Latest Breezebrowser beta adds Zoombrowser-style renaming op

[dbookbinder]

Just a note to let you know that the latest beta of BreezeBrowser (1.2 beta 3) will, optionally, rename files in the same way Zoombrowser does. (Okay, I admit I nagged him to add this feature.) So if, like me, you started your Canon image file database with Zoombrowser, and now you're disgusted with Zoombrowser because it has trashed its database one too many times (and thrown away all the .THM files, too), here is another reason to look at Zoombrowser. The only files it won't rename are the movie files, but Chris Breeze said he'd be willing to add that if there was any demand.

Breezebrowser 1.2 also will allow you to do batch renaming in a wide variety of other renaming schemes, described in the expanded help file. It also adds a "proofing" feature that reduces noise. I tried it on some grainy night shots taken at ISO 400 and 200, and they removed noise with less loss of sharpness than I was able to obtain in Photoshop with Gaussian blurs.

More anon,
--
- David

[cornovius]

dbookbinder wrote:
Breezebrowser 1.2 also will allow you to do batch renaming in a wide variety of other renaming schemes, described in the expanded help file. It also adds a "proofing" feature that reduces noise. I tried it on some grainy night shots taken at ISO 400 and 200, and they removed noise with less loss of sharpness than I was able to obtain in Photoshop with Gaussian blurs.


I am interested to try that, since noise seems to be a problem in general.

I found that Breezebrowser 1.2 would not let me save a CRW image asa 16-bit TIFF, even when I selected that option. This is a shame, since G1 CRW are 10 bits per component and two bits of precision get thrown away which is a lot, especially if you under-expose deliberately to get less camera shake / more depth of field and plan to lighen up to a correct exposure in the digital domain.

[dbookbinder]

I haven't been working with CRW files much and didn't realize that it was not saving them as 16-bit files. You should report this to Chris as a bug. He seems quite responsive to such reports -- he's fixed several bugs I reported.

- David

[cornovius]

dbookbinder wrote:
I haven't been working with CRW files much and didn't realize that it was not saving them as 16-bit files. You should report this to Chris as a bug. He seems quite responsive to such reports -- he's fixed several bugs I reported.


OK, I did that. Technically its not a bug since this is the behavior that the Breezebrowser manual describes, but it is an unecessary restriction so I phrased it as a feature request. Here is the mail I sent:


I just downloaded your excellent BreezeBrowser and was giving it a test. I was particularly interested in converting CRW images to something else (non-JPEG) for manipulation in Photoshop without JPEG artefacts. I have a canon G1.

I noticed that, even if I selected 16 bit TIFF, the software still saved out an 8-bit TIFF (as determined by tiffinfo). I also noticed that this is the docuented behaviour of your software:

http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/raw.htm

OK, but why? I have a G1 not a G2, but the G1 saves out CRW data at 10 bits per pixel:

http://www.colorshots.com/cs200e/html/world_kamera.html

so why truncate it to 8 bits? OK so its not as good as the 12 bits on the G2 or D30, but it is still a useful two extra bits of resolution which is very useful for preserving shadow detail.

Please, consider lifting the restriction on the G1 and allow its 10 bits per component to be preserved as a 16 bits per component TIFF rather than truncated to 8 bits per component.

[dbookbinder]

Well, it's a bug in that it doesn't tell you that it is saving the file as an 8-bits-per-channel file. That option should be grayed out. He may be unable to do much about it, however. My recollection is that Canon doesn't publish their RAW format specs and you are limited to whatever they give you in their SDK unless you manually figure out how to decode their files.

[boone]

dbookbinder wrote:
My recollection is that Canon doesn't publish their RAW format specs and you are limited to whatever they give you in their SDK unless you manually figure out how to decode their files.
This guy has apparently decoded RAW (though I've yet to try it):

http://www2.primushost.com/~dcoffin/powershot/