NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Processing & Publication => Topic started by: stenrasmussen on February 04, 2017, 17:04:50
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This is a shot taken with the X-T2 and 90/2 at f/4. With so many RAW converters out there I thought it might be fun to see how your converter of choice does. It is a challenging file as the houses in the far distance are tricky to get details out of.
Here's a link to the file in my Dropbox:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21535730/X-T2%20Files/DSCF1651.RAF
Please post 100% crops as well.
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Cool, I'll give it a try later.
Would you like contributors to comment how the developed the file and with which software, for shared learning?
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Cool, I'll give it a try later.
Would you like contributors to comment how the developed the file and with which software, for shared learning?
Very much.
1. Raw converter
2. Development process (main steps)
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Photoshop cc2017, some niks detail extractor, the regular like contrast settings, shadow/highlight.
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Here is one of my tries.
1. Photo Ninja and Photoshop for the jpeg to
2.
- Smart lighting, adjusted Illumination to 12.
- Sharpening 50/60/100
- Render to full size jpeg very high quality
- Photoshop: Grabbed 100% crops and a little Smart sharpening.
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Photoshop cc2017, some niks detail extractor, the regular like contrast settings, shadow/highlight.
Colourful! 100% crops perhaps?
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Quick pass - Irident Developer Windows Beta - Lightroom, minor sharpening and clarity with brush on the far shore. Irident sharpening low, LR sharpening 5, Adobe Standard Profile
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Unlisted-Galleries/n-Xp8pp/Test/i-Zn5pdNR/0/XL/DSCF1651-XL.jpg) (https://billm7.smugmug.com/Other/Unlisted-Galleries/n-Xp8pp/Test/i-Zn5pdNR/A)
Cropped
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Unlisted-Galleries/n-Xp8pp/Test/i-QbQ9cfb/0/XL/DSCF1651-2-XL.jpg) (https://billm7.smugmug.com/Other/Unlisted-Galleries/n-Xp8pp/Test/i-QbQ9cfb/A)
Obviously further processing will enhance the far shore
Please click to view larger on SmugMug
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Wow cool to see a rainbow appear in Bill's development. Well done!
My attempt with Lr CC:
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Here it is ran through both Lightroom and Capture One 10. I went through each one pushing and pulling until I arrived here, a bit moodier, not trying to match one version to the other except for overall brightness. While I did adjust individual colors hue, saturation, and lightness a little bit, I suspect the main difference in color interpretation between the two was in LR I raised Vibrance and lowered Saturation and in CO there is no Vibrance so I only desaturated.
(You may want to view the 100% crops in a new tab at full size)
1 - Lightroom
2 - Capture One
3 - Lightroom 100%
4 - Capture One 100%
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Herewith, my editing in Lr:
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Adobe Camera Raw
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My attempt, developed in Iridient. Please note this is just a RAW edit starting point, I would probably do more to this image in another program.
I used the Fujifilm X ProNegHi v3.3 preset,
Exp -20, Fill +10, Contrast -10, Shadows +15
Vibrance +15
Clarity +10
Iridient Reveal sharpening (0.55, 200, 4, 0); Noise reduction 3.5 (2,0,2,0,3)
Default lens corrections
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Translated in CC to a 16 bit Tiff file (at neutral settings without changes), otherwise DXO - 10 can't read the file.
Template - Landscape - General
Colorrendering - Color Positive Films - Fuji Velvia
Moved to CC for crop and automatic downscaling
No extra manual sharpening done.
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Amongst those results presented so far, Iridient seems to deliver the better output. Interesting. Hopefully this RAW converter will be available on other platforms (Windows, Linux) in the near future.
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Above my pay grade...
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Amongst those results presented so far, Iridient seems to deliver the better output. Interesting. Hopefully this RAW converter will be available on other platforms (Windows, Linux) in the near future.
Iridient and Photo Ninja supposedly share the same DCRaw demosaic engine, therefore detail from both should be similar. Color...I don't know.
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Colours of the image posted by Simone appear very natural and life-like (this landscape and its appearance is very familiar). Details look good too. A lot of the output otherwise have smeared rendition of fine branches against the sky etc.
