Rub me RAW

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

"Oh Lord, those blues are gonna rub me raw" - Warren Zevon RIP Here follows a veritable orgy of pixel peeping. I was playing around with Aperture 1.5 earlier today, since Apple has finally decided to let people try it out for free. I might write further about Aperture later, but I got distracted by what I discovered when I tried comparing detail in Aperture output compared with my current favourite, Iridient RAW Developer.

The photo I was playing with. The green box is the area which the 100% crops are taken from

I processed a recent photo in Aperture, with default settings, and sharpening disabled. I then opened it up in Photoshop, and compared it with the same image processed with RAW Developer. At first glance, whilst it was clear that the colour balances were quite different, it also seemed that if anything, Aperture was extracting more slightly more detail than RAW Developer, especially in the highlights (you're going to have to take my word on this, but in any case, this is hardly a scientific study). At second glance, however, I was distracted by something I hadn't notice before - a rainbow pattern in a ripple in the water, which certainly shouldn't be there. Actually, I'd noticed some strange colour artefacts in water droplets in another photo from this shoot in Aperture, and was ready to denounce Apple's RAW conversion - except that I found this "rainbow" in the RAW Developer version. It's in the Aperture version as well. So, what have we here then ? The mythical E-1 moiré ?

Oil slick or moiré ? As revealed in Iridient Raw Developer

Aperture 1.5's version of events

So I decided to give Adobe Photoshop™ Lightroom™ (ahem) Beta 4 a go. And lo and behold, (almost) no rainbow.

Lightroom Beta 4 shows what it can do

So, who cares ? Can't see it in the print, right ? Well, no. You can. And once I found one example, I found lots more in rippling water in similar shots. So, shock, horror, in this particular case it seems that Lightroom, and its flavour of ACR, are in fact pretty good at handling edge-case E-1 ORFs. Since Lightroom is improving it leaps and bounds, it is beginning to look interesting. And yes, I did check in Olympus Studio, and even in CaptureOne. Neither could do better. But actually, I was following up another bit of pixel-peeping there: whilst comparing Aperture's output to Raw Developer's I noticed in looked rather cool. So I checked the white balance data, which in both cases was set to "auto", or "as captured". Aperture reported a colour temperature of 5039K, tint -7, whereas Raw Developer claimed 5495K and -5. A bit more digging revealed the following:

Software	Col. Temp	Tint
Lightroom B4	5200K	+14
Olympus Studio 1.5	5300K	0
Iridient Raw Developer 1.5.4	5495K	-5
Aperture 1.5	5034K	-7
CaptureOne 4.7.3	5700K	+3

Now, I realise that different programs have different ways of handling white balance data, but surely they read the same camera data ? Otherwise, what was the big fuss about Nikon encrypting white balance all about, if it all comes down to guesswork anyway ? I know that CaptureOne seems to actually report a colour temperature some 300K than it is actually applying, and I know that there are various different interpretations of tint, but still... Do we just take this as black magic, and consider it part of the "character" of each RAW engine ? I don't know, but manually adjusting the colour temperature in Aperture to the same value as in RAW Developer pretty much gives the same result. So who is right ? Normally, one would assume Olympus has the best crack at it, but given the general competence of Studio, one has to be sceptical. What this really underlines is the importance, if you really want to capture "true colour" (whatever that is) of using a reference like the Whibal. Otherwise just feel free to wiggle around sliders until you get something you like the look of. That's what I do. So, after all these detours, what about Aperture ? Well, it seems competent. Very different to Lightroom, to be honest. Very focused on DAM, and with much better Photoshop integration, ironically. I'm not so impressed with Apple's reinvention of various wheels in the image adjustments settings, although the results are fine, but in terms of digital photo management, it potentially blows iView MediaPro out of the water. Potentially only, however, because unless you're shooting RAW only, and a RAW that Aperture knows about (it won't touch Lumix LX1 files, even converted to DNG), then forget it. It will handle scans, but grudgingly. The Lightbox, and the Stacks, are great, good ideas with inspired implementation. The Loupe is indeed a gimmick, but an entertaining one. And despite the scare stories, it seems to run just fine on my MacBook, and feels less cramped than Raw Developer. But I've got too much legacy both in film scans, and processed RAW files, to adopt it. Maybe one day. If Microsoft screws up MediaPro, I'll be tempted. As far as RAW Converters are concerned, to be honest, they're all pretty much on a par. My advice is find one you like the feel of, where you understand the controls, and how to get the best out of it, and stick with it. But bear in mind that Lightroom and Aperture, for better or for worse, bring quite a lot of baggage along with them that you might one day regret getting locked into. And as far as E-1 moiré is concerned, well, bug*er me sideways - looks like Phil Askey was right

