[LRflex] Re: Silky smooth...

Xavier wrote:

>  I need to get a special film setting or use RAW.
>But, I'm not in a hurry.

Hi Xavier!

When I first bought my LeiCanon,  (the 20D) I shot .jpg - as you are 
doing now.  It seemed so much simpler, when I was unsure just what I 
was doing with this new camera.

Then, after a few days, I tried shooing RAW.  I "developed" the files 
with the Canon software that came with the camera.  Results were better.

However I had a few shots where the exposure was not quite right, and 
there was little I could do about it.  The fine details were lacking 
in the photos, as well.  They looked very much like .jpg shots... and 
I wondered why I was going to all the extra bother.  The jpegs had 
been very good!

Then, Peter Werner suggested Silkypix to me.  I downloaded the trail 
version, and discovered that the photos it produced looked much more 
detailed, with superior colour renditions. It was much easier to make 
photos that were noticeably superior to the jpegs!

After a while, I bought the software license for Silkypix, and the 
extra features became available to me.  Four features that I really like are:

1) the ability to crop during the development stage.  This proves to 
be a time saving step, later.

2) the "black level" slider.  This is much akin to the lower half of 
the Curves graph in Photoshop.  (Think of it as half a contrast 
control.  It darkens the dark areas, without lightening the light 
areas ... so you can increase contrast without blowing the 
highlights.)  It is much faster, yet easier to control, than Curves, 
in PS.  Still, a standard Curves graph is available to you, in SP, 
should you want it.

Many people have commented that my photos look like slides.  This, I 
attribute to the "black level" slider.  A feature that does not exist 
in Photoshop (not sure about LightRoom).

3) When you rotate a photo, in PS, you must then follow it with a 
second operation to crop the shot and remove the white triangles on 
the sides.  When you rotate a photo in SP, the photo is automatically 
cropped, slightly enlarging it with each step.  So, both steps are 
combined into one.  As well, in PS, you must set the rotation angle 
and then repeat the steps over and over again.  In Silkypix, you 
simply click and hold while the photo automatically rotates in very 
small steps, until you have it where you want.  Go too far?  Just 
click the button for the other direction, until it's just where you 
want it!  Too simple!

4) SP displays thumbnails of all your RAW shots.  It is very fast to 
delete those you do not wish to develop.  Then, you mark up the 
others, as you wish them developed and set a flag.  When you're done, 
you can set SP to "Batch Development", and go for lunch.  When you 
return, all is done!  Sure beats sitting by the computer, developing 
each photo, in turn.  A huge convenience, especially if you're using 
an older Compaq-a-saurus!

These features make it remarkably quick to develop your shots.

Oh... and I also like the colours that SP delivers.  My only 
complaint is that the sharpening algorithms in SP2 are very mild.  I 
set EVERYTHING to max sharpening... and often need to sharpen, later, 
in other software.  However, I used the trial version of SP3 - which 
cures that. It is, in fact, capable of easily oversharpening!

I may have to pay for the upgrade!

I believe that you will be like me...  hesitant to try RAW... but 
once I did, I'll never go back.  In fact, the ONLY jpg shots I've 
taken, since then, were the ones I shot the weekend Rose and I 
visited with you, in Paris.

You will recall that when my new "photo bank" quit, I switched to 
.jpg in order to get more shots on a card.  Then, when we found that 
generic one, in town, I immediately switched back to RAW.  As I look 
at my photos from that trip, it is very easy to see which are the 
better photos... and they were all shot RAW!  The RAW shots, 
show  better colour and more dynamic range.

Once you try RAW, I don't think you will ever shoot jpegs again, either!

Cheers!




---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/
Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt
Stock Photography at: http://tinyurl.com/2amll4

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