Hyper Utility: To buy or Not?

The OFFICIAL site for S7Raw is this at Geosite.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-PaloAlto/9919/s7raw.html

This is the direct link to download the latest S7Raw program.
[Ver 0.4.6 build 156]

Normal Win XP
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-PaloAlto/9919/s7raw.046.zip

Win XP x64 bit edition.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-PaloAlto/9919/s7raw64.046.zip

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i'll do

ARIGATO!

worth trying?

i'll let you know

i'm gonna be checking for resolution improvement in spite of colour or DR... like for labels, letters on products and detail on textures...

You know personally I would hang on! I use HU, ACR, Lightroom, Capture One, Silky Pix and DxO, why?

Because none of them do everything I want!!!

I like SilkyPix for image quality and interface, but no "purple fringe" removal, I like ACR/Lightroom for speed, but not image quality. I like HU for smooth tones and highlights, but not interface and speed. I like DxO for built in lens profiles, interface, purple fringe and CA removal..but not it's resolution.

I have presently gone back to Capture One despite the fact it assumes a 6mp output.

BUT..wait!! I would seriously consider holding on to your hard earned money for a few more weeks as DxO are about to introduce V5 with "a new Raw processor" apparently exceeding the quality of any other!! If this is true, and given it's other facilities and corrections, I would seriously consider putting this at the top of my list...

Hope this helps!

itt said:

ddk said:

itt said:

ddk said:

Can't comment on it, I haven't had a PC in years, Mac only. Still, I
doubt that it would give better results than HU.

Click to expand...

OK, you don't have to take my word.
Give me a zipped S5 RAF file, I post my S7Raw version, you post your
HU version.

Will you accept this challenge ?
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Click to expand...

Sure, I'm curious too, send me your e-mail address and I'll shoot you
a file.

Click to expand...

ultrapicture ATT gmail DOTT com

Please send a challenging one
Thanks
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Click to expand...

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david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

Many conflicting opinions here, just shows you that no one flavor suits everyone...

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david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

David,

Thanks for sending the RAFs.

For the 2EV overexposed girl shot, the challenge was the skin tone recovery.
I think S7 did a good job using the new "linear" mixing mode.

Not sure if this match the real skin tones, but a fine tuned WB can nail it down.
Full size image:

For the underexposed "back muscles" shot I disabled the R pixels, since they had nothing to contribute other than noise.
Again not sure about the WB.
Full size image:

It would be interesting to compare to what you can do with HU or other software.
Show me what you got.

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Not that bad, but it has a slight blue and magenta cast. I think you should choose tweak the WB a little bit more to yellow and take out some magenta.

Regards
Michael

Sorry I forgot. The comment refers to the first picture ;-)

I'd say find a way to get it cheap (like via eBay) and buy it. You're probably going to always wonder if it's better just like I did. If you can get it down to say, $70 then it's not that much to throw away.

Otherwise I would at least pick up Lightroom. As much as the dang thing drives me crazy it has pretty much everything you need under one roof - exposure, white balance, curves, red eye fix, dust fix, CA fix, a million little adjustments, etc. All this bundled in a very well laid out and easy to use interface.

It's true, it may well not produce the best conversions, but for most it is more than sufficient and, if you're like me, you'll find yourself using it no matter how much you'd like to find another. It's just too convenient.

Well, good luck in the mean time! My guess is like most of us you'll end up owning a bunch of different converters, some being better than others depending on what the task at hand is.

--
Matt Fahrner
http://www.boinkphoto.com

Michael I don't notice any color cast.
Perhaps is the difference in monitors.

If David gives me permission I can post here the original RAFs for download so others can post their best effort and compare.

Thanks for the comments,
itt

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I am working on a calibrated monitor. Additionally I measured the colour with the colour picker. Yellow is clear below magenta for most areas of the skin. This also is a strong hint for a colour cast.

Kind regards
Michael

itt said:

Michael I don't notice any color cast.
Perhaps is the difference in monitors.

If David gives me permission I can post here the original RAFs for
download so others can post their best effort and compare.