Panasonic more marketable than Leica ?

Thursday, October 26, 2006

I just received the latest Olympus E-Spam, er sorry, E-News, and apart from the fact that after over 2 years, they have finally relented and sent to me in English rather than German, it also contains a link to the 4/3rds consolidated lens catalogue. And the interesting thing there is that the lenses are branded as Olympus, Sigma, and ... Panasonic. The front of the glossy catalogue carries the brands Olympus, Sigma, and Panasonic. Not a Leica logo in sight (nor indeed Lumix). The 25mm f1.4 is described as the "Panasonic Leica D Summilux", and as "bearing the renowned Leica Summilux name". In other words, Panasonic have bought the rights to use the name. End of story. Strange marketing indeed.

Olympus E-400 and other things

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The last year has seen some considerable changes in the evolution of the 4/3rds world. We have a number of new cameras, nominally from 3 manufacturers, although 1.5 would be more truthful, and lenses from 3 companies as well. Up until now, I haven't found anything of much interest beyond the E-1 and the mid-range lenses. The E-300 didn't interest me, nor the E-500, and I have no use for the E-330. The Lumix/Leica L1, as far as I can see, is an expensive doorstop. I really fail to see why anybody interested in photography would buy one. The Leica (let's be generous with naming) 14-50mm lens seems expensive and clumsy, and whilst the image stabilisation is interesting, the optical performance seems at very best just below the Olympus 14-54 - and since the next generation Olympus cameras will probably have in-body stabilisation, one could wonder what the point of the 14-50 Leica actually is. However, the Leica 25mm f1.4 lens is definitely interesting. Some of the Sigma lenses could be interesting as well, in particular the 50-500mm, which is approachable in terms of cost. However, it is quite slow, and a slow 500mm coupled with the E-1's sensor and autofocus is not necessarily going to be a happy marriage. But what has got me excited is the Olympus E-400. A camera about the size of an OM-1, with an OM-style body design, and a weight to match, two matched lenses AND a 10Mpix sensor - this sounds like an ideal travel / trekking camera. Ok, so it isn't splashproof, but there have to be tradeoffs, especially at the price. It is telling that the forum world hasn't got excited about the E-400: this is a camera aimed at photographers, not geeks. A preview of a pre-production sample in Réponses Photo adds to the anticipation. They really like it (apart from the autofocus, but it seems that we're stuck with that 3 point system) and in particular they found that the viewfinder was surprisingly good, bright and not too small - better in fact that the Pentax K10D in the reviewer's opinion. I'm sorely tempted. The E-1 gets to be a heavy camera when you're climbing 2000 meters. Obviously I would miss the 100% viewfinder, and probably the E-400 is not as nice to handle as the E-1. But it is the first 4/3rds camera I've considered buying since the E-1.

