Workflow question: Linear *.tiff's

[Lazyg]

I've just recently (yestarday) acquired a D30 and I'm having a little trouble with noise in the resulting pictures - after post processing.

I use Breezebrowzer to convert *.raw files to linear *.tiff to then be opened in Photoshop and converted using Linearsharpen 3.42 actions. The end result has quite a bit of noise in certain colors. Example:

(the small blue square being a 100% crop of the sky and the focus point is the umbrella)

http://65.34.52.4/images00/Linear8bittiff.jpg



The 16 bit *.tiff has less of this noise then the 8 bit but nonetheless, it is still apparent.

Now when I convert a *.raw file to a normal *.tiff using Breezebrowzer there isn't any noise. I'm wondering whether or not this is being created in Linearsharpen or Breezebrowzer? It is impossible to tell by viewing the image because once it's been converted to a Linear file in Breezebrowzer it is far too dark to see any noise.

Thank you for reading.

Hopefully this problem is being caused by my ignorance alone.


Kind Regards

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Lazyg,

Irrespective of the noise, I can tell you that you should NOT use 8-bit TIFFs with LinearSharpen. It will not work at well especially with images with large areas of similar colour, e.g. sky. You can see this in your picture with the banding.

If you are going to shoot raw, I would always recommend convert to 16-bit TIFFs and do as much editing in 16-bit before converting to 8-bit when you need to use layers.

Regards,

[Lazyg]

Thank you for the reply, I need all the help I can get. I'm quite green when it comes to digital post.

Also, I'd like to compliment you on your good work and imformative site (moreso then most I've read). In fact, I probably would have waited much longer to purchase the camera and software if it wasn't for your site and others much like it. Many compliments on both. I couldn't be happier with the camera and software.

After reading around I found some very helpful and thoroughly written help pages at Breezesys.com (hey! go figure :) ) that at least makes me feel better.

"Combined conversion converts the raw file using normal conversion and combines this with the image converted using linear conversion. Linear conversion has a better dynamic range than normal conversion and this makes it possible to extract more highlight detail from the image. One of the problems with only using linear conversion to extract highlight detail is that the shadow detail starts to show noise. "Combined" conversion avoids this problem by combining the highlight information from the linear conversion with the shadow and mid-range detail from the normal conversion. Combined conversion is based on an idea first suggested by Fred Miranda and is used in BreezeBrowser with his kind permission. It is similar in concept to his excellent Highlight Recover action for Photoshop."


Kind Regards

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Thanks for the compliments.

I must admit that I'd forgotten about BB's combined conversion option. I stuck exclusively to linear with my D30, but I have read lots of satisfied remarks re combined.

No surprise that you're enjoying the D30. It still produces great images even, if it isn't the latest thing on the market.

Regards,