Ok ! Go to the Carl's website I posted the explanation...
http://www.rytterfalk.com/2009/10/02/silkypix-first-look-and-mixed-raw-pack/
http://www.rytterfalk.com/2009/10/02/silkypix-first-look-and-mixed-raw-pack/
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Silkypix now supports X3F (all) and DP1s announced!
- Thread starter Rytterfalk
- Start date
jaeming
Active member
I always kind of liked Silkypix. How can you not like a RAW developer that has curves built into it? 
I was a little disappointed when I first bought my SD14 and saw they didn't support it. Glad to see they are developing for it now for sure
Anyway, here's my results using it:
or fullsize:
http://imgur.com/cfzzv.jpg
--
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaeming/
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm
going to take tomorrow.
I was a little disappointed when I first bought my SD14 and saw they didn't support it. Glad to see they are developing for it now for sure
Anyway, here's my results using it:
or fullsize:
http://imgur.com/cfzzv.jpg
--
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaeming/
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm
going to take tomorrow.
- Imogen Cunningham
dominik_rybczak
Member
This programm is great, iso 800 on the sd14 looks really nice! oh, why so late, why so late?!?
--
g u i ñ o ...jak sie patrzy!
http://www.guino.pl
pompinik (at) gazeta.pl
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g u i ñ o ...jak sie patrzy!
http://www.guino.pl
pompinik (at) gazeta.pl
Rytterfalk
Senior Member
Agree, but now it's here! Let's enjoy!
--
Carl @ Rytterfalk.com (Göteborg, Sweden)
http://www.rytterfalk.com
Proud Foveon user. Using Sigma SD and DP cameras.
--
Carl @ Rytterfalk.com (Göteborg, Sweden)
http://www.rytterfalk.com
Proud Foveon user. Using Sigma SD and DP cameras.
R
Raist3d
Guest
HIGH ISO management is the best win for using this RAW converter. I was able to get an ISO 3200 file in color to a reasonable, comparable to my cameras, file output.
Anything else I really prefer the SPP output far more. SPP seems to have been tuned well for the Foveon type noise which is this weird random color spotches, that when using Silky Pix just came forward in some areas of shots I have even at ISO 100 (but that was one particular extreme case, in the photo I saw, in general it's more ok).
But honestly makes things look more like the output of a Bayer sensor, more than the Foveon... interesting how processing can make it vary that much.
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
Anything else I really prefer the SPP output far more. SPP seems to have been tuned well for the Foveon type noise which is this weird random color spotches, that when using Silky Pix just came forward in some areas of shots I have even at ISO 100 (but that was one particular extreme case, in the photo I saw, in general it's more ok).
But honestly makes things look more like the output of a Bayer sensor, more than the Foveon... interesting how processing can make it vary that much.
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
J.F. Midol-Monnet
Well-known member
gives no result, because it seems that this version of Silkypix is unable to open SD9 X3F files !!!
And as SD9 is my unique FOVEON guy, I have not been able to test this new X3F developper...
Sorry, and best regards
Jean-François
--
Le motif n'est rien en soi, la lumière est tout
Léonard MISONNE.
And as SD9 is my unique FOVEON guy, I have not been able to test this new X3F developper...
Sorry, and best regards
Jean-François
--
Le motif n'est rien en soi, la lumière est tout
Léonard MISONNE.
Speedfreak09
Active member
- Messages
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- Reaction score
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In my opinion Silkypix X3F-Files are completely unaltered original RAW files.
SPP X3F-Files are no real RAW files.
So far, I'm enjoying Silkypix very much: thanks Carl!
I've only gone through two complete editing sessions (start-to-finish) to see what I can do, and I was quite pleased. Unfortunately, I used rather ugly photos, because I wanted to pick images that had never been improved or worked on previously, so that I wouldn't be tempted to 'recreate' something I had done in other RAW apps, which I didn't see as completely fair. I say this because part of one's choices may incorporate what you 'know you can do' with a certain set of applications, and this app seems to bring some very different ways of doing things, and even some new capabilities altogether.
Next, now that I know a little bit better how Silkypix works, I will try to recreate some images I have worked on before, and then compare the output. Then I will have some pudding for final proof.