Thanks for the comments,
itt

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Click to expand...

itt

i have added a link, where you can see the original JPEG left and the slightly corrected right

The correction has been made in LR based on the JPEG
Temperature +10
Tint -20
Vibrance -10

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/10853324

Kind regards
Michael

itt said:

Michael I don't notice any color cast.
Perhaps is the difference in monitors.

If David gives me permission I can post here the original RAFs for
download so others can post their best effort and compare.

Thanks for the comments,
itt

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Click to expand...

Itt,

I need to appologize. I had a conversion failure to a wrong profile when importing. There is no colour cast!

Regards
Michael

itt wrote:
Thanks to itt for doing these conversions, results are quite interesting.

First picture- The image of my daughter was overexposed and the highlights are at the limit of HU's recovery capability, I was curious to see how S7 handles this. The HU image is a direct conversion with no pp as I think the s7 raw image is.

My observations, your conclusions might be different;

Color cast aside which is fixable, I'm amazed at S7's highlight recovery, it certainly goes beyond what HU can do. At conversion I set the Sensitization to -1.0, Tone to ORG, Color to STD, Sharpness to STD and DR to 400% but as you can see S7 has pulled out more detail in the face than HU.

On the negative side, S7 has flattened the image somewhat, the flash was pointing directly at her 5' away, but there's no sign of any highlight here. HU conversion has kept the highlights, though its almost blown a little in parts of the face its over all fine and nothing is blown on the jacket with the highlight of the flash intact. I don't see the flash with the S7 conversion as if it has truncated the DR somehow and flattened the image. There's also slightly more tonal gradation with HU as well but hard to tell with web images. Still the most amazing thing is S7's highlight recovery even if HU has more DR.

HU



S7



You can go here and just click through if you want,

http://www.pbase.com/ddk/image/88798010/original

david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

You look for yourselves, but imo HU has a lot less noise imo and better tones and gradations, the color is richer and deeper. For me HU is clearly better here.

Again no pp, straight conversion and then resized for web.

HU Settings

Tone - STD

Sensitization +2/6

Color- ORG

Sharpness - STD

D.range - 400%

NR - ORG



S7



you can go here to click through the images,

http://www.pbase.com/image/88802000/original
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david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

ddk said:

You look for yourselves, but imo HU has a lot less noise imo and
better tones and gradations, the color is richer and deeper. For me
HU is clearly better here.

Click to expand...

Well, better tones yes, but the noise is more visible on the S7 version because the picture is brighter. If I tweek more this image I can come with a very similar rendering than the HU version and the noise gap should be smaller.

ddk said:

Again no pp, straight conversion and then resized for web.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by PP, the whole process of RAW conversion is a big PP.

I think you said it before, there is not perfect RAW software solution. All have their pros and cons.

My conclusion is HU for batch 1 click conversions, and S7raw for custom conversions.

Abobe Lightroom is also does a fine job, but it cost $ and it doesn't offer the type of control S7raw does.
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itt said:

ddk said:

You look for yourselves, but imo HU has a lot less noise imo and
better tones and gradations, the color is richer and deeper. For me
HU is clearly better here.

Click to expand...

Well, better tones yes, but the noise is more visible on the S7
version because the picture is brighter. If I tweek more this image I
can come with a very similar rendering than the HU version and the
noise gap should be smaller.

Click to expand...

Yes, you did brighten t way too much, it was shot in a very dark environment. I did a test brightening it up to same levels yours, the difference was less but still less noisy with HU.

itt said:

itt said:

Again no pp, straight conversion and then resized for web.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by PP, the whole process of RAW conversion is
a big PP.

Click to expand...

By that I meant no tweaking in PS after conversion.

itt said:

I think you said it before, there is not perfect RAW software
solution. All have their pros and cons.

My conclusion is HU for batch 1 click conversions, and S7raw for
custom conversions.
Abobe Lightroom is also does a fine job, but it cost $ and it doesn't
offer the type of control S7raw does.

Click to expand...

One thing that I learnt from this test was S7's recovery capability, its really amazing when you need it, thanks for the experience.

itt said:

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Click to expand...

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david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk