[argyllcms] Re: help with camera profile
- From: edmund ronald <edmundronald@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:26:13 +0200
Yes, it's amazing how this one-man operation has managed for so long to
make one of the best products on the market. Raw Developer also has the
benefit of playing well with Nikon files, for which there are so few good
choices. Getting the word out about niche products was one of the small
pleasures of being a photo columnist.
Talking of smallish commercial RAW products with a decent graphical
interface, here's my mini-review of the usual suspects, I'm biased and
superficial, as always :) I'm not going to talk about Lightroom because we
al know about it ;)
C1 is uneven, depending on your camera; it can be good or mediocre, plays
well with profiling for some cameras and has a very interesting profile
editor. With my D4 the sharpening is extremely good but I don't really like
the rendering, and I still hate the ergonomics. I would call it
overpriced, but every pro needs to look at it once.
Canon's DPP is free and useful. When I last looked at it the quality of the
color and of the sharpening were unbeatable, it's clear that the
programmers had inside info on the Canon sensors and AA filters. If you own
a Canon, this may be the converter to use for those "special" files that
need to shine.
Nikon's free View NX is a joke. My only reason for keeping it around is to
check whether image flaws come from the camera or from the converter.
Strangely, the last time I looked the app file itself (not the support
files) had disappeared from my system, so I had to uninstall and reinstall,
likely I trashed it in my sleep, or else it has moved to Natanz. I tried
Capture NX once or twice, Nikon's insistence on asking money for something
so slow amazed me.
Hasselblad's Phocus combines free, decent workflow and decent results. I
think on the Mac it builds on the Mac's native Raw conversion libraries for
third party brands like Nikon and Canon, which are not so bad, some pros
swear by Aperture. Of course in desperation, the same libraries are
accessible from Preview itself, maybe even iPhoto. Hasselblad are making
noises about supporting camera profiling for art repro etc, see here:
http://www.hasselbladusa.com/news1/hasselblad-announces-plan-for-a-new-era-of-industry-
‘best-practice’.aspx
Out of courtesy, let me list Iliah's RPP, which is one of many dcraw
descendants. It has the benefit of an integrated Argyll profiling engine. I
don't know these converters so well, because my whole knowledge of the
field is mainly historical, I got paid *then* for looking at things, sadly
not any more.
Edmund
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 2:43 AM, Ben Goren <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2012-07-20, at 2:58 AM, edmund ronald wrote:
>
> > Iridant's beautiful mac-only Raw Developer
>
> Thanks for this tip! I don't think I would have considered it had you not
> praised it so highly, and my initial impressions are quite favorable. I
> have a strong hunch I'll be switching to it for at least my art
> reproduction workflow, and possibly for everything else as well.
>
> Cheers,
>
> b&
>
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