In general, I wish they could 'tone-down' the gratuitous use of sliders: yes, they make it easy, but it forces many controls to be 1-dimensional in usage, and often the corollary to an adjustment isn't included in the same dialog box. That means a bit of efficiency goofyness hunting for a related slider, but I have found that there's almost always a corresponding control somewhere .
The use of presets that can be called up globally or locally right down to the dialog box is excellent, and its so quick & easy to switch or add a new setting.
Dual previews, the 'Corel/Kitchen Sink' approach (include nearly every functionality you can imagine - like lens shift, aberration controls, curve/histogram tweaks, colour tweaks down to a sub-palette, clone fixing, dynamic setting previews, and so on, and so on...), smart batching, all let you do 98% of your work in just one application. It has truly optimized processing performance whether using a single-core very fast (3.6GHz) cpu, or slower multi-core processors.
I have only seen sRGB and Adobe RGB (no ProPhoto), but that's all I can do with my camera anyway.
I really like the unbelievably precise, yet intuitive colour controls, even more than Capture One (which says a lot). I think these are the most nuanced and powerful colour controls I have ever used.
The sharpness controls are OK, maybe not quite as controllable as LR, but I need a bit more practice there before rendering a final judgment.
The noise reduction is another area where it works really well in some cases, and yet hardly at all in others. I need to figure that out some more. But the nice thing is that when judiciously applied, it seems like the noise reduction and sharpening (working together) can improve the image, and yet not destructively make the image lose some of its 'Foveon' glassine look. That's paramount to me, otherwise there's little reason to work with a a Foveon sensor to begin with.
I'm not sure about how I feel about unsharp masking being applied only at print/export time: yes, you usually only have to do that to match the limitations of your external devices, but the preview window is rather small to make very important decisions about USM settings, even if you can easily zoom to any level of magnification. On the plus side however, I like that my final image doesn't have tio be saved in some 'ugly' rendition just because it needs to be printed that way. I can save my export/print settings too, so its not like I have to 'dial-in' every setting every time I use them. I guess its just that the small preview window doesn't let me see enough to have total confidence in my settings.
Everyone's fears about the lack of SPP's 'Fill-Light' feature should be partially calmed by the fact that you can achieve the same effect in most cases through tweaking about three interactive sliders The only true downside here is that there's no easy 'negative fill-light' control (or nothing I have yet found, unless you go completely wacky on the curves, and that still doesn't give you the same surreal look as SPP).
My last concern is that my images' histograms in Silkypix may look nice and full, but upon opening the images in another application, I may have a large chunk of unused brightness levels. Upon further inspection though, in most cases, one colour channel or another was using up that space, and only the Luminosity or a couple of colour channels were incomplete. in GIMP, Capture One 4, and Irfanview 4.x, the output images all looked identical. In Corel13, the image looked rather flat, but this was at work on an LCD monitor that has no colour profile, and so each application is similarly display challenged. I should add that the Corel histogram still matched all the other apps. But the fact that there is sometimes a difference (between Silkypix' histogram pre-export, and another apps histogram with the exported file) is a little disconcerting.
If my final tests can produce an image that matches or exceeds my current workflow(s), it will be a no-brainer to buy this, even at its somewhat elevated price-point. Overall, it looks like that could be the case. Here is one RAW developer (other than SPP) that actually seems to 'try' to preserve the Foveon look, as long as you keep conservative in your use of controls.
I've only gone through two complete editing sessions (start-to-finish) to see what I can do, and I was quite pleased. Unfortunately, I used rather ugly photos, because I wanted to pick images that had never been improved or worked on previously, so that I wouldn't be tempted to 'recreate' something I had done in other RAW apps, which I didn't see as completely fair. I say this because part of one's choices may incorporate what you 'know you can do' with a certain set of applications, and this app seems to bring some very different ways of doing things, and even some new capabilities altogether.
Next, now that I know a little bit better how Silkypix works, I will try to recreate some images I have worked on before, and then compare the output. Then I will have some pudding for final proof.
In general, I wish they could 'tone-down' the gratuitous use of sliders: yes, they make it easy, but it forces many controls to be 1-dimensional in usage, and often the corollary to an adjustment isn't included in the same dialog box. That means a bit of efficiency goofyness hunting for a related slider, but I have found that there's almost always a corresponding control somewhere .
The use of presets that can be called up globally or locally right down to the dialog box is excellent, and its so quick & easy to switch or add a new setting.
