ChromaSoft: January 2017

AccuRaw and PhotoRaw now have Fuji GFX 50S support

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. Compressed support will follow over the next few weeks. But now you can take a close look at GFX raw files using AccuRaw.

Of course, the new support also applies to both AccuRaw Monochrome, and PhotoRaw.

Jan

The Leica M10 and Dynamic Range

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.

I would guess the improvement in dynamic range between the M10 and the M240, just by eyeballing the published images, to be closer to 0.5 stops than 1.5-2.

Jan

Leica M10 raw file (DNG) analysis

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.

The first thing to note is that I obtained sample DNGs from three sources; these three sources will become important later. The sources were:

From the DPReview site. The "performance proofs" from the official Leica site.

Jan

Non-clipping workflows are important for EXR images

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. One of the biggest advantages of the ILM's OpenEXR format is that image highlights aren't clipped, no matter how badly overexposed. This makes manipulating images in multiple tools a lot easier.

Jan

AccuRaw EXR's highlight control curves

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".

The new curves are intended to preserve the value of blown highlights in floating point EXR files, so as to allow highlight manipulation, even recovery, in processing after the image is exported from AccuRaw.

Jan

The AccuRaw EXR beta is now available!

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. It's been used extensively in the movie industry, on major feature length movies.