Digital Light & Color

Charles2 wrote: ↑December 16th, 2019, 3:24 pm 1. Most camera vendors offer a free developer program that yields a close match to the camera JPG. Have you tried the current Olympus offering, Olympus Workspace? https://app.olympus-imaging.com/olympusworkspace/en/

2. An alternative is Silkypix. In agreement with Jonathan, it does not encumber you with mandatory "asset management" like Lightroom and Capture One.

I tried Olympus previous software and didn't like it. I suspected it to make adjustments I hadn't chosen. The image turned out too much like the JPG. And it was slow. Also, it was only 24 bit. Seems counter productive.

Their new program won't install on my Windows 10 machine. When I run the installation file windows tells me the installation file can't be found. Go figure.

I've jet to try Silkypix. I'll do that. Thanks. Totally agree with both of you about the cataloguing and other unwanted stuff.

In my experience, none of the manufacturer-supplied programs are any good.

Yes, I've heard the same about several brands. Peculiar, one would think it should be worth a lot to them to provide a good RAW processor. Wouldn't need a lot of bells an whistles.

Been at it another hour. AfterShot and Affinity is leading among the paid ones so far, usability wise. And DarkTable is growing on me too. It seems well documented. Unusual for Open Source.

Do you know if these do a good job?

When I moved from film to digital around 2003 I was introduced to Picture Window Pro and also Qimage. At that time Qimage did not do RAW converting but when it did and became Qimage Ultimate I moved my RAW work to it.

It is still my RAW converter for everything other than my Sigma Merrill files.

If the big worry around here now is lens correction QU may be your answer. Mike Chaney seems to include them all and when I beat him to an early acquisition I send him some shots and he incorporates them into his next version release.

QU has a quite unusual GUI which is what puts people off their trials. Be prepared. Your working screen is not going to look like Lightroom. But it does a job and it is not expensive. What I also like is that, as with PWP, the originating developer is readily accessible and highly reactive to comments, suggestions and (most importantly) woes!

Any help?

Tony
Long serving PWP user.

Thanks. I'll download it and try it out. Not looking like LR is a *good thing*. Only it seems geared towards printing and I don't print. My budget doesn't allow that.

But I'm getting to terms with darktable (I've learnt it should be all lower case now...), I think. Once I figured out I can get rid of the things I don't use it became more friendly, even if still ugly.

I hope I can pick your brain(s) about something else. Am I right when I think exposure is the only thing that needs to be done in RAW processing? Apart from camera and lens related things. darktable has for instance camera and lens specific noise filters for different ISO settings. That's probably a good thing.

But things like highlight recovery for instance. Is it any different done in RAW processing compared to hat we can do with masks and curves in PWP?

Trying to keep the learning curve low here as you may have figured out. ;-) Not only that, I prefer to do things step by step, so the less I need to do in RAW processing the more comfortable I am.

Here are the operations I think are best performed by the raw converter, listed in order of importance:

1) exposure adjustment, including highlight and shadow recovery - this does things you can't do in PWP after the conversion.
2) lens corrections (distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting) - you could do these in PWP, but not automatically
3) noise reduction - some forms of noise reduction work better on raw files

Pretty much everything else I do in PWP.

"Only it seems geared towards printing"

That is probably because that was the way it started out.

I do so few prints these days that I actually ran some test files on my Epson 3880 this morning as I was worried it might dry up over the Christmas holiday. QU actually has a head cleaning mode if you worry that cleaning with the printer software uses too much ink.

JS makes the points:-

1) exposure adjustment, including highlight and shadow recovery - this does things you can't do in PWP after the conversion.
2) lens corrections (distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting) - you could do these in PWP, but not automatically
3) noise reduction - some forms of noise reduction work better on raw files

Qimage Ultimate does all of those. How much better than any other software I have never seen reported. I reckon that because the GUI is so different the usual internet chat group gurus never want to spend (waste?) time learning how to use it. I have worked some miracles with some rubbish RAWs. I tend to ETTR and sometimes overdo it. The embedded jpg in my RAW file looks horrendous and yet somehow QU finds a bit of info in the blown bits. I foolishly shot a bright interior scene at 20,000 ASA on Saturday with my new Ricoh that I have yet to familiarise myself with. QU has managed to hide most of the noise and no a soul has questioned the look of the shots on my website. I had a 7-14 F4 m43 lens that had severe distortion but Mike Chaney made me a profile and it could even be used for portraits without embarassment.

Please do not think this is an advert for QU. Just a suggestion it might suit you as a companion to PWP - in the way it has been in my case for years.

Tony
London UK

jsachs wrote: ↑December 16th, 2019, 9:29 pm In my experience, none of the manufacturer-supplied programs are any good.

Fuji does not make its own vendor-supplied raw processor; it licenses a version of Silkypix. Recently it added a similar joint deal with Capture One.

Fuji also has the idiosyncratic Fuji X Raw Studio. It requires a live USB connection to the camera and uses the same camera firmware that creates the camera JPG. You can vary all the in-camera settings and get the "camera JPG" you want.

Are the programs limited to respected RAW format then?

jsachs wrote: ↑December 17th, 2019, 7:33 am Here are the operations I think are best performed by the raw converter, listed in order of importance:

1) exposure adjustment, including highlight and shadow recovery - this does things you can't do in PWP after the conversion.
2) lens corrections (distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting) - you could do these in PWP, but not automatically
3) noise reduction - some forms of noise reduction work better on raw files

Pretty much everything else I do in PWP.

Thanks Jonathan. Exactly what I need to know.

I've discovered darktable has noice reduction with wavelets. Seems to work well, even if I'll need some practicing. Preserves edges, I think? Is it something similar PWP does in Advanced Sharpening noise reduction?

I found a program yesterday for analyzing RAW files. I knew about it already, but thought it was just for viewing the files. It's a lot more. I was so titillated by it that I bought it 5 minutes after opening the trial. That has happened only once before. That was a text editor I bought back in the 90s and have used every day since. I think this program will help me greatly in understanding RAW. It's called FastRawViewer. You guys probably know about it already. If not... https://www.fastrawviewer.com/ . It was just about $25 including VAT which I supposed Americans don't need to pay.