This is just a comment from the side line and too little is known of the approaches used by other contributors to draw any conclusion at all.
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Colours of the image posted by Simone appear very natural and life-like (this landscape and its appearance is very familiar). Details look good too. A lot of the output otherwise have smeared rendition of fine branches against the sky etc.
Thanks for the comment Bjørn.
A note to all Iridient users regarding Fuji files: the presets that can be freely downloaded are highly recommended.
The default rendition has excessively saturated colours and somewhat altered tonalities; this applies especially to reds.
I tend to use the "negative" presets for more natural-looking colours, especially when people are involved or when there are lots of reds. The image then benefits from some added saturation and vibrance (the saturation tool is "smart" in that it has some inbuilt protection against blowing channels).
For images with lots of contrast the ProNegStd preset allows much better highlight and shadow recovery; the default result usually has shadows that somewhat lack punch but one can add back contrast to taste during development.
For more punchy images out of the box ProNegHi works well.
I fairly often use Natural for landscape images, this gives fairly punchy and saturated images without going overboard. I always try Natural or ProNegHi + saturation/vibrance before deciding.
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The Iridient files look very good. DXO 10 is awful and obviously it doesn't help to translate the RAF file to Tiff. DXO does not like Fuji I have the idea ;) I notice the same (poor) results with the S5 Pro.
Direct in ACR - some corrections on highlights and whites, some sharpening, small noise reduction- file to CC -- back to ACR for other small corrections on highlight and white- sharpening mask.
Downsize with Bicubic sharper
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Developed with Fuji's software silkypix
Changed color to Classic Chrome
Highlights control 1.8 , whatever that means, but it pulls highlights a bit
Saved as TIF
Downsized in PS bicubic smoother to 1200 on the long side
100% crop, no down size ,
both export for web 80% quality
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The Iridient files look very good. DXO 10 is awful and obviously it doesn't help to translate the RAF file to Tiff. DXO does not like Fuji I have the idea ;) I notice the same (poor) results with the S5 Pro.
Direct in ACR - some corrections on highlights and whites, some sharpening, small noise reduction- file to CC -- back to ACR for other small corrections on highlight and white- sharpening mask.
Downsize with Bicubic sharper
Seems adobe fixed whatever problems some claimed they have resolving the fuji sensor images !
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Rather straight forward in Photo Ninja 1.3.4 (settings below) & Auto Contrast, because I liked it on PSCC2017:
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Seems adobe fixed whatever problems some claimed they have resolving the fuji sensor images !
Looks like it. But not perfectly to my feeling. Need to add that with post-processing in ACR/CC the focus was only on the highlighted area's, which is just the background and a small part of the whole image.
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ACR in the latest version of CC2017. Camera profile: ASTIA/soft, Contrast: 50, Highlight: -100. Resized to 1200pix horizontally (Bicubic sharper). No sharpening was applied in the process.
100% crops of the distant part and the (seemingly out of focus) foreground.
Interestingly the color of ASTIA/soft looks a little more vivid than PROVIA/standard...
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Sten where is this image focused?
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A second Lr trial with a 1200x800 crop; classical PP, no Ps sharpening or dehazing applied:
(1) 2nd edit
(2) crop 1200x800
(3) main Lr development parameters
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A second Lr trial with a 1200x800 crop; classical PP, no sharpening or dehazing applied:
(1) 2nd edit
(2) crop 1200x800
(3) main Lr development parameters
A good amount of noise reduction has been applied?
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It is my observation that the Lightroom (and presumably ACR) processing of XTrans files has not substantially improved since the big Adobe improvement in 2013.
It is also my observation that Photo Ninja and Iridient offer noticeably more "correct looking" detail without the weird blobby artifacts on small details.
I think that Fuji going to 24MP may help alleviate the blobbiness, because the because the pixels are smaller and therefore the blobs are smaller.
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@pluto: I have difficulties to understand your statement when I look at contribution #6 and #11: Irridient artifacts are there as well and may be worse than Lr. Although the overall results are promising.
