK will provide ideal results regardless of the input profile. You can choose to convert all corrected images to sRGB, or choose to leave them in their input profile.
• We added a high-quality, high-performance image resizer.
• We’ve fully re-written our SDK Documentation and now provide a full suite of sample code, ready to compile and run.
• We now produce pixel-for-pixel identical corrections for all of our corrections across Windows, Linux, and Mac environments.

We’ve been hard at work at our newest major update to our SDK packages, and we’re trilled to provide these to our SDK customers at no additional cost. Here’s what’s new in V8:

1. Dramatic speed improvement: several options and internal optimizations have been put in place to reduce the Calc, Apply, and AutoCorrect processing times dramatically. On computers and servers, you should expect about a 3x speed improvement when compared to v7.4. The total processing time depends on many factors: image size, correction parameters enabled, and computer characteristics, so exact speed improvements cannot be stated exactly. The following features and improvements account for the speed gains:
   • Face Aware Exposure can now be run on a larger (slower) or smaller (faster) image. This is controlled through the PFCFEATURE enum when using separate Calc and Apply function calls, or through an additional function parameter when calling AutoCorrect.
   • Tint Calculation can optionally be skipped when tint correction is not enabled. Tint detection is performed in the ‘Calc’ phase, and if you allow the user to enable or disable Tint correction, then it is important to perform Tint detection regardless of the user’s choice; this allows Tint to be toggled on or off without needing to ‘Calc’ a second time. However, if your implementation of Perfectly Clear does not offer Tint correction as a user-facing option, then you can gain a speed improvement by disabling tint detection. Starting in v8.0, Tint detection is disabled when using AutoCorrect. You may choose to disable this using the PFCFEATURE enum when calling Calc and Apply separately.
   • Face detection for the purpose of ‘Beautify’ corrections is now slightly more accurate. Starting in v8.0, the SDK will default to the same detection rate as our Workbench application.
   • AVX / NEON code optimization. A substantial speed gain was achieved by enabling AVX instruction set support for desktop/server processors and NEON support for ARM processors. By default, the Perfectly Clear SDK now requires AVX support – this is present in nearly all CPU’s produced since 2011 by AMD (Bulldozer and later) and Intel (Sandy Bridge and later). The Android SDK is also offered by default only for arm64-v8a and x86_64. Please contact Athentech support if your implementation requires support for older processors that do not have AVX or NEON support.
2. “V3 Corrections” support: Our “V3” products introduced numerous corrections that have not been available in our SDK – until now. These corrections include:
   • Finishing & Graduated Filters
   • Image Ambulance (manual exposure correction)
   • Color Vibrancy (not to be confused with Color Restoration – which was previously labelled ‘Color Vibrancy’ in Athentech’s products.
   • Foliage & Sky Enhancement
   • Input and Output LOOKS – these are packaged and licensed separately from the rest of the Perfectly Clear SDK
3. Sharpening Update: In this SDK, we have improved the sharpening algorithm to be less prone to visible artifacts when applied at higher strengths. The maximum sharpening strength has been increased as well. Presets that used the previous sharpening algorithm should not need to be adjusted – previous sharpening levels will produce similar “strength” of sharpening.