Hightlight recovery - ASP 1.1.0.30

[afx]

Now back at LR trial and Windows.

With the right patches it also runs on Wine

cheers
afx

[KeithR]

Hope I'm not getting too off topic here. What do you make of Photo Ninja?

I like it a lot - I flip-flop between it and Lightroom 4 as my converter of choice, because each has its strengths and weaknesses. (By way of full disclosure, I quite like DxO Optics 8 too, although it's highlight recovery is noticeably behind Lightroom and Photo Ninja - still miles ahead of ASP though).

Local adjustments aren't a priority for me - I make use of them in Lightroom, but I'm just as happy to do selective edits in Photoshop after conversion - and I really like PN's "just a converter" model.

PN's files really do have a 3-D "look" to them - which I like a great deal - and I really appreciate how good the conversions tend to be after just a few clicks (there's some damn' intelligent processing going on behind the scenes with PN, especially "Smart Lighting" behind the "Illumination" slider, which is little short of amazing in its effect), but - ironically (given PN's Noise Ninja heritage) - I prefer Lightroom's high ISO noise handling; and sometimes I prefer Lr's more subtle highlight recovery.

True, PN is short on shiny bells and whistles (which suits me just fine - IQ over gadgets and gimmicks every time for me), but in terms of the quality of its conversions it's a remarkably mature product, and things like batch processing, and the ability to use PN as a Photoshop plugin, presumably as an alternative to ACR, are coming - this last being something I'm particularly keen to see.

Best of all - the developers actively communicate with, and listen to, their customers.

As of right now, I'd say that PN is the converter I'm most likely to fire up first.