Adobe launches ACR v7.1 and Lightroom v4.1 with X-Pro1 support

mike kobal:

My problem with Silkypix 5 is the terrible colour control and bad noise reduction for higher ISO pictures. (All of which ACR can handle when opening these "Fuji" DNGs converted with ADC.)

As a test I used Adobe DNG Converter 7.1 to open some Samsung NX100 raws; there was no micro screen pattern anywhere to be seen.

The disappointment of Adobe DNG Converter 7.1 sure doesn't inspire me to spend the money "upgrading" Photoshop CS5 to Photoshop CS 6, so I can open these Fuji raws in ACR 7.1.

I wish Adobe had spent more time and done a better job with the files from this unique sensor.

Perhaps Bibble/Corel will do good raw extraction software for these X-Pro1 raw files. And then I'll simply get that capacity when I get a free update to AftershotPro, which I already own. (Not holding my breath for DXO.)

mike kobal:

Have you tried opening these Fuji XPro raws with ACR 7.1 in either Lightroom 4 or Photoshop CS6? I'd be interested to know if the micro-screen pattern is there when ACR 7.1 extracts these Fuji X-Pro1 raws directly? And I don't feel like paying the $200 to upgrade to Photoshop CS6, unless I need it for some reason.

Unfortunately, I'm familiar with Silkypix from my Panasonic LX5 and my Samsung NX100, so I know how get the most out of it and that most isn't much--unlike ACR or Bibble5.

(Yes, I tried the trialware of Silkypix5 with Fuji X-Pro1 raws and in any challenging situation just saw a lot of smearing, weird coloring and artifacts.)

Strange,

especially the color control of Silkypix Pro 5 and it's finest detail protecting noise reduction capabilities, were the reasons, why I choose Silkypix instead of ACR in LR or CS...

...Howabout a RAW converter test like here:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=41655824

Maybe one can learn something additional?

Usee,

That's not a review of Silkypix, those are comments, and many concern jpegs, which immediately calls into question the seriousness. Then there's the ISO 200 problem.

Have you actually used ACR with any frequency?

I can say I have used Silkypix and it is nowhere near ACR or Bibble for color or noise.

I've also used UFRAW and that's nowhere near as good as ACR, despite what some claim in these comments, but that's at least free raw extraction software and seems mostly better than Silkypix.

No, I have not tried every raw file type with Silkypix, but the Panasonic LX5, Samsung NX100 and Fuji X-Pro aint good when extracted with Silkypix. (Hint: there's a reason that the Leica branded version of the LX5 comes with a copy of Adobe Lightroom.)

The problem with your assertion is I that do see.

@mike kobal: the micro screen pattern is also seen with the fuji X10, also big disappointment

You should show Your expertise with the simple comparison test I already proposed.

I made tests with ACR fans and no one could surpass the quality which is possible within Silkypix Pro 5.

Why don't You show Your ACR capabilities with this suited and free available RAW:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/fuji-x-pro1/XPRO1hSLI00200NR1.RAF.HTM

in this thread:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=41655824

Use ACR, I use Silkypix and we will see.
I have only seen evidence for the opposite of Your claim.
ACR is simply not as good for Fuji and Sigma cameras...

Stick with it - no problem, as long as You don't claim that it is better than something else without a open comparison.

Hopefully You don't write things like "excellent detail with ACR",
if it is so easy to proof that another converter is way better.
What is way better than excellent?

If You are open minded and don't fear to revise Your opinion, You should make the comparison test with me and see...

Usee,

That's a raw file you linked not some comparison. I've already extracted XPro1 raws with both Silkypix 5 and Adobe DNG Converter 7.1. The free ADC 7.1 already beats Silkypix 5 for noise and color.

The problem with ADC 7.1 and the XPro1 raws is the micro screen pattern--this also may be a problem with ACR 7.1 but I'm not going to pay to find out for a camera I don't own.

