FastRawViewer

From the folks who brought you Raw Digger:

http://www.fastrawview​er.com

in Beta now.

kirk

Thanks, hadn't heard of this before.

Marvelous app! This has become the first station on my workflow. A few bugs still, for instance the XMP sets LR's Process Version to 2010 and overrides my custom defaults, but I wrote a preset that puts everything back to my defaults except the Basic panel, so the WF is now 1. Fast Raw Viewer and set exposure according to Raw histogram, 2. open in LR, 3. "Read metadata from file", 4. Apply preset.

Email Iliah and let him know of the bug - it's beta.

it's a pretty nifty tool.

kirk

I've been testing it myself; so far so good. The UI could use some work to bring it up to modern standards and unfortunately it doesn't have genuine full screen mode. The bright border near the menu bar when in full screen is rather distracting.

So, I haven't downloaded it -- Elie, let me get this straight -- if you open a Raw file it automatically sets it to PV 2010? Does this mean that if I open a folder/file that I've already processed in PV 2010 that it will revert in the xmp file to 2010?

If so I hope they get it fixed in case one wanted to look at old shoots!

tonylong wrote in post #16933718
So, I haven't downloaded it -- Elie, let me get this straight -- if you open a Raw file it automatically sets it to PV 2010? Does this mean that if I open a folder/file that I've already processed in PV 2010 that it will revert in the xmp file to 2010?

If so I hope they get it fixed in case one wanted to look at old shoots!

You can turn off XMP creation if you merely want to use it as a fast loading browser with a Raw histogram, over/under exposure colored overlays and numerical readout in number of pixels and percentage of total, focus peaking and a few other features; but if you want to use either the auto or manual exposure correction or the Adobe style ranking tags and then to transfer that metadata to LR/ACR, it has to be done with an XMP (even the great Iliah Borg can't insert metadata into a CR2) and at the moment that FRV-created XMP seems to contain a line that sets P. V. 2010. It should be noted that LR does not automatically read and load data from an XMP, it has to be given a menu command. In ACR the action is automatic, however.

After giving it some thought I have realized that this may not be a bug, but intentional. P. V. 2010's Exposure control was linear, as is FRV's. But in P. V. 2012 Exposure is curved and auto-adaptive, i.e. the curve changes according to image content. If you have done any conversions of old P. V. 2010 images to P. V. 2012, you may have noticed that the Exposure setting is recalculated and probably incorporates the old Brightness setting. I think it will take a while longer for me to get my head around this and decide how best to utilize FRV.

Yes, exposure in FRV is scaling of the linear raw file. This would not be compatible with PV2012, which does things "automagically" but not uniformly, physically or predictably. But it looks "good!"

Kirk

Well, it sounds interesting, then a question would be: if you want to "see" adjustments that you've made in LR in FRV, do you convert to PV 2010, Save Metadata to xmp, and will PVR "see" the adjustments?

I would think that FRV is really for a first (or zeroth) step in raw processing. I see it as a way to evaluate your images for exposure and focus, with access to the actual raw histogram and focus peaking feedback. This is especially useful for ETTR. You can cull and rate the images, and sort them into separate folders from within FRV. FRV is not an editing or conversion tool but an evaluation tool, free of the auto adjustments or rendering lag of the typical raw converter. If you want to pass the exposure adjustment to LR/ACR, then you have to do it in a uniform, deliberate way - that takes the new PV2012 auto-ranging highlight compression out of consideration. If ACR/LR were to actually give the user the ability to control the highlight compression and exposure, then it would be a no brainer.

http://www.fastrawview​er.com …nual/using/expo​sure#start

Note:

kirk

Well, hey, I downloaded/installed FRV, WhooHoo!

A question: I've seen mention of FRV showing "noise" -- is this just noise without noise reduction (as in not doing the default LR Color noise reduction, so it shows up say zooming to 100%? I'm asking because I had been under the impression that there was some kind of noise "indicator" (like it has for contrast "Edges" and fine Detail, but seemingly not!

Second, for those of us who have been involved in discussions about Exposure as applies to colors and the White Balance, it was nice and interesting to see that there was a UniWB setting!

Oh, and I was also happy to see that my LR conversions came out very good in comparison! In fact, one thing I believe adds a lot in LR is the Clarity control!

tonylong wrote in post #16934406
Well, it sounds interesting, then a question would be: if you want to "see" adjustments that you've made in LR in FRV, do you convert to PV 2010, Save Metadata to xmp, and will PVR "see" the adjustments?

No, FVR does not read and apply an XMP, it is "write only". There is a saying, "Anyone could have discovered what Einstein discovered, but he would have had to be an Einstein to do it." To do LR developing the app would have to be LR, or ACR which is the same.

Yes, that's right. As well as doing a preliminary exposure adjustment (referred to in FRV's site and quoted by Kirk) LR also does under-the-hood sharpening and NR (all these are fixed according to camera model and done before the additional measures dialed in by the user), but in FRV the histogram refers to the raw Raw. Don't forget, however, that the image you see is a fast conversion which has been WBed and had its gamma corrected with the sRGB tone curve and the shadows boosted (unless you turn it off). It will also contain features imparted to it by the conversion engine (probably Dave Coffin's DCRaw) so I wouldn't read too much into a visual inspection.

Kirk, to see the "hidden" adjustments made by Adobe, which are specific to the camera model, you can convert a CR2 to DNG and they are then recorded in the Exif (see below). Although I don't know what the noise and sharpness units are, I have read that the exposure bias is in EV and will therefore make a more accurate setting than the generic 1.0 EV.

Gentlemen, thank you for your interest.

Couple of minor points:
- FRV does not change ACR/LR defaults, and if you have 2012 process as default, it will remain so.

- If no XMP exists to begin with, the file we write has no process tag and it is interpreted by Adobe software as process 2010. If the XMP does exist, the process tag is not changed, so if it was 2012 it will remain as 2012.

- We will add a checkbox in Preferences to force process 2012 for the XMP files we write.

- FRV _does_ read adjustments from XMP made by ACR/LR (ratings, exposure adjustment, white balance adjustment, orientation) and apply those adjustments when opening a raw.

- Technically, we can modify raw files. But we consider those to be originals and we think it may be not such a good idea to risk damaging originals due to some power glitch in the field while re-write is in process. Nikon are migrating to XMP in their new converter, Canon with their DPP are adding the "editing" block to the end of the file or offering a VRD sidecar (safer).

Please let us know if your experience shows something is not as described above We are very grateful for any bug reports and suggestions on improvements and features.

--
Best,
Iliah

Thanks, Iliah!