Picture Code

bananahead · Post by **bananahead** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:29 am

With yesterdays announcement of Photo Ninja will ASP include Noise Ninja 3 or will they do something else?

afx · Post by **afx** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 8:39 am

Do you really expect an answer?

cheers
afx

Blrfl · Post by **Blrfl** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 2:55 pm

bananahead wrote:...will ASP include Noise Ninja 3 or will they do something else?

Yes.

--Mark

bananahead · Post by **bananahead** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:14 pm

afx wrote:Do you really expect an answer?

cheers
afx

Dutchmm · Post by **Dutchmm** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 8:49 pm

Managed to get Photo Ninja - and a trial license - to run on my Linux machine (Linux Mint Maya, KDE variant), under Crossover 11.2.1 for Linux.
First impressions are that the results of demosaicing are quite impressive.
What I would miss - if I had to change over to Picture Code from AS - would be the wavelet sharpening and denoise plugins, and the layer adjustments.
I imagine I could get those from gimp or an (old enough to work in Wine) version of photoshop elements, but in at least the latter case, all the work would have to be in the 8 bit image.

ormdig · Post by **ormdig** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:38 pm

I downloaded the free version of Photo Ninja which doesn't allow rendered or saved images but is useful for comparison. I worked on two raw images with high dynamic range that I had previously edited to my satisfaction in ASP. Both needed highlight and shadow recovery. At first I was not very impressed as the images seemed somewhat flat and not being familiar with the program I was having trouble figuring out how to get the look I wanted. I decided to compare them to my images done in ASP to see what I needed to do. The PN images had incredible detail, both in shadow and in highlights compared to ASP. The shadows (with NN3 enabled at default setting) were incredibly clean and sharp. The highlight detail compared to ASP was far more detailed without even a hint of the pink that I still get in ASP when they are slightly blown. I really don't know about the workflow comparison because I can't export. I also haven't figured out how to use versions or copies to work with but haven't looked at the manual available online. Like any Real Man I only look at or ask for directions when I am looking back up at the cliff I just drove over.

Dutchmm · Post by **Dutchmm** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 10:18 pm

@ormdig

You can get a trial license by mailing support1@picturecode.com, and with the subject "Trial keycode request" - mine came within about 45 minutes. That will allow you to render, and give you a JPG or TIFF you can use for comparison with AS

Mike

WilsonC · Post by **WilsonC** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:26 am

ormdig wrote:I downloaded the free version of Photo Ninja which doesn't allow rendered or saved images but is useful for comparison. I worked on two raw images with high dynamic range that I had previously edited to my satisfaction in ASP. Both needed highlight and shadow recovery. At first I was not very impressed as the images seemed somewhat flat and not being familiar with the program I was having trouble figuring out how to get the look I wanted. I decided to compare them to my images done in ASP to see what I needed to do. The PN images had incredible detail, both in shadow and in highlights compared to ASP. The shadows (with NN3 enabled at default setting) were incredibly clean and sharp. The highlight detail compared to ASP was far more detailed without even a hint of the pink that I still get in ASP when they are slightly blown. I really don't know about the workflow comparison because I can't export. I also haven't figured out how to use versions or copies to work with but haven't looked at the manual available online. Like any Real Man I only look at or ask for directions when I am looking back up at the cliff I just drove over.

It's definitely an impressive piece of software. Although, I do see a "hint of pink" in some of my recovered highlights (mostly noticeable on waterfall shots).

Fraenzken · Post by **Fraenzken** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 12:07 pm

I agree, the results are very impressive: Colors are great, the illumination-slider is very useful, highlight recovery works very very well, demosaicing is top-notch, Noise Ninja 3.0 is also very good.

The workflow and some tools leave much to be desired though.

