Just before the Christmas break, I decided to spend some time over the holidays comparing Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, Apple’s Aperture and Phase One’s Capture One raw developer/digital asset management products. By way of background I’ve been a Lightroom user since the earlier betas, and really like Lightroom’s workflow management. But I’ve never been happy with Lightroom’s color rendition, but have also not had the time to really dig into why I wasn’t getting what I wanted. But by just before Christmas, I was sufficiently frustrated that, despite what I like about Lightroom, I was in “there’s got to be a better way than this” mode – ready for change.

Now one person’s great color rendition is another person’s nightmare, so there isn’t any point in trying to just play with the sliders till something nice comes out – at least not for me. Also, on some products there eighteen sliders, all of which interact. I accept that there may be people out there that can look at an image, move a few sliders, and get what they want, but that isn’t me. So what I’ve chosen to do is to look at color rendition in a more “scientific” way; and ask three questions:

  1. How close is the default rendition of each product to a 24-patch GretagMacBeth color checker?
  2. How easy is it, using each product to calibrate the rendition to as exactly as possible match the theoretical values of the GretagMacBeth test chart, as printed on the instruction sheet that comes with the chart?
  3. How usable is the calibration that I’ve created – is it easy to transfer to other images, how sensitive is it to changes in exposure settings, etc.

At least, while calibrating to to a GretagMacBeth chart doesn't mean I'll have "good" color, at least it's a consistent starting point. And yes, accepted that questions 1 and 2 are fairly simple and objective questions, but that question 3 starts to get more subjective.

As perhaps I might have expected this turned out to be a far more complex process than I’d thought, and eventually pulled me into comparing the three products quite a bit more broadly, for example, as regards the performance of their Bayer interpolation engines.

For the record, the software versions used for this comparison were:

  • Lightroom 1.3.1 Camera Raw 4.3.1
  • Aperture 1.5.4 and 2.0
  • Capture One 4.0.14154.14152 and 4.0.1.14900.14887

Now the first issue that comes up when trying to do this is a simple one - given that, for example, the skin patch on a GetagMacBeth cart has the l*a*b* color values of (65.711, 18.13, 17.81), what does that actually mean in terms of the RGB values that we should expect to get from the cursor read out in each program. A little of experimentation will show that this isn't a simple question.

Actually there are two issues with trying to calibrate imaging software - in what units is the readout, and secondly what adjustments are being applied to the image. Typically, when a raw developer loads a TIFF file, it does so without adjustment, but usually applies some kind of tone curve when loading a raw file.

The readout units for the programs that I've calibrated are:

  1. Lightroom: Melissa RGB - Melissa RGB is the combination of the ProPhoto primaries and the sRBG gamma curve, Also known as "bastard RGB", as it's the bastard child of ProPhoto and sRGB.
  2. Aperture: Wide Gamut. (Note: this was correct at the time this post was originally written. But see the comments this year below - its now Adobe RGB. However, the color rendition information is still correct)
  3. Capture One: Capture One uses whatever color space is set as its output space, so you can set it to any ICM profile you have. For a bunch of ICM profile you can use, see my ICM Profiles page.

The adjustments made by default are more complex - generally, each raw developer has its own tone curve, and also its own default brighness settings.



This is the graph of the ACR 3 default tone curve, as extracted from the Adobe DNG toolkit - it shows the flatting at the top and bottom of the curve, and also the default brightness setting



What I've done to get real tone curves from the packages I'm looking at is to use the monochrome stepwedge reference image (shown above, and available in DNG format on my Reference images page) to work out what the tone curve is.

In part 2, I'll show those curves.

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Good news in a difficult year - all the macOS apps that I support - AccuRaw EXR, AccuRaw Monochrome, pcdMagic, CornerFix, dcpTool (both the GUI and command line version), DNG cleaner and pcdtojpeg - now are all available with native Apple Silicon versions for blazing fast performance on Apple's new

There's a whole slew of new camera support, including for Canon's new CR3 format.

Updates of AccuRaw EXR, AccuRaw Monochrome, PhotoRaw are now available on the Apple App Store.

pcdMagic for Windows - the only currently available app that can convert Kodak Photo CD images with correct color and at full resolution - is now available on the Microsoft Windows Store.

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As usual when new Leica cameras come out, I took a quick look inside a DNG from one of Leica's new Leica CL  cameras:

The camera name shows as "LEICA CL" The image data is 14-bit. There is no compression used in the DNG I looked at.  The DNG version is 1.4, with a "backward version" of 1.3.

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So finally, after many years of searching, I have an answer to the question that torments all who go down the digital color rabbit hole.

This is from XKCD, brought to my attention via an article on the Digital Transitions website about the Phase One IQ3 100mp Trichromatic.

Back in January, when the new Leica M10 was introduced, there were claims that the improvement in dynamic range from the Leica M240 to the M10 was of the order of 1.5 to 2 stops.

dcpTool has been available for quite a while as a command line application for Windows and the Mac. But now it available in the form of an easy to use Mac app, with powerful batch processing capabilities. dcpTool for the Mac is available from the App Store.

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Many cameras embed lens corrections into raw the raw files that they produce. Generally, that's a good thing - straight lines stay straight, etc. For an example of lens corrections in practice, take a look at this post about the Leica SL.

But, as the saying goes, "there is no free lunch".

Those of you that have read the Leica M10 raw file analysis post will know that M10 DNGs have more baggage in them that is typically the case for a Leica DNG. I've put together a little app to clean them up, called DNG Cleaner (Mac only for the moment).

AccuRaw users might have gotten a bit of a surprise recently - AccuRaw has turned into AccuRaw EXR, and is now at version 3.

