X7 - RAW Conversion

[Tadjio]

I think it would be useful to start a new discussion thread as to what we feel about X6 Camera RAW Lab and (hopefully) it's replacement in the next PSP Version - X7.

Personally I need to say that I abandoned trying to use Camera RAW Lab and instead use Corel's AfterShot Pro ASP (or else Canon's Digital Photo Professional DPP).
My stance is that Corel should aim to reproduce as much as possible of ASP within PSP. Fundamentally this means a new RAW Conversion mechanism for PSP.
In the meantime, I do RAW Conversion in ASP or DPP and then use the External Editor facility (Ctrl+E in ASP or Ctrl+B in DPP) to pass the image as a TIFF file that is automatically loaded into PSP.

From the RAW Conversion in ASP, I believe that we would want the following features in PSP:-
Exposure Adjustment. This is essential and is something Howard Dickson has pointed out, together with Shadows & Highlights sliders.
Highlight Recovery and Blacks. This is important to adjust for over/under-exposure and has to be done in RAW.
RAW Noise adjustment including features comparable to Noise Ninja or whatever Corel plan to use.

At this stage, it is possible to use all the normal PSP Editing facilities on the resultant image.

[df]

I think you've already pointed out why they won't put too much into the RAW Lab. They offer ASP.

[LeviFiction]

THis shouldn't be a valid reason though. Again I quote the comparison of Photoshop and Lightroom. Photoshop's RAW editing is built on Lightroom's engine. It has many of the same basic editing options. Now, of course, Photoshop RAW will always be beyond PSP's RAW but Photoshop doesn't take away from Lightroom because Lightroom does more than just RAW. And does more in RAW than Photoshop does.

The same could be done with PSP. Just the base better engine of ASP with some of your expected basics, as listed here, to give PSP a good RAW capability but ASP would still be the go to for true RAW editing options. Then make ASP and PSP work very well together and it'd be a winning combination for photo editors.

If you could make PSP and ASP sell each other, it's in Corel's best interest to form this link between them. Make PSP better, make it known that it's better because of ASP and that ASP can do so much more, and they can sell them both. If anything not improving PSP with a better engine for RAW could potentially hurt them.

[photodrawken]

I'm still unconvinced that PSP needs a separate Camera RAW Lab, because all of PSP's adjustments can be applied to a 16bpp image directly in its editing area.

Like I've said before, the conversion of the RAW data is based on a camera profile and can simply be done to immediately load the 16bpp image into the editing area.

Insofar as making the adjustments to the RAW image, I suggest you do a comparison between the adjustments achieved using the Camera RAW Lab and the same adjustments done directly in the editing area.

Here's one example -- Noise Reduction.

This is a screen capture of a very small part of the original DNG image at 300%:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

This is the result from using the Camera RAW Lab Noise Reduction with a setting of "25" -- the least amount of NR to just barely eliminate the noise:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

This is the result achieved to the original image using the Editor's Digital Noise Reduction. The amount was "30" and all detail areas were linked. To make the comparison more useful, the Correction Blend was set to "100%" so only the DNR result is showing:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The same is true for the other adjustments available in the Camera RAW Lab. White Balance, Highlight Recovery, Sharpening -- all the results can be achieved using the Editor's built-in adjustments. That's because editing a 16bpp image is editing a 16bpp image. And, the Editor's range of adjustments also surpass what's available in the Camera RAW Lab (Curves, Histogram Adjustment, Highlight/Midtone/Shadow, etc.).

Of course, I'm not holding up the Camera RAW Lab's results as a standard of excellence. I'm just saying that for the casual photographer or the photographer new to shooting in RAW, the built-in PSP editing adjustments are all that's needed. Those of us who want to pull much more quality out of our RAW images will always first use a dedicated RAW processing program, and that will also be the path taken by those casual photographers as they advance.

[bananahead]

I would prefer Corel to put all of their development effort into just one RAW conversion tool. And that should be ASP.

If they want to include a light version with PSP then that is fine. But it should just be a subset of ASP and not a separate development.

[MarkZ]

I'm still unconvinced that PSP needs a separate Camera RAW Lab, because all of PSP's adjustments can be applied to a 16bpp image directly in its editing area.

Like I've said before, the conversion of the RAW data is based on a camera profile and can simply be done to immediately load the 16bpp image into the editing area.

Insofar as making the adjustments to the RAW image, I suggest you do a comparison between the adjustments achieved using the Camera RAW Lab and the same adjustments done directly in the editing area.

Perhaps I don't understand "16bpp image".

When I started shooting RAW I used PSP to convert to jpg and quickly realized I was unhappy with the quality of the result, no matter how I tweaked the jpg - the camera club judges are far more picky than I am. The result from the SilkyPix converter that came with my camera was far better but I did not like the interface at all. When ASP came along I did extensive testing on a number of images and found that its output was much better and close to SP. For me the issues were sharpness and white balance. If the initial jpg is not sharp sharpening in PSP just makes it worse. I would certainly like to see a much, much better RAW processor in PSP to make it more of a one-stop editor.

