Converter Comparisons?

[Kintama]

Has anyone done a test that shows the various RAW converter solutions?

I've tried Pekka's latest "Chooser", which is pretty cool. And I found that the adobe1998 color mode helped, but then (a big surprise to me) ACDSee's browser with the (you need the update) seemed to do a damn nice job and I liked the color a bit better (but this could be cause I'm screwing up something with the colors in photoshop).

Then I tested the sharpening of both Chooser and Acdsee's editor and they of course look different (Chooser is "smarter") but the end result at no magification "looks" to be nearly the same (Different when you zoom in) but they are in same ball park.

That got me to thinking if anyone has done really hard testing of the various ways to bring tiffs (linear and non) in and converted using all the various options. I'm just a newbie to all this so I could be failing to so some important step and that is why I'm seeing what I'm seeing so I would be interested and seeing what the seasoned veterans have found.

My next experiments will evolve around Neat Image. I did some preliminary futzing around with it and it seems like a pretty good option. I've not messed with Fred Miranda's stuff yet cause I'm not ready to try and figure out the ICC profile stuff, but someday.

The workflow side of the D30 is far more involved than I expected. I had a G1 but I never used RAW on it, so this is a whole knew thing for me. I think I'm going to use regular Tiff mode cause there is just so many steps and places to mess it up. Maybe later I'll move over to non-linear.

I enjoy the tweaking and all that but only for those special images... I don't enjoy jumping through hoops for each image as I look for my golden nuggets.

:-)

James

[Roger_Cavanagh]

James,

I wrote up some comparisons here:

http://www.rogercavanagh.com/tips/t12_q13.htm

As far as I concerned the jury is still out. I do think that overall l-tiff gives more dynamic range than nonlinear, but colours are not consistent from method to method. Pekka's conversion produces different colours to Fred Miranda's which are different again to non-linear TIFF and JPG. And none of 'em are exactly like real life.

Viewed in isolation both LS and LP give results that look great. Obviously, Pekka still has some work to do on LC as far as integrated sharpening is concerned, but there's nothing to stop you using a separate sharpening action.

WRT to use of Fred's ICC profile, this is simple and doesn't add any complexity to workflow. With both LS and LP is possible to create a batch workflow that does not require any intervention. I have created a set of actions that integrates stuff from various sources that allows me to set options for conversion, saturation, noise reduction, sharpening and final profile that can be run on one image or use with File>Automate. You certainly don't have to jump through hoops, but it has taken a good while to understand what was needed in the first place. :)

I tried the ACDSee demo, but got p.o.'d with it pretty quick, so never explored the editor. I find it hard to believe that Photoshop will not give better results, once a good workflow is sorted.

Part of the difficulty of all this is that the D30 will not capture colour perfectly. NO camera - digital or film - will. But how do we work out the optimum processing? It's hard to decide when the image is "good enough". Still it's lots of fun trying. :D And Pekka and Fred both manage to produce beautiful images whatever they're doing.

Regards,

Roger
www.rogercavanagh.com

[Kintama]

>? It's hard to decide when the image is "good enough". Still it's lots of fun trying. And Pekka and Fred both manage to produce beautiful images whatever they're doing.



Boy aint that the truth !

WRT sharpening, I didn't mean to imply that ACDSee was better at sharping, I meant the color seemed better... but again I'm really new to the workflow on this so it could be entirely my own fault. But back to the sharpening... ACDSee is not a smart sharpen at all like Pekkas, but for being the dorky freebee sharpen that it is I thought it was impressive that it could compare to Pekkas. Which again could say that I'm not doing the right thing on the PS side.

I need to mess around more with Neat Image but from the minimal testing I did, it seems to have some good smarts about it.

WRT Linear/non-linear I have a pro photographer buddy that uses the D30 and he suggested to stick with regular tiff unless the highlights are blown. Given the inconsistencies in conversions I think this is good advice for me til I get more comfortable with getting the results I'm expecting, and getting them more intuitively than I am now haha... I have spent more time experimenting with settings in software than playing with my new camera so far. -doh

James