The reason for the name change is that the focus of the AccuRaw product has changed a bit, based on what users were actually doing with it.

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Good news - AccuRaw, AccuRaw Monochrome and PhotoRaw now have support for the compressed raw format that Fuji use in the new GFX 50S. Previous versions of AccuRaw/PhotoRaw had support for the regular uncompressed RAFs, but not the compressed version.

Updated: AccuRaw and PhotoRaw now have support for compressed and uncompressed RAFs.

For those that have been asking me about AccuRaw and Fuji GFX 50S support, I'm pleased to say that the version on the App Store as of today has support, although only for uncompressed RAFs.

I've been reading various articles, posts, etc on the web that deal with Leica's new M10. Many of those suggest that the improvement in dynamic range from the Leica M240 to the M10 is of the order of 1.5 to 2 stops. But I find that difficult to agree with.

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As usual when new Leica cameras come out, I took a quick look inside some DNGs from one of Leica's new M10 cameras. Usually, there's not much to see with Leica DNGs - they are typically text-book vanilla DNGs. But with the Leica M10, things are bit more interesting.

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In a previous post introducing AccuRaw EXR, the new version of my AccuRaw raw processing software, I mentioned the importance of a "non-clipping workflow" for the promise of the EXR format to be a reality.

Now that the AccuRaw EXR beta is out, one of the questions I'm getting is how the new highlight controls work.

The control curves are below. Note that these curves are on a linear scale, and 1 is white. So anything above 1 is "blown".

AccuRaw EXR is a new version of AccuRaw with support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) images in OpenEXR format. OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications that uses floating point data.

For those eagerly awaiting the opportunity to be able to process Olympus OM-D E-M1 II raws, the latest version (4.4.2) of PhotoRaw has support, including for the 80 megapixel raws. AccuRaw and AccuRaw Monochrome support will follow in a day or two in version 2.5.1.

New versions of PhotoRaw and AccuRaw became available on the App Store today with support for the new Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.

New to the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV is what Canon are calling ‘Dual Pixel Raw’.

Good news - AccuRaw, AccuRaw Monochrome and PhotoRaw now have support for the compressed raw format that Fuji use in the new X-Pro2. This is thanks to Alexey Danilchenko and the folks over at LibRaw, who reverse engineered the format, and published the results in open source form.

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Yes, AccuRaw and PhotoRaw now supports the Nikon 5, all ISO 3,280,000 of it. The new versions are already available on the App Store.

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LFI has recently published an article stating that the sensor in the new Leica M262 differs from that in the older Leica M240. This has generated a fair amount of comment on various forums because the M262 is, at least in principle, just a simplified version of the M240.

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Mostly, I use this blog to write about photography related issues, but today I'm making an exception, and writing about email apps. Apologies to regular readers, but never fear, normal service will resumed soon.

Email is important to me.

CornerFix was one the the first imaging apps that I wrote. Written originally for the Leica M8 to fix the M8's "pink corners" problem, it corrects for vignetting, both in luminance and in color dependent form. In photographic circles, this is known as "flat fielding".

I've just found out that, to my regret, Photosmith has ceased development. In short, Photosmith allowed images to easily be uploaded to an iPad, sorted, rated, and the ratings etc transferred to Adobe's Lightroom.

A number of people have contacted me to ask how much lens correction there is on the new Leica SL. Or, more accurately, how much lens correction there is on the new SL lens, the VARIO-ELMARIT 1:2.8-4.0/24-90mm.

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(Edited 23 October to include information on how M lenses are handled.)

As usual when new Leica cameras come out, I took a quick look inside a DNG from one of Leica's new Leica SL (Typ 601) cameras, using one of the new Leica L mount lenses:

The camera is using what appears to be production softwa

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Affinity Photo isn't one of my products, but I have been following it closely, and trying out the betas as they came out. It is now out of beta, and I know that a lot of readers of this blog are looking for alternatives to being forced onto the Creative Cloud model.

As usual when new Leica cameras come out, I took a quick look inside a DNG from one of Leica's new Leica Q (Typ 116) cameras:

The camera is using what appears to be production software - version 1.02. The camera name shows as "LEICA Q (Typ 116)" The image data is 14-bit.

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As usual when new Leica cameras come out, I took a quick look inside a DNG from one of Leica's new Leica M Monochrom (Type 246) cameras:

The camera is using what appears to be production software - version 1.0.0.4. The camera name shows as "LEICA M MONOCHROM (Typ 246)" The image data is 12-bit.

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I don't often talk about pcdMagic because, well, there's seldom much new to say about it. For those that don't know, pcdMagic is my software package for converting old Kodak Photo CD images to modern formats.

PhotoRaw version 4.2.1 is now available on the Apple App Store with new camera support including the Sony A7 II (ICLE-7M2), Sony QX1 (ICLE-QX1), Panasonic DMC-CM1, Pentax K-S1, Olympus E-PL7, Fuji S1, Kodak C330, Leica D-Lux (Type 109), Leica V-Lux (Type 114), Samsung NX300M, Samsung NX3000

I previously wrote about a nasty bug in iOS 8 that prevented PhotoRaw from accessing any images that were shot as raw+JPEG.

While Adobe's DNK SDK has been a great asset for the imaging world, allowing all sorts of useful open source software, including my CornerFix and dcpTool packages, as written it only supports Windows and OS X.

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So you can stop emailing me :)

The versions of AccuRaw and AccuRaw Monochrome on the App Store as of this morning (V2.2.8) have support for the Canon 7D Mark II, Canon SX60 HS, Canon G7 X and Fuji X100T.

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