Quattroterziphoto

Thursday, October 05, 2006

I recently noticed that I get quite a lot of traffic to this site from a domain called quattroterziphoto.it - or "fourthirdsphoto.it". Finally, I've investigated, and discovered this very nice site dedicated to the 4/3rds system, in Italian. They also have a very active forum, and they have a prominent link to my site... So the least I can do is to return the favour. Allora, grazie mille per il link - provero forse di participare al forum. Saluti del Ticino

A RAW Workflow

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Since I have a received a good few questions about my workflow, particularly from Olympus E-1 owners, I though it was maybe time to write something about it. Note, I do all of my digital photography on Macs, so I'm afraid this workflow is Mac specific, or at least the RAW conversion part is. I use three core tools on my workflow:

• Microsoft iView Media Pro, for ingesting, preview, preliminary sorting, and cataloging
• Iridient RAW Developer, for RAW development and image processing
• Adobe Photoshop, for image post processing and output

I also use Colorbtyte ImagePrint for printing, and FixerLabs SizeFixer for scaling up. For RAW processing, I sometimes use PhaseOne CaptureOne Pro and Olympus Studio. For Lumix LX1 RAW processing, I usually use Adobe Lightroom Beta. I only use Adobe Camera Raw in special cases, for example if I want to use Photoshop's HDR tool. In all cases, you can assume I'm using the latest versions of each application. Stage 1: Ingesting The first part of the workflow involves getting image files off the card and into the computer. I use MediaPro to import and rename the files, and to apply a basic personal metadata template. I don't really have a solid naming scheme, but I at least rename files to include a code indicating which camera the file comes from, and the date. I let MediaPro assign a serial number. Actually, the best renaming software I've seen is Olympus Studio, which allows you to use EXIF fields as components of the file name. The important thing is to have a unique name, and to keep it throughout the pipeline. In this way, it is possible to sync metadata in between different catalogues and different filetypes (so for example the captions from E1_20060603_0091.ORF and E1_20060603_0091.JPG can be synchronized. My filing system is quite simple: I have a master hard disk for RAW files, with folders for each month. Within these folders, I create subfolders whose structures depend a bit on the nature of the shoot. Usually, I create a folder for a single day, e.g "2006_06_03" (that's 3rd June…I'm European), but I might create a folder for a multiple day "shoot", e.g. "Iceland March 2006". No hard and fast rules, just whatever makes sense. If I end up using CaptureOne, it will require its own sub folder structure to be created inside this folder – at least, if you prefer to keep things simple it will. Other RAW developers will leave settings files inside these folders too, so it is important to ensure these remain safe. I generally back up each folder to DVD – one or more, as necessary, although this is not ideal, really, since the backup only store settings files created up to that point. I also keep an automated working backup using Retrospect. I maintain two "master" RAW catalogs for Olympus ORF and Lumix Raw (converted to Adobe DNG) respectively, and these automatically update. I plan in the future to manage archive backup creation from these catalogs (using a script to record the archive volume names in each image's metadata), but I haven't got around to that yet.

Microsoft iView Media Pro

Stage 2: Preview Once the files are organized, I create a local catalogue using MediaPro – by this I mean a catalogue of just the RAW files in the particular folder. I set MediaPro to produce the largest, highest quality previews it can create. I then use the comprehensive previewing and rating tools to decide which images I want to work further with, and how I want to categorise them (for example, I might well have "fun", "family" and, er, "art" shots from the same shoot. MediaPro 3's new Lightbox tool comes in extremely handy here, although it is very important to note that you are working with an 8-bit preview here, so the histogram for example is of the preview, not the 12bit RAW. However, it is easily good enough to show if an image is irrecoverably over- or under-exposed, and the method is fast and effective. At this point I will delete any files which are really trash, although if in any doubt, I keep them. Disk space is cheap. I end up with sorted, rated files, and I can even print contact sheets if I wish. Stage 3: RAW Processing For RAW Processing in the vast majority of cases I use Iridient RAW Developer (IRD). IRD, thankfully, has the good taste and common sense to be "just" a RAW developer, and has no pretensions to act as a full blown "workflow manager" (no, I'm not going to get sidetracked). IRD has drawn praise from a number of reputable sources, and is possibly the most full featured product in its category. Certainly it can't be beaten on sharpening options. Initially IRD seems very complex, but the complexity is only there if you need it, and it doesn't get in the way. It also often provides several ways to reach the same end, for example tone curves and tone sliders (I prefer curves, because Photoshop forced me to understand them, and Bruce Fraser's books explained them). IRD is especially highly rated by black & white aficionados, but, typically, I don't use it to B&W conversion. I tend to open RAW files in batches of related images, by selecting them in MediaPro, right-clicking and opening in IRD (this works as well for Olympus Studio or Camera RAW, but not very well for CaptureOne – ironically, since there is some sort of marketing alliance between CaptureOne and iView…well, there used to be, pre-Microsoft). Once the photos are open in IRD (note how I use "photo", "file" and "image" interchangeably), they can be selected from the open files drawer, and processed in turn. I won't go into detail on how I use IRD here, but my default settings for E-1 ORFs include using light "Difference of Gaussians" sharpening as "capture sharpening" – although I'm beginning to wonder if multi-stage sharpening is necessary considering the lack of artifacts IRD introduces – and using ProPhoto as the working colour space, and Joe Holmes' ExtaSpace as output space. My principal output files are 16 bit TIFFs, which I save in a temporary holding folder called "IRD Output". I also sometime process directly to JPG for print or web, but for my web galleries I use a set of Photoshop actions (coming later).

