New RAW converter Photo Ninja boost Olympus OMD quality.

After using Lightroom for many years I now have bought the brand new raw converter Photo Ninja. I first used the trial for a couple of days. ( see www.picturecode.com/index.php).

I have tested Photo Ninja om my my images shot in France during this summer. These were the best i could adjust them in LR4. Now i have redone some of them with Photo Ninja and the difference is large. I get better high light recovery, more details and and even beter chromatic aberation correction (fully automatic).

See here some 100% crops and visit my Flickr account for the Full Res images to check it our your self: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rvkphotography/sets/72157632326929799/with/8313255379/

All images are taken with the Olympus OMD and 12mm F2.0.

Robert

This is a good sample. see no CA, much more high light recovery and sharpness.

I feel like I can take the right picture in LR and make it exactly the same as the left. And only touching the Basic section. You can easily boost the micro-contrast in seen in the statue pic using clarity slider. The rest is just playing around with the normal exposure/contrast/highlight/shadow sliders.

Automation is nice, but I find PP is half the fun!

Edit: and to be honest, For the statue pic, I like the picture on the right better, the left side recovered to the point where there was no longer contrast in the image.

Apart from the CA I think the pp in Ninja is somewhat oversharped and unnatural. So don't throw away your Lightroom.

Pollo

I've viewed some of your files on your flicker account and they do indeed show a definite improvement with the use of Photo Ninja.

The highlight recovery alone is most noteworthy, particularly the way it is balanced against the midtones and shadows.

Of courses the OM-D does provide you with excellent files as a starting point.

In Photo Ninja you can use automatic features but also fill manual control.

because it is only version 1 they do not have batch and local adjustments yet. So indeed i will no throw away LR.

Also i noticed that Silver Efex pro 2 can capture even more high light details in my images and in the files from the Leica M Monochrom (which i borrowed a while ago).

I am also still learning how to use the software.

robert

You are so right, i love the my OMD camera;->

The Smart lighting control in Photo Ninja is very nice, as is the noise reduction.

The thing it can do that is quite different from LR is how it can deal with blown highlights and to try and color correct them. For example in this picture the top of the cake is blown out.

Reducing exposure or the highlight control in LR4 just results in the top of the cake looking white.

However, putting it into Photo Ninja and using the highlight recovery restores the color to the top of the cake. I did have to tweak this slightly in LR4 as the candle on the shirt took on the color of the shirt, I used the adjustment brush to desaturated that candle.

Shawn

Yes Shawn, that is a nice example. I can only recommend people who do not believe it. to use the free demo version and try it themselves.

Hey Robert,

I tried Photo Ninja, and it's pretty nifty. Although honestly I don't find the difference big enough for me to want to switch. One really big issue, and I noticed this on every one of your photos as well. Oly and Pana RAW files have barrel distortion correction data in the RAW file, and light room uses this to automatically correct for barrel distortion. Photo Ninja, however, doesn't seem to utilize this and I have not found where I can enable this. If you look at your flicker photos, you'll see the barrel distortion evident in your Photo Ninja files but absent from LR files.

Also, I didn't find a way to correct for purple fringing which is a big issue with Pana lenses on OLY bodies.

Do you have the same comparisons but adding a third example : straight out of camera Jpeg?

You see ... to my eyes ... the left examples look a lot like Olympus SOOC Jpegs, and the ones on the right some sort of wishy washy half-assed RAW conversion at default levels with no attention to sky colour.

I would be very surprised if I could not do as well or better using ACR (LR), but I'd need the raw files to see. Can you make the raw files available? or ship one or two to me via e-mail?

I should also note that the Ninja renditions, particularly of the statue, have all but smothered the highlights. Sun-illuminated clouds don't look they way they do in the Ninja version; they have bright points more nearly like they do in the LR version.

This is not to say the LR versions are good.  They look to me to be very poorly processed.

thanks,

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gollywop

No, because i always shoot raw only.

Hi,

You might be right i am no pro on LR4.

you can download 3 raw files i used from here:

https://www.box.com/s/8fqjpfhpqrsimoilezka

good luck and be gentle with me ;->

Robert

It does have lens correction options even the difficult moustache wave like correction. but to be honest i did not mind to turn it on for these images. (there just holiday images and with 12mm wide angle you always get some sort of wide angle effect. i do not mind that because i am no architect;->)

If you look at the roof image you can see on the lower part of the metal gutter the two types of CA left side is purple and right side is grenish. both are corrected automatically but can be done manually per region as well.

robert.

For comparison purposes this is the file processed by Raw Photo Processor 64. It has a little sharpening and local contrast added along with an Ektar film simulation. I'm just starting to learn RPP at this point.

Shawn

Thanks Shawn,

you did a good job, but it looks very grainy and the cloud top left has a large hot spot. also still some CA.

for the rest the colors are a matter of taste, mine are over the top in this one and yours are a bit grey. thanks for your work on the  raw file.

robert.

With this camera I strongly advise you to at least take RAW+Jpeg because I expect the Jpegs will be generally better than what you're starting with as RAWs, and better than what is quickly achievable for some people with some processing. (caveats eh?)

(Unless highlights require recovering or black shadow needs lifting of course.)

There is NO reason not to have a nice little Jpeg on your card for every RAW frame, but the "only RAW" attitude is one I see mostly with people who have spent years with other brands.

Robert,

RPP does not correct for CA so it would still be in there. As far as the small section of blown out cloud I left that alone as there is not much detail lost there.

The grain is part of the Ektar film simulation. This is the pic. without the film simulation applied, same sharpening, exposure and local contrast settings with the global contrast turned up +5 as it was a little flat without it.

Shawn

I've been doing quite a bit of work using Photo Ninja over the past few weeks. It is indeed a very good RAW processor with a significant learning curve. I don't use it on all my images. It is easy to do too much work in PJ and end up with rather garish results. Best to be subtle.

My workflow may be different than many photographers in that I always finish my images in PS.

My normal RAW workflow without PJ

1. LR - cataloging, review and initial processing
   
2. PS - completion (with LR adjustments)
3. re-import into LR if necessary

1. LR - cataloging, review
2. PJ - adjustments
3. LR - review and adjustments as 16 bit Tif
4. PS - completion (with LR adjustments)
5. re-import into LR if necessary

You can make an unlimited number of passes into PJ without degradation because it will open the original RAW file and apply your previous adjustments.

I'm not concerned by the number of steps I perform when processing a file. My goal is the best possible interpretation of the RAW image. I don't limit my possibilities by limiting my processing. Sometimes a RAW file will be processed several times before I'm happy with the results. I'm now reprocessing some images in PJ that were originally captured as early as 2006.

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kw
http://www.thealamoproject.com/
http://www.pbase.com/kwhite

The jpeg is the manufacturers interpretation of the RAW image. Except for a few adjustments you make such as color bias, color balance and art filters it is set in stone. If you are after quick snapshots that you don't intend to ever alter in any significant way the jpeg is the way to go.

RAW files give you an opportunity to make the decisions about the look of an image for yourself. For good or bad. They also provide the opportunity to reinterpret your images as you grow and learn. It is a different style of photography with an emphasis on craft.

It is your choice either way. So choose.

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kw
http://www.thealamoproject.com/
http://www.pbase.com/kwhite