Dual previews, the 'Corel/Kitchen Sink' approach (include nearly every functionality you can imagine - like lens shift, aberration controls, curve/histogram tweaks, colour tweaks down to a sub-palette, clone fixing, dynamic setting previews, and so on, and so on...), smart batching, all let you do 98% of your work in just one application. It has truly optimized processing performance whether using a single-core very fast (3.6GHz) cpu, or slower multi-core processors.
I have only seen sRGB and Adobe RGB (no ProPhoto), but that's all I can do with my camera anyway.
I really like the unbelievably precise, yet intuitive colour controls, even more than Capture One (which says a lot). I think these are the most nuanced and powerful colour controls I have ever used.
The sharpness controls are OK, maybe not quite as controllable as LR, but I need a bit more practice there before rendering a final judgment.
The noise reduction is another area where it works really well in some cases, and yet hardly at all in others. I need to figure that out some more. But the nice thing is that when judiciously applied, it seems like the noise reduction and sharpening (working together) can improve the image, and yet not destructively make the image lose some of its 'Foveon' glassine look. That's paramount to me, otherwise there's little reason to work with a a Foveon sensor to begin with.
I'm not sure about how I feel about unsharp masking being applied only at print/export time: yes, you usually only have to do that to match the limitations of your external devices, but the preview window is rather small to make very important decisions about USM settings, even if you can easily zoom to any level of magnification. On the plus side however, I like that my final image doesn't have tio be saved in some 'ugly' rendition just because it needs to be printed that way. I can save my export/print settings too, so its not like I have to 'dial-in' every setting every time I use them. I guess its just that the small preview window doesn't let me see enough to have total confidence in my settings.
Everyone's fears about the lack of SPP's 'Fill-Light' feature should be partially calmed by the fact that you can achieve the same effect in most cases through tweaking about three interactive sliders The only true downside here is that there's no easy 'negative fill-light' control (or nothing I have yet found, unless you go completely wacky on the curves, and that still doesn't give you the same surreal look as SPP).
My last concern is that my images' histograms in Silkypix may look nice and full, but upon opening the images in another application, I may have a large chunk of unused brightness levels. Upon further inspection though, in most cases, one colour channel or another was using up that space, and only the Luminosity or a couple of colour channels were incomplete. in GIMP, Capture One 4, and Irfanview 4.x, the output images all looked identical. In Corel13, the image looked rather flat, but this was at work on an LCD monitor that has no colour profile, and so each application is similarly display challenged. I should add that the Corel histogram still matched all the other apps. But the fact that there is sometimes a difference (between Silkypix' histogram pre-export, and another apps histogram with the exported file) is a little disconcerting.
If my final tests can produce an image that matches or exceeds my current workflow(s), it will be a no-brainer to buy this, even at its somewhat elevated price-point. Overall, it looks like that could be the case. Here is one RAW developer (other than SPP) that actually seems to 'try' to preserve the Foveon look, as long as you keep conservative in your use of controls.
Very interesting.
Seems like Arcsoft just got pushed out, and Silky is Sigmas darling now.
Very good decision.
The pictures look VERY GOOD.
Better like ACR-wow!
Much less agressive algorhythms like SPP.
Much better separation, though the reds and skin tones bleed.
They bleed much worse than in adobe or RAW photostudio,
so there´s some room for progression.
I see a Chromatic Abberation slider now- heyyyyyy
Time for SIGMA to apply some pressure to the developer for a MAC version.
And time for the developer to un- clutter his user interface.
Featur-a-ma all over the place.Chaos.
Seems like Arcsoft just got pushed out, and Silky is Sigmas darling now.
Very good decision.
The pictures look VERY GOOD.
Better like ACR-wow!
Much less agressive algorhythms like SPP.
Much better separation, though the reds and skin tones bleed.
They bleed much worse than in adobe or RAW photostudio,
so there´s some room for progression.
I see a Chromatic Abberation slider now- heyyyyyy
Time for SIGMA to apply some pressure to the developer for a MAC version.
And time for the developer to un- clutter his user interface.
Featur-a-ma all over the place.Chaos.
R
Raist3d
Guest
Silky pix like all raw converters do their own flavor of interpreting noise and a few other things. You can see it by the sharpening and such where it can easily end in bit of water color.
Not sure how Silky Pix files are "True raw" vs "SPP's non true raws." What exactly leads you to such conclusion?