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A good amount of noise reduction has been applied?
Herewith a screen copy of my noise reduction settings (it is in French, but I'm sure you can sort it out):
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I love the painterly quality of the noise reduction applied of the BG yellow rocks very much, MFloyd! In some developments shown here the mountais in the back appear just like a featureless blur of grey sand.
General remark: As "camera shake reduction" in Photoshop makes the image mich better in many parts I guess there might be some camera shake present. Focussing point? I guess the roof in the middle right?
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To my eyes the M Floyd Lr version looks the best!
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Sten where is this image focused?
On the streetlamp to the left.
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Thank you Frank and Mike 😊 Too kind. I tried some traditional sharpening through Ps; but I did probably something wrong: the reimported DNG file from Ps to Lr, and then exported JPEG file from Lr to NikonGear was completely posterized, so I abandoned, without trying to investigate what went wrong.
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Another one, this time with Raw Therapee. I've now tried Photoshop CC 2017, Photo Ninja, Irident and Raw Therapee and the latter is my choice.
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@pluto: I have difficulties to understand your statement when I look at contribution #6 and #11: Irridient artifacts are there as well and may be worse than Lr. Although the overall results are promising.
Clarification: I have LR 6.x, not CC. There is the [remote]possibility that the Fuji X processing in LR-CC may be different.
I have concluded that having more than one raw converter is a good idea.
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Hello pluton; you wrightly said "remote"; Ps, Lr, Bridge are sharing the same RAW "ACR engine" so, I would be very surprised, beside some CC post-processing gimmicks.
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Raw Therapee and the latter is my choice.
Raw Therapee is rather slow here, with updating the changes to the image. Do you experience the same problem?
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Raw Therapee is rather slow here, with updating the changes to the image. Do you experience the same problem?
Raw Therapee might lack the speed, some features and easy learning curve of other applications but it does give the user an almost endless professional tools for squeezing out information from a raw file. I am but at the early stages of learning its many features. But as always, horses for courses.
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Thanks Sten. True, it has an extensive help function --- http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Main_Page (http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Main_Page)
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... and it works under Linux, giving massive horsepower for next to nothing.
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It is a cross platform thing that just works.
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WOW!
1. Irident X Transformer is way above the rest. And so easy to use ;D
2. Add image, run without sharpening, import DNG to PS and do whatever tweaks you like.
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WOW!
1. Irident X Transformer is way above the rest. And so easy to use ;D
2. Add image, run without sharpening, import DNG to PS and do whatever tweaks you like.
I thought the same thing Sten. It took me only a few images before I bought a licensed copy!
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Look at how the white walls shine through the branches,,, second enlarged image from right,,,
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Look at how the white walls shine through the branches,,, second enlarged image from right,,,
That is because of the super strong backlit scene beyond the twigs. The highlights are recovered.
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Look at how the white walls shine through the branches,,, second enlarged image from right,,,
Enlargement (same area) of my last trial Lr; post-prod unchanged
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I just tried RAWpower that can be used as an extension to Mac Photos out of curiosity and was actually quite surprised by the raw processing capabilities. LR especially has problems with unsharp areas, especially the tree branches in the front. I did not see that in RAWpower.
RAW processing was done with standard settings. I only "added" an S-curve. No further postprocessing in LR or other software. I just wanted to show how RAWpower deals with the Fuji file
(https://nikongear.net/revival/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.visualcue.photography%2Fimg%2Fs9%2Fv97%2Fp2199775558-6.jpg&hash=df15ad814d8ed5816e6fada16b7353c8719bc509)
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I just tried RAWpower that can be used as an extension to Mac Photos out of curiosity and was actually quite surprised by the raw processing capabilities. LR especially has problems with unsharp areas, especially the tree branches in the front. I did not see that in RAWpower.
