PhotoRaw was one of the apps mentioned in an article in the New York Time's Personal Tech column entitled "The iPad as a Hand-Held Darkroom". Sadly, they didn't provide a direct link to PhotoRaw, but hey, it's still good.
dcpTool V1.4 is out, with support for the DNG 1.4 specification, and Adobe's "V4" profiles.
When Adobe's V4 DNG Camera Profiles (DCP files) came out, I blogged about the new fields in this post.
When Adobe's V4 DNG Camera Profiles (DCP files) came out, I blogged about the new fields in this post.
Just took a look at Fuji X-Pro files using Lightroom 4.3 release candidate.
In short, same chroma smearing problem as the previous versions. Oh dear. Again(!)
Updated: Adobe now have improved support.
In short, same chroma smearing problem as the previous versions. Oh dear. Again(!)
Updated: Adobe now have improved support.
Not, you're not seeing double. There was indeed a previous post titled "Lightroom 4.1 and the Fuji X-Pro - oh dear.....". I just downloaded the latest version of Lightroom, LR 4.2 in its final release form. The chroma smearing in V4.1 is still there.
I haven't posted for a while - I've been busy coding. Something new in the works that should be available in a month or two.
But I do want to quickly publish something I haven't seen documented before, which is how you can do RGB to HSV conversions in a CIFilter. HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) representations are useful in a number of image manipulations, and CIFilters are part of Apple's image processing in OS X and iOS, and use a reduced version of the OpenGL shader language.
In general, HSV conversion in OpenGL shader language are a problem, because of the conditionals, which shader language aren't good at. Some RGB<->HSV conversions in Open GL shader language have been published before, but all the ones I've seen use functions that aren't available in the subset of the shader language that is available in a CIFilter.
This implementation takes some ideas about the use of the "step" function from Ian Taylor's "normal" shader language implementation.
The CIFilter below adjusts exposure and saturation by converting to HSV, adjusting S and V, and converting back to RGB. You can test this by just pasting it into Quartz Composer. Of course, if all you want to do is to adjust exposure and saturation, there are easier ways than HSV - this is just a demo!
Anyway, without more talk:
PhotoRaw 3.6 is now available on the app store. It's a big upgrade; import speeds are about twice as fast. So, for example, on an iPad 2 the image on the first page of the PhotoRaw website loads in 13 seconds, versus 26 seconds for the previous version.
After my series of blog posts on the Fuji X-Pro1's sensor (here, here, here and here), Sean Reid of Reid Reviews contacted me about the posts. I've known Sean since 2007, when I was developing CornerFix at the same time that he was investigating the IR issues on the Leica M8.
Jason Howe has a great new article on his work with a Leica M9 and a 15mm Voigtlander Super Wide Heliar f/4.5 Aspherical.
There have been a few questions about why the Leica M Monchrom doesn't have the compression options for DNG files that the M8 and the M9 have.
I previously wrote about the Leica M Monochrom's sensor in this post. In summary, what I said was that I doubted that the sensor was simple a "naked sensor" - in order to get reasonable spectral sensitivity, there would have to be a filter of some sort.
My previous two posts about the Fuji X-Pro1 ( here and here) drew some interesting (and amusing) comments on the web. What those comments did show is that there's a lot of misunderstanding about how the relationship between camera manufacturers and software developers works.
Jono Slack over on the L-Camera-Forum was kind enough to post a raw DNG from Leica's new M Monochrom, so I a took a bit of a root around inside it. No surprises - it's very similar to a M9 DNG. For those interested, there's a field level dump of the interesting fields below, but the highlights are:
14 Bit data, much the same as an M9, with non-zero black level Uncompressed DNG version 1.0.0.0, so still the original DNG spec, none of the new stuff Camera name specified as "M9 monochrom" The MakerNote with its lens info still seems to be as for the M9; in this case the lens shows as "Apo-Summicron-M 75mm f/2 ASPH", which is consistent with what Jono reported The famous "blue dot" is still there The only thing that might surprise a few people is the "PhotometricInterpretation: LinearRaw" part. But that's actually quite correct - the way the DNG spec works, you can either set that to CFA (aka a Bayer array type camera) or to LinearRaw. And this sure isn't a CFA camera.
There is one slight side effect of LinearRaw though. When ACR or Lightroom load a normal raw, they apply a tone curve by default. However, with a LinearRaw, they don't. So, for those intent on comparing a M9 image to a M Monochrom image shot side-by-side, be aware that by default they have different tone curves.
I'd guess that once the M Monochrom is shipping ACR and LR will have a built-in M Monochrom camera profile that will probably have a tone curve.
The other issue to be aware of with LinearRaw is that most raw development programs don't support it, so until Aperture, Capture One, etc are updated, don't expect M Monochrom DNGs to load in much except Adobe products.
There's a good article, complete with a step-by-step guide, on using CornerFix with the 15mm Voigtlander Super Wide Heliar f/4.5 Asph. Well worth the read. The photographs are pretty good as well.
Check it out here.
Check it out here.
A nice article on using the CornerFix to correct for color shifts when using a Voigtländer Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm/5.6 on a Sony NEX-7: Sony NEX-7 and the use of legacy ultra wide lenses
I wrote a blog post about a month ago that talked about the state of play with support for raw images in iPhoto on the iPad. Something that's come up regularly since then in feedback from readers is the question of what exactly "supports raw images" actually means.
I just came across something really useful for those that use M lenses on non-Leica cameras. One of the problems you run into is that you can't focus a close as you'd like. Well, now there's a solution for that - the Hawk’s Factory Close Focus Adapter. These's a review here by JB Hildebrand.
The new (2012) iPad with the Retina display is looking good for photographers. Anand Lal Shimpi over at Anandtech has got hold of an early copy, and put its new Retina display through its paces. Page three of his review makes for encouraging reading.
Taking a look round the photography forums recently, two things are clear:
Using iPads and iPhones for image editing is getting more and more popular - the introduction of iPhoto on the iPad by Apple seems to have got a lot of people interested, but There is a lot of confusion about what the variou
Using iPads and iPhones for image editing is getting more and more popular - the introduction of iPhoto on the iPad by Apple seems to have got a lot of people interested, but There is a lot of confusion about what the variou
As soon as iPhoto for the iPad came out this week, the obvious question was "can it handle raw files?"
The answer is no, there's no raw file support in iPhoto for the iPad - I did some playing with iPhoto on an iPad 2 as soon as it came out, and it clearly doesn't do raw conversions.
The answer is no, there's no raw file support in iPhoto for the iPad - I did some playing with iPhoto on an iPad 2 as soon as it came out, and it clearly doesn't do raw conversions.
Adobe's Lightroom 4 beta is out, and among it's other enhancements, it features a new lossy compression scheme for DNG images. LR has always has lossless compression, which could usually reduce image size by up to half.
So I decided to change to Mint from Ubuntu for my (fairly minimal) Linux needs because I haven't managed to get used to Unity. It may look cool, but it's a pain to use.
The good news is that installation was easy; none of the issues I had last time I installed Ubuntu.
The good news is that installation was easy; none of the issues I had last time I installed Ubuntu.