Iridient RAW developer

Stage 4: Post-processing Currently I use Photoshop (.PSD) format as my final archive format, for fully processed images. There are several reasons for this, number one being layers, although even I'm not using any layers, I still save as PSD for consistency – if I see a PSD file, I know it is "finished", or at least it has been worked on. The second reason is that at least 25% of my output is still film-based, and my film workflow always culminates with Photoshop. I don't know of any compelling reason to change this practice. Therefore, I open all files from "IRD Output" in Photoshop, and at a minimum save them as PSDs on another disk volume, which is my "finished work" repository. Here, I simply maintain a folder for each month, and save the file into the current month's folder (I use MediaPro, not the filesystem, to catalog, so it doesn't matter if a photo I took in March 2005 ends up in the January 2006 "finished" folder). Depending on the photo, there are several things I might do in Photoshop. Generally, I will have sorted out tone in IRD, but I might run a local contrast enhancement action to see if it adds anything (I have evolved a variety, which act on different tonal ranges as necessary – usually I find excluding highlights is a good idea). Noise reduction is often required on E-1 files taken at 800 ISO or over, sometimes at 400 as well. For this I use the Noise Ninja plug-in. If I decide to convert to black and white, I use the Convert to BW Pro plug-in on a layer. I save files unflattened, although I might compact things a bit if they get out of hand. The "finished work" gets cataloged in my "reference" MediaPro catalog, where I add detail metadata, and construct various sub-catalogs and sets. Stage 5: Output to Web and Print Output requires sharpening and sometimes scaling. If I'm outputting to print, I take the PSD file, and set the output size as necessary. If the resolution drops a bit below 240dpi, I will scale up using Photoshop, but if it is well below, I use SizeFixer SLR. Once I get to the target size, I use Photokit Sharpener to apply output sharpening (note, for SizeFixer, it appears that sharpening before scaling is quite successful, but how Photokit's algorithms react to this, I'm not sure. Whatever – if it looks right, it is right). I then flatten the file, and save it as a copy to a temporary print folder, where ImagePrint picks it up. For my web galleries, I run an action which converts to 8bit, sRGB, then creates three different sizes of the file, appropriately sharpened, in an output folder hierarchy. The largest files are managed in a MediaPro catalog, and this is synchronized with my online mySQL database using a set of Applescripts, which glue MediaPro, MacSQL and Transmit FTP together. There are ways of using scripting additions to do the SQL and FTP parts, but they are complex, and not worth the trouble to me. The Applescript is very specific to my configuration, but I'm happy to send it to anybody who would be interested to see if they can adapt it. So that's basically it. It takes longer to write about than to do it. The foundation stone is obviously MediaPro, which is a very powerful, but subtle application. The fact that Iridient RAW Developer constrains itself to doing one thing very well makes it very easy to introduce into a composite workflow. And Photoshop remains Photoshop... At some point I will follow up with my film-based workflow, but it isn't really so different.