[photodrawken]

Mark,
"16bpp" is shorthand for "16 bits per pixel". It's what you get from a RAW image, as opposed to the 8 bits per pixel that the JPG format uses.

Edit:
You're much better off keeping the image as a 16bpp one for all adjustments, and only converting to JPG as the final step for submission to your contest.

[Tadjio]

I support you, Mark

My understanding is that a RAW Image is not the same as one that is "Rendered" into an image that PSP can manipulate.
One very important example is the handling of Exposure, with any Adjustments, and in particular the Shadows and Highlights.

PSP adjustments are not comparable with those done during a RAW conversion.


Can I also say that it really does make more sense for Corel to support one RAW conversion model (as in ASP) rather than attempting to improve the Camera RAW Lab in PSP which is a very different model and unsatisfactory.

[photodrawken]

PSP adjustments are not comparable with those done during a RAW conversion.

OK, then post examples of an experiment (as I have done) showing the exposure adjustment that you cannot achieve using PSP's built-in features.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that better quality adjustments should not be included. I'm just questioning the need for having those adjustments in a separate Camera RAW Lab as opposed to having them in the Editor.

[bananahead]

Mark,
"16bpp" is shorthand for "16 bits per pixel". It's what you get from a RAW image, as opposed to the 8 bits per pixel that the JPG format uses.

Edit:
You're much better off keeping the image as a 16bpp one for all adjustments, and only converting to JPG as the final step for submission to your contest.

Actually you get 14 from RAW with most cameras.

There is a lot more to RAW conversion than just format conversion.

[Tadjio]

OK, then post examples of an experiment showing the exposure adjustment that you cannot achieve using PSP's built-in features.

Here's an example of a photo at Worcester Cathedral that has deep shadows and overblown highlights.
In ASP I took the original RAW and immediately passed it to PSP as an External Editor without any changes (#1).

I then made some adjustments in ASP, as follows:-
Highlight Recovery Value = 1 .............. (to improve the blown sky)
Black Point = -5 ............................. (to improve the dark windows)
Exposure Adjustment = -0.5 (1/2 stop).. (to adjust the tower appearance)
on consideration I decided to increase this again
Exposure Adjustment = -0.66 (2/3 stop)
again I passed this adjusted image to PSP (#2).

Original photo

Adjusted photo in ASP

I was wondering how to achieve the same in PSP and then I re-read your statement "that you cannot achieve using PSP's built-in features" so I stopped there...

[photodrawken]

Tadjio,
Thank you so much for posting your image. This could be an informative experiment.

Please try these steps on your original 16bpp image:
1. Adjust...Brightness and Contrast...Histogram Stretch.
2. Adjust...Brightness and Contrast...Histogram Adjustment. These settings will probably be a good starting point:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

My results came very close to your RAW adjustments, without adding the pink colour cast. Some of the brightest areas of the sunlit tower wall and the deepest shadows of the windows lack detail, but I suspect that may be due to starting with the 8bpp JPG image.

[Tadjio]

Tadjio,
Thank you so much for posting your image. This could be an informative experiment.
My results came very close to your RAW adjustments, without adding the pink colour cast. Some of the brightest areas of the sunlit tower wall and the deepest shadows of the windows lack detail, but I suspect that may be due to starting with the 8bpp JPG image.

In the spirit of experimentation, I have done as you requested.
To be honest Histogram Stretch appeared to do nothing (probably because the shadows and highlights were already blown)
and I don't understand how you arrived at your Histogram Adjustment settings.
The result has extremely clipped shadows and the highlights are left high and dry...
I will experiment further and perhaps post the Histograms. I personally prefer to use Levels which can identify Clipping better.
(btw the 'pink' crept in without my noticing in ASP probably due to too much Exposure Adjustment. They're better at -1/2 stop)

With photodrawken's adjustments

PS why do you use Imageshack when you can upload attachments directly?

[Tadjio]

Before I go to bed I thought I would post one more image.
I reworked the RAW Conversion in ASP using much more moderate settings which lose the pink but still leave a little clipping:-
Highlight Recovery = 1
Black Point = -1
Exposure Adjustment = -0.1

Here is the result viewed in PSP:-

v2 edit in ASP

and here is the PSP Histogram showing the Shadows clipping (mainly blue) and Highlights clipping (mainly pink)

v2 Histogram in PSP

I have not done any further editing in PSP.

[hartpaul]

Guys I think you are better off uploading a raw "image" so that you can both apply those changes to the data you are debating rather than a second hand jpg of low resloution and quality.

As an aside, did you realise that a jpg can show approx 16 million variations of shading / colour(256x256x256), a 14/16 bit image approx 4 billion variations ( 16384 x16384 x16384) , and the average human eye can only detect about 10 million variations.