- I haven't found any possibility to batch convert pictures. (No batch queue - at the moment I seem to have to save each and every picture manually.)
- Seemingly no possibility to crop the picture automatically after straightening
- Straightening is not very comfortable as it has to done by slider
- no history panel; no possibility to undo the last editing steps
- no possibility to create different versions
- no customizable hotkeys

In these respects, ASP is miles ahead.

That said, if the new version of ASP doesn't improve sharpening and demosaicing, I think I'll swap. 97 bucks for NoiseNinja users (till October 15th) seems reasonable, and I'm hopeful that many of my complaints will be addressed in near future. (Maybe that's wishful thinking though - I thought that of Bibble/ASP before too). Anyway, PhotoNinja seems a very very promising newcomer, kudos to the developers.

KeithR · Post by **KeithR** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 1:40 pm

Photo Ninja (PN) is very much just a converter - I for one appreciate that - and it has some niggles and bugs (which - familar territory here - should have been identified by its beta testers - I caught them within a day) like the occasional false-colour rendering of highlights (although it's still miles ahead of ASP, and PN includes a tool specifically intended to correct the problem - the Colour Correction tool - which works pretty well for the most part); and the occasional "forgetting" of the the chosen token-based naming convention in the Render dialogue which (along with the apparent inability of PN to auto rename/increment multiple versions of a given conversion) is a pain in the butt.

But in terms of IQ, my God! it's good, and - frankly - that's all that matters to me. Picture Code has clearly focused on IQ as its priority, and it shows: no dicking around with bells, whistles and gimmicks, just high quality conversions and the native tools to get you there.

Doesn't it say a lot that a company with no background whatsoever in conversion software, has produced a solution that from Day One stomps all over Bibble/ASP in terms of the very things in my signature that I've been waiting years and years for a solution to?

As of release 1.1 of PN, it'll work as a plug-in to Photoshop (and PaintShop Pro, of course) which suggests all sorts of additional functional/workflow advantages.

KeithR · Post by **KeithR** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 1:45 pm

bananahead wrote: will ASP include Noise Ninja 3 or will they do something else?

Seems to me that NN as a standalone product is done - the only thing on http://www.picturecode.com now is Photo Ninja.

From http://www.picturecode.com/download.php (with my emphasis):

Noise Ninja legacy downloads

For the time being, Noise Ninja can still be downloaded here.

That'll be a no to NN3 for ASP, then...

(As an aside - ironic, is it not, that Picture Code is based in Austin, Texas..?)

tomsi42 · Post by **tomsi42** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 3:07 pm

It does indeed look nice. But I am unsure if I want to spend my time working with software from a small company any more ...

pefunk · Post by **pefunk** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:06 pm

I was impressed with the image quality of the demo and bought it last week as upgrade from NoiseNinja Pro. Impressive is also the very fast learning curve (o.k. there is not much to learn, just a straight forward converter).
What is most impressive however is customer communication: I emailed some comments and wishes and possible bugs to them yesterday (a Sunday) and I got a personal response from the devloper himself the same day.

The devoloper agrees that there is still room for further development and improvement, but what a brilliant start!

Peter

Dutchmm · Post by **Dutchmm** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:16 pm

My experience with the support team was similar to yours - they were also quite candid about their plans to build in AS like features like batch processing. Perhaps they will recruit some of the former Bibble devs, since they - like Bibble Labs - are based in Austin.

Fraenzken · Post by **Fraenzken** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:05 pm

Dutchmm wrote:My experience with the support team was similar to yours - they were also quite candid about their plans to build in AS like features like batch processing. Perhaps they will recruit some of the former Bibble devs, since they - like Bibble Labs - are based in Austin.

Same here. They react very fast and seem to have an open ear for suggestions.
And, as Keith stated: the image quality is outstanding. At least as good as the best converters I've used so far (RawTherapee & Lightroom).
No crashes so far b.t.w. (though I came across the naming convention bug that Keith mentioned in his post. I wouldn't call the highlight recovery buggy though - all it can do is guess the right color when one channel is blown. And it does that very very well.)

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