Daniel
What do you use for RAW conversion?
Daniel
What do you use for RAW conversion?
Mostly Lightroom. It has a ton of quality problems. Underexposed (high ISO) shots are especially poor. It lacks basic features such as nonlinear EC. The downsampling algorithm corrupts the image with aliasing artifacts. It applies different amounts of hidden exposure compensation for different cameras (e.g. you have to set -0.33 EC for the 5D2 to get counteract their hidden +0.33). There are plenty of other quality issues as well.Originally Posted by Mark Elberson
But for all its problems, I still prefer it over all the others for one single reason: ease of use. I can get on the computer, process hundreds of photos with various adjustments here and there, and get back off in a short amount of time. The plugins and integration with other software save more time still. Most of my photos look "good enough" with Lightroom, so I put up with the quality issues just to be able to zip through a pile of raws in less time. Before Lightroom 2 came out, I was using Bibble for the same reason: easy. But it took extra time to integrate with the DAM. Lightroom has the DAM integrated directly, which I think saves me some time (at a loss in flexibility).
When I am concerned about quality, I will take the time to load up a different converter. My favorites are RPP, DxO, but sometimes I try Bibble, DPP, or a dcraw derivative. I develop astro shots in a variety of more specialized programs such as IRIS, DSS, and MaxIm DL. I haven't used C1P, Aperture, or SilkyPix, but I hear good things.
I use DPP and find it very user friendly and with its"recipes" and batch processing I think it can bang out a lot of images in a reasonable amount of time as well. I am curious though what your thoughts are on its quality?
I think the quality of DPP is a sight better than Lightroom, especially for underexposed (high ISO) images. I really like that NR=off really means "off". (Whereas in Lightroom, NR=off means "a little less".) I also really like time-saving features like automatic falloff correction. However, I think it introduces a more demosaic artifacts (e.g. maze) than other converters, but they're not noticeable in most shots. One thing that really annoys me about DPP is that it doesn't implement 1/3rd stop ISO correctly. Those ISO settings have different white points (i.e. "highest number possible") than normal ISO, but DPP uses the same white point for every ISO setting, so it completely misses the very tippy top of the highlights in 1/3rd stop ISOs (whole stop ISOs are fine). It's only a small amount of highlights, but just the idea of wastage just bothers me. (You'd think that if they're going to mess up the camera by changing the white point for each ISO setting that they would at least handle it in their own converter correctly, but oh well.)
Also, as demonstrated in this thread, I can't figure out how to control clipping caused by color space conversion in DPP, but there's probably a way.
Well Daniel, what can I say? Your insights into this kind of technology are very well appreciated.
Thanks you all guys for helping me out
Andy
Andy,
I'm a bit late to the party but I had to wait until I was home to do this.
I didn't see the 2.3EV worth of headroom on this raw. I used three raw converters andnone neededan EV adjustment. I was very suprised to see how good the exposure was. I'm sure with the first two you could easily tweak things to get the color more like you want it but I thought the default renderings were pretty interesting. Here goes.
Warning: The followingimagesmay exceed the color gamut ofsome monitors. There are shades that I cannot view on my laptop lcd. On my HP LP2275w each of the following images looks great. Even your original posted image looks pretty clean!
SilkyPix Development Studio Ver 3.0.25.1 - Default Settings
Original SilkyPix Here
ACR 4.4 with ACR4.4 selected as the camera profile. Default Settings
Original ACR Here
Picasa from Google - Go figure, I like the way it rendered the 450D RAW!
Original Picasa Here
I don't like and don't use DPP for obvious reasons. I don't think that's necessarily the problem. It may have alot to do with the extreme color gamuts of the photo being displayed on a monitor that doesn't have the ability to display those gradients properly. I don't know what kind of printer you have but I'd try printing it and see what you get. You may be suprised.
Out of curiosity I am interested to know which rendering is the closest to what you were looking for. (If any were close)
Chuck
Great conversions, Chuck. I like the colors on the Picasa (a dcraw-derivative) one too.
I'm not surprised. Few photographers have ever even seen a raw histogram; only what that has been processed (and mangled) by their converter (or camera). That's why I used Rawnalyze: it lets one see the *true* histogram, before white balance, black clip, gamma, tone curve, etc.
(That's reason why I shoot UniWB, which allows me to see the true histogram in-camera and get +2 or +2.6 more exposure, which means a ton less noise without clipping, among other benefits.)
The optimal exposure is totally disconnected from the amount of EV adjustment needed to achieve a pleasing brightness. Generally, the optimal exposure is "as much as possible without clipping highlights" (ETTR). For this image, the exposure could have been increased 2.3 stops without clipping. Then in post production, one reduces exposure by -2.3 EV to get the brightness back to the desired level. (But since raw converters never show the raw histogram, no one ever realizes that they have so much headroom.)
Ah, so are you saying that, in terms of dynamic range and detail, it's generally better to overexpose and then dial back in the raw conversion?
One question on the raw conversion....
For web display, i'd assume that we'd be looking at sRGB or what have you. If that's the case, shouldn't all of these images look similar? Or were we supposed to download them and then view them not in the web browser, or do some web browsers support embedded color space information?
Daniel,
Thanks for the pat. I did learn something today. I was glad I waited until I got home to look at some things before I posted. I was amazed to see those images on my new HP monitor. Obviously, we're all not seeing the same thing when it comes to high gamut renderings like these red flowers. On my HP2275w there is no visible clipping that I can see in the OP's image.
So Picasa uses a dcraw derivative for thier engine. That's interesting. I've heard that name many times. Can't say I've used it, but It's got quite a reputation along with RawTherapee (I think that's it).
Any way, I'm a SilkyPix diehard. It just flat out works for me 99% of the time. It's nice to see the differences with ACR and something as simple as Picasa from time to time. Helps keep my SP output honest and serves as a good scale for hard to render photos like this one.
Colin, Each RAW converter will render the RAW data slightly different from one another. I'll let Daniel do the in-depth. The originals are for anyone who wants to check the gradients up close and personal. If you really want to see something wild, develop this CR2 with ACR 4.4 or higher along with the Canon camera profiles. Standard, Faithful, Neutral, Landscape, etc. The outputs are miles apart when pushing a red gamut this hard. sRGB is as good as all the other color spaces when developing for the web.
That's why I'm curious as to which output renders the most true. I'd like to think that SilkyPix does. At least for me, 90% of the time it's really faithful at rendering accurate color output.
Daniel,
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=485349
Is there any validity to this one. Like that poster, I'm lazy too.
If your taking about the green cast white balance for accurate raw histograms, I tried, but just couldn't get use to it. Most of the time, under normal conditions I shoot 40D at +.3ev and the 5D no-comp. I use center weighted alot but find that evaluative works best most of the time on my 5D. I try to set custom WB based on conditions and shoot with "K" selected WB. I find that 5000K is a great place to park!! I try to shoot "to the right" in high ISO and that works pretty good.
The biggest thing that I keep messing up on is forgetting to shoot a white/gray card at the beginning of session. Man, I could save myself hours of post time if I'd just remember that one silly little thing. If I could get in the habit I'd spend 70.00 on a Gretag color chart and use that as well!
And this is good advise to the OP to practice doing when shooting flowers, etc. I suspect 4600 Kelvin is just a bit cool for that scene. A white/gray card could have really helped there. We would all have a better idea of what color those red flowers really are!!
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