You seem to be under the impression that I've never used Silkypix before, that's incorrect. As I clearly stated because I own the LX5 and the NX100, I'm already familiar with Silkypix and its failures. Silkypix 5 may not have the micro screen pattern problem with the Fuji XPro1 that Adobe DNG Converter 7.1 does, but that Adobe software sure does colour and noise better than Silkypix 5.

You're going to have to provide many more raw examples than 1 from a website to get me to pay attention to your claims about Silkypix. I don't look at colour and noise claims based on jpegs.

Well Usee,

I just retested Silkypix 5 with some Fuji XPro1 raws, from DPReview, and my memory is most certainly correct. It remains truly awful for color and noise, it even struggles with an ISO 500 picture--that's struggles with noise and colour both.

Adobe DNG Converter 7.1 in combination with ACR 6.7 easily bests Silkypix, despite Adobe's micro screen pattern problem.

So yes the problem remains that I do see.

Now that Silkypix and Adobe (with the micro screen pattern troubles) messed up, I'd hope that Corel/Bibble will take advantage of this opportunity and do good raw extraction software for the Fuji XPro1. Same applies to CaptureOne.

Surely it IS a RAW file, a RAW file You could develop with ACR and I would develop with Silkypix Pro 5...

...then we have the comparison between Your ACR output and my Silkypix Pro 5 output.

In addition we can use the ISO 6400 sample with the same procedure...
...to get even a answer to the noise question.

Where is the problem?

Download the RAWs, show Your outcome and I show mine and we are fine.

Usee,

If you want to send me a check for 200usd then fine, I'll use ACR 7.1. Until then the fact remains that at ISO 6400: Fuji XPro1 RAW to dng via Adobe DNG Converter 7.1 then to tiff via ACR 6.7 easily beats extraction directly with Silkypix 5. (This is despite the micro screen pattern Adobe issue.) The fact that Silkypix is terrible raw extraction software is not new with this new Fuji--Silkypix has been doing a horrible job for years. So the onus is not on me to prove anything.

Get a Samsung NX100 raw shot at ISO 2500 and see for yourself, if you have ACR 6.5. Or a Nikon D3s RAW at ISO 10000. Or pick low ISO examples, Silkypix 5 has trouble with ISO 500 XPro1 raws.

PSE 10 users can use DNG converter for FREE.

DNG is free to anybody, that´s not the point. It´s not RAW, that´s all, besides locking you in to their tool again... :(

DNG is RAW converted to TIFF type file.

"DNG is RAW converted to TIFF type file"

It's a TIFF "language" container, with a preview and metadata etc in a standard published format. But what is inside this container, is not a converted bitmap and this is not the same thing as a standard 'TIF file. The contents are (almost always AFAIK) untouched sensor data identical to the contents of a camera proprietary Raw. The DNG container provides enough information that this can be deciphered and interpreted, where that camera model is not supported, just as well as where it is - apart from a few peripheral differences, most notably the availability of camera colour profiles.

What happens next, is standard Raw processing (demosaicing, contrast curves and so on).

Can you please post the specs of your PC ? I really love Lightroom but the performance is just to slow on my (4 year old) PC.

Intel Core i7-3820 quad core (8 threads) at 4.4ghz, 16GB quad channel DDR3, two 90GB corsair sata3 Solid state drives, geforce gtx 480, evga motherboard.

faster then mac, and much cheaper.

And this is how it goes... they are making the software slower, to force us to buy the next generation of hardware...

With lightroom 4.0 I had the same performance issues when using sharpening NR and other edit tools on my 4.5 year old PC. With lightroom 4.1 all these issues have been resolved.

Would these help?

http://pskiss.com/shop/cross-camera-color-profiles/

I'm getting the same results, its especially bad with red detail, in my case, red text as well, smearing all over the place where the camera jpgs are fine.

There are no problems with red detail, if one uses Silkypix Pro 5:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1020&thread=41326555&page=2

Lightroom is obviously no alternative at the moment.