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
Not sure how Silky Pix files are "True raw" vs "SPP's non true raws." What exactly leads you to such conclusion?
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
DanasSutra
Forum Enthusiast
ditto,
I just tried it ... no go. Doesn't recognize sd9 files. Oh well, so much for that.
I just tried it ... no go. Doesn't recognize sd9 files. Oh well, so much for that.
R
Raist3d
Guest
I wonder if they can do that with a firmware update. That way anything could open the RAW files.
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
Rytterfalk
Senior Member
Not much to add, you put your finger on most places.
I noticed that noise reduction makes a very smeary appearance if you don't watch out. Really ugly bleeding where skin tones comes outside the skin into the background etc. But it's always possible to go to a lower level and save some.
Raw Developer can have very high levels of color smoothing (as they call it) and still no bleed. But RD lacks the fine tune color controls and lots of other things. Also, the Mac version is on it's way.
--
Carl @ Rytterfalk.com (Göteborg, Sweden)
http://www.rytterfalk.com
Proud Foveon user. Using Sigma SD and DP cameras.
I noticed that noise reduction makes a very smeary appearance if you don't watch out. Really ugly bleeding where skin tones comes outside the skin into the background etc. But it's always possible to go to a lower level and save some.
Raw Developer can have very high levels of color smoothing (as they call it) and still no bleed. But RD lacks the fine tune color controls and lots of other things. Also, the Mac version is on it's way.
--
Carl @ Rytterfalk.com (Göteborg, Sweden)
http://www.rytterfalk.com
Proud Foveon user. Using Sigma SD and DP cameras.
it bleeds too much, even in preset mode,
hence they blur the color channels in LAB mode too much.
Skind against backgrounds look unsharp.
Plus they have a RED problem.They are blocky.
As i said, THEY MUST WORK on their appearance.
They should hire a UI designer instead of leaving stuff to the geeks (hear me Sigma?)
I guess Foveon shoots somehow in a LAB mode, they split the info in
chrominance and luminance, therefore can derive the best of both worlds out of the data. leading to those high, almost HDR liek dynamics.
hence they blur the color channels in LAB mode too much.
Skind against backgrounds look unsharp.
Plus they have a RED problem.They are blocky.
As i said, THEY MUST WORK on their appearance.
They should hire a UI designer instead of leaving stuff to the geeks (hear me Sigma?)
I guess Foveon shoots somehow in a LAB mode, they split the info in
chrominance and luminance, therefore can derive the best of both worlds out of the data. leading to those high, almost HDR liek dynamics.
Halldor Eiriksson
Senior Member
After trying a few RAW files, I find it much easier to get the colors I want with this converter. My workflow has been using "sunny WB" in the camera, then starting with "Auto" in SPP and finally some correcting / adjustments in LR. The colors from this workflow has not always made me very happy. I'm really pleased with what I have seen so far with this converter.
Halldór
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eirod/
Halldór
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eirod/
Hardy Steiner
Senior Member
I had a go and it looks very interesting. The only thing missing for me is that it can act as a image database as well (like Lightroom). Does somebody here use any open source image database/archive?
--
Best regards,
Hardy
==================
Join the Sigma DP Macro Group on:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sigma_dp_macro
My pictures on:
On Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diddy
On Mostphots: http://www.mostphotos.com/Diddy
http://steinerphotography.blogspot.com
--
Best regards,
Hardy
==================
Join the Sigma DP Macro Group on:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sigma_dp_macro
My pictures on:
On Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diddy
On Mostphots: http://www.mostphotos.com/Diddy
http://steinerphotography.blogspot.com
Rodrigo Cunha
Leading Member
Why is "Noise Reduction" (just below Neat Noise) disabled?
PS: yes, silkypix is using a direct raw conversion, not clipping shadows like SPP or ACR. And skilypix lets you completely disable noise reduction if you really want to.
PS: yes, silkypix is using a direct raw conversion, not clipping shadows like SPP or ACR. And skilypix lets you completely disable noise reduction if you really want to.
Craig Philips
Well-known member
Here is an English version of the Silkypix web site
You can download 3.0.2.2 version of the software as well as a detailed manual (150pp) in either pdf or html form
http://www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/
You can download 3.0.2.2 version of the software as well as a detailed manual (150pp) in either pdf or html form
http://www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/
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