Leafwork

Docs

Documentation

How to photograph a leaf, and what Leafwork does with it. The app is in active development — this covers what's stable today; deeper reference lands with the beta.

How to photograph a leaf

Photometric stereo needs one thing from you: the same leaf, shot several times under different light. Here's the setup.

  1. 01

    Set the scene

    Lay the leaf flat on a dark, matte surface. Put a small reflective ball (a steel bearing works well) in frame — it gives the app a reference for where your light is.

  2. 02

    Lock the camera

    Mount your phone or camera directly above the leaf and don't move it. Set focus, exposure, and white balance to manual, so only the lighting changes between shots.

  3. 03

    Move the light

    Take one photo per light direction — top, bottom, left, right, and angles between. Four is the minimum; more directions give a cleaner solve. Keep the light about the same distance each time.

  4. 04

    Keep it still

    The leaf and camera must stay put across every frame. If something shifts, the Align stage has more to do — and very large shifts can't be recovered.

A leaf capture setup: leaves on a dark desk, a reflective steel ball, and a handheld light.
The whole rig: a dark surface, a light, a reference ball, and a fixed camera.
  • Leaf lit from the top Top
  • Leaf lit from the bottom Bottom
  • Leaf lit from the left Left
  • Leaf lit from the right Right

What Leafwork does with your photos

Your frames move through eight stages, from raw photos to finished maps.

The Leafwork PBR stage bar: Import, Segment and Refine Alpha complete, Calibrate Lights active, then Align, Solve, Integrate, Export.
The eight pipeline stages, shown in the app.
  1. 01

    Import

    Bring your set of photos into a project.

  2. 02

    Segment

    Isolate the leaf from its background.

  3. 03

    Refine Alpha

    Clean up the leaf's edges for a precise cut-out.

  4. 04

    Calibrate Lights

    Tell the app where each light sat, using the reference sphere.

  5. 05

    Align

    Register the frames so they overlap pixel-for-pixel.

  6. 06

    Solve

    Run photometric stereo to recover surface normals and albedo.

  7. 07

    Integrate

    Turn the field of normals into a height map.

  8. 08

    Export

    Write the maps out in your chosen format and preset.

Reference

The deep-reference guides are written alongside the beta. Here's what's on the way.

  • Solvers

    coming with the beta

    Choosing between the classical and learned photometric-stereo solvers, and when each wins.

  • Export & engine presets

    coming with the beta

    Output formats, map conventions, and getting textures into Blender, Substance, and game engines.

  • Troubleshooting

    coming with the beta

    Reading the app's messages and fixing common capture problems.

Ready to try it?

Download Leafwork PBR — the free tier is permanent — and capture your first leaf.

Download Free How It Works

Something unclear? support@leafwork.io