I just re-read this thread and I don't see anyone blaming Fuji - although I could if I wanted to, mostly for failing to deliver a professional-grade raw converter in time.

And no, I don't believe that included limited edition of SilkyPix qualifies. For example, they just managed to fix a gray balancing tool in the last update, before it was producing psychodelic color. And none of color presets in SP produce a believable color anyway - I got around it by profiling the camera with Colorchecker SG+Profilemaker; that's about $1500 and not everyone can afford it. And lastly, color-tearing issues present in ACR output are present in SP too - just look for any instance of fine white type on bright colored background.

OOC jpeg color detail looks better than both ACR and SP (talk about irony), but this route has its own issues - for example many sharp colorful objects have faint colored halos around them, and the detail is not as sharp as what is expected from a camera w/o AA filter.

To Imagefoundry:

Just try to use Silkypix Pro 5 (at least the trial version) and look at this example without color smearing etc.:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=41667696

...and way better color detail than with OOC jpg can be still seen here:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=41331770

There is only the irony, that some people obviously refuse to see...
...for whatever reason.

@Usee

Let me start by saying that you are probably mis-reading my posts. I am not here to bash Fuji, Adobe or makers of SilkyPix. It's frustrating that there's no reliable raw conversion tool available, this long after the camera launch.

You obviously like SilkyPix a lot, and I don't have any issues with you championing the product in the forums. However:

Can you in all fairness expect me to spend USD$342.90 on SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro5 just to get the basic raw functionality?
And, looking at the examples you linked to, I am sorry they don't look convincing at all. Specifically, look at white type in Fiddler's Elbow. Top of the "W" is pink. It's supposed to be white. This is exactly the same issue as with ACR 7.1, just less severe.
I see no point in your second example - we already know that tonal detail is pretty great on X-Pro1.

"Why is ACR not a product that works with ALL versions of Photoshop? My guess is it's all about the money."

It's all about the API and having to maintain multiple versions of the same code.

If it were all about money, they wouldn't provide a free DNG converter so you can use new camera support all the way back to the beginning of ACR. If the camera companies would just produce DNGs out-of-camera, you wouldn't even need that step.

At the moment, I have the CS6 beta and CS5 installed. This allows me to use ACR 7.1 to open my Canon G1 X raws. If I need to process in Photoshop, I can process them and save them as PSDs . I'm not sure what will happen when the beta expires, but this is giving me a few more weeks to decide if I want to upgrade or not. It's not perfect, but it's a workaround. Before this, I was converting the RAWs into DNGs with the free converter.

I am fairly new to Lightroom, but I was really surprised at how sloppy the LR update procedure was. I've been using Adobe's entire suite of software professionally for years, and for some time the update process has been painless and easy via Adobe's AIR update application. By contrast, when I hit the "Update" button I was prompted with, I was sent to a generic Lightroom page on Adobe's site. There was no 'update' option on the entire page and in the end I manually had to select the Demo download, typed in my Adobe username and pass, and manually ran the installer. My thought was "what year is this?" Adobe should be embarrassed.

yeah i wonder too.
if you have a decent system you should have enough speed for bridge previews.

i have "only" ~200000 images but i have no need to have them all in the cache. i don´t even notice on my system what is cached and what not.

maybe time to get a system that is better suited for your needs.

I need all images cached - I have to go back to history often for various publishing reasons.

One of the attributes of a decent DAM is that you can quickly browse all of the image assets. As it turns out, my image archive is on networked drives (1 gbps network, the drives work at an effective 275 mbps) with the cache on a sata drive for browsing speed. If ACR chooses to rebuild, everything slows down since the cached images become almost useless while ACR rebuilds

My computer is more than competent enough.

then your network is to slow i guess.

i have 90 MB/s over 1 gigabit ethernet.
there is no problem to browse with bridge over network.

275 mbps are about 34 MB/s.. that´s slow for a 1gbps network.