RAW processing was done with standard settings. I only "added" an S-curve. No further postprocessing in LR or other software. I just wanted to show how RAWpower deals with the Fuji file
(https://nikongear.net/revival/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.visualcue.photography%2Fimg%2Fs9%2Fv97%2Fp2199775558-6.jpg&hash=df15ad814d8ed5816e6fada16b7353c8719bc509)
100% crop please 😊
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100% crop please 😊
This might be a better option: a link to the full size jpeg file. This allows you to look at all details yourself.
http://www.visualcue.photography/img/s9/v97/p2199775558.jpg
I tried to upload the TIFF file but the size of the file was too big. I can send a link via dropbox to your email, if you want.
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Oh my oh my, how the glory falters when one scrutinies the full-sized jpg. Oversharpened, ugly haloes, muddy detail.
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Oh my oh my, how the glory falters when one scrutinies the full-sized jpg. Oversharpened, ugly haloes, muddy detail.
Much less so in the tiff. The tiff was impoorted in LR, then sent to zenfolio as jpeg via plugin.
LR did not do well with this file. I did not check photoninja (my favorite for fuji x-trans files)
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PeterN I get confused now: Is this Rawpower or Lr, and why this complex iteration ? You state that Lr has problems with "unsharp areas etc..." can you illustrate this ? Because I don't see this.
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I am very interested in the topic, but do the samples display the differences of the programs in question or do they rather display their users' developing skills?
I don't intend to be a "grinch". If anyone familiar with the programs above is willing to suggest a comparable setup, I'd rejoice to participate with LR.
Cheers,
Günther
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I am very interested in the topic, but do the samples display the differences of the programs in question or do they rather display their users' developing skills?
Both.
The file creation tools of today's processing apps are so numerous and user-adjustable that it may be difficult to create precise comparisons across multiple operators, all filtered through forum software.
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I am very interested in the topic, but do the samples display the differences of the programs in question or do they rather display their users' developing skills?
I don't intend to be a "grinch". If anyone familiar with the programs above is willing to suggest a comparable setup, I'd rejoice to participate with LR.
Cheers,
Günther
I took this only as a "play around with the file in various raw converts" sort of thread. This is not a good way to compare RAW converters simply because everybody will go about their processing differently.
Perhaps a better comparison of RAW converters from multiple users would be to convert from RAW to JPG without making any adjustments, but then you miss what the programs are capable of doing when pushed and pulled.
The most meaningful comparison is for an individual to spend time with each program and see what works for them.
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PeterN I get confused now: Is this Rawpower or Lr, and why this complex iteration ? You state that Lr has problems with "unsharp areas etc..." can you illustrate this ? Because I don't see this.
My apologies for the confusion. I did the following:
Process in Rawpower with standard settings; save as TIFF file
Import TIFF into LR without development settings.
Export as JPEG to Zenfolio via LR-plugin.
I should have been more thorough in explaining the process and tracking the differences. I may dive further into this because I am tempted by the X-T20 as small travel set. I will probably compare various raw converters with their standard standards (I am lazy).
In comparing raw converters in the past, I noticed that LR has problems with foliage/bushes/trees. Having said that each RAW converter hasits pros and cons in various circumstances.But as a lazy person I forfot to take detailed notes on this. In the end I decided to stick to LR and use photoninja in specific circumstances. When I read about RAWpower as PHotos plugin, the software nerd in me got curious.
Hopefully this clarifies a bit.
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I am a bit late to the party, but here is my effort.
Photo Ninja -1.4 Exposure, +12 Illumination, noise reduction smoothing +5 residual detail +4; Viveza control points to brighten foreground and background (one group of points for each); Photoshop CC 2017 curves adjustment for overall brightness and high pass sharpening radius 1.0.
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also late to the party, but i find this a very interesting exercise.
every time i see reduced-size jpg from the fuji cameras, i get remorseful for having abandoned the system after years of banging my head against it. the colors and tones are always strong and i love the various qualities of several of the lenses.
but, oh the artifacts and detail. i tried this one with ACR and photoninja, and they're both really poor in my opinion. wierd postery smooth areas, that strange fractal mushy quality still exists, very little high frequency detail, etc. i just don't understand...
(https://nikongear.net/revival/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.431.org%2Fng%2F1651-comparo.jpg&hash=4c4942b8302ae8c392cd35ccdc368864382ef13a)