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Wow, Sonys Raw converted worst I have ever seen

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spencerda

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I have just downloaded and tried to use.

Have never ever seen anything as bad as what Sony would have us use.

It's to me un-usable Given the choice Id have to use Jpeg and I have always used Raw, going back to my Canon G2.

2 questions

1) Recomdations for areal Raw converter for the RX 100M2

2) How does a complany like Sony evaluate, tweek raw and Jpeg engines as well as develup all the exposure settings, like DRO without proper software to evaluate resuliting images?

Seems most camera complanys own software is second rate, (Sony is still the worst I have seen)so clearly it's done by other means, just have no ideal what they are.

Dave

take it slow
 
Yes, it's terrible. Yes, everyone knows this. It's better than Sigma's :-P

Lightroom (as mentioned). Iridient Developer. Aperture (but not yet working with RX1R or RX100M2). Others.
 
Sigmas Converted is worst?

Hard to belive, one cpould do worst!

Was just telling my GF that the person at Sony who develup the converter had to make a real effort to make that bad!

Have read how bad Sonys was, but did not appreciate how bad, bad could be.

In the past I have read that many consider canons converter bad, It's not bad in my view for the basic conversion, befor converting to Tiff and sending to photshop.

Dave
 
Point taken - for the price it would be nice if Sony could bundle a basic copy of Capture One.

For what it's worth DXO does a great job with RX100 mark 1 raws - not sure if it can process mark II raws yet. I like it better than LR for the RX100.
 
Have to say I haven't tried it, as it wasn't supplied with the camera.

I just use LR and it seems great (for a mk1 at least).

My DSLR is an Oly, and their bundled software does a very good job of replicating jpegs with the additional flexibility of non-destructive editing and setting white point etc.
 
I've been using Sony's converter for only a few weeks and have found it usable.

I will admit that the shots directly out of the camera mostly don't need a lot of correction or adjustment. So far, It does all that I want.

It was so generous of Sony to allow us to download their precious software from they website instead of including in the package on a CD. And the "missing" instruction manual for the camera really pi**es me off... don't get me started on that one.

Hans
 
Agreed!

Lightroom is the obvious choice.

Another alternative that produces really excellent results is: PhotoNinja

http://www.picturecode.com/index.php

You can try it for free. It works on Windows and Mac. Very nice!
 
The performance is bad, to the point of being unusable on my computer that I just upgraded. It was an E4300 core 2 duo running at 3 GHz with 2 GB ram. The new computer is a AMD FX-8350 with 8 cores running at 4 GHz. When I first tried IDC on the new machine, it was much faster, but still not crisp. Then I installed the graphics card drivers, and it seemed to get quite a bit better. I just ran down the side panel of slider controls, and made extreme adjustments, as fast as I could get from one to the next. The computer basically kept up. The old one sat there and chugged for minutes.

The software code seems poorly written. That said I monitored the processor when I was doing the test with the Image Data Converter software, and it loaded up all 8 cores to 100%. It also appears to be using the graphics accelerator in the graphics card, which is a lower end gaming card.

I still cannot recommend the software for use. I use Photoshop Elements 11 with my RX100, and am quite happy with it. However, while it supports the M1 it does not as yet support the M2, and suspect it will not. You will have to wait for Photoshop Elements 12 to get the ACR 8.1 that does support the M2. I believe Elements 12 is expected in September.

Lightroom is a good product, but also has performance issues. Elements is fast, and does all the basic RAW developing that LR does, and also all the basic stuff the full Photoshop does, and Lightroom does not. I may eventually upgrade to Lightroom, as I now have a computer that can handle it, but I'm in no hurry as I'm very happy with Elements.
 
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Sony would do well to provide a 3rd party software and stop wasting their time and everyone else's with their software. For many people a 3rd party software is enough of a bonus to make them buy the camera but Sony doesn't seem to be having a problem with sales right now.
 
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It really is bad. My computer is fairly new a and blazing fast. Lot of waiting for the Sony RAW software to catch up.
 
For raw conversions, nothing can match Photo Ninja. Other programs may have more features, but PN's results are the best. ACR/LR, C1 and DxO are not even close. Run your own comparisons, and see for yourself. I do it all the time just for fun.

Rob
 
Hi, Does Photo Ninja support the RX1 yet (does anybody know?). I seem to recall the RX100 is but nothing since.

I will have to look into it but if anyone can offer info please post. Thanks much.
 
Robgo2 said:
Robgo2 wrote:

For raw conversions, nothing can match Photo Ninja. Other programs may have more features, but PN's results are the best. ACR/LR, C1 and DxO are not even close. Run your own comparisons, and see for yourself. I do it all the time just for fun.

Rob
Click to expand...

Your enthusiasm for PN is obvious but I hesitate to state as fact something that is really more of an opinion. I have run these comparisons myself and arrived at slightly different conclusions - in fact, I seem to recall us possibly having a similar discussion on another forum?

The thing is, you place 100% on IQ - this is clearly very, very important, but I think that workflow is important as well, and my own experience with Photo Ninja (which I do have a licence for, as I quite like it), is that I can't quite get into the workflow as easily as I can with Lightroom. It also crashes regularly on my Win 7 64-bit PC whereas DXO and LR never crash on me. As for IQ, well I think that PN can extract a lot of resolution with its deconvolution detail extraction/sharpening/contrast engine. I'm not 100% convinced about its NR - it is good, but I find I can do better in PP and I like the way DXO tunes its NR to the specific sensor. I can't honestly see many pros who want to do batch raw processing of large numbers of shots necessarily being tempted away from ACR or LR by PN until the latter product becomes more fully featured and stable.

But clearly it works for you and you love it, so that's great. For me, with tweaking of sliders I can more or less match the output of PN in DXO Optics Pro 8 and come close in LR4. The only way I have found of making PN produce more resolution than these others can match is cranking up the detail so much in PN that artefacts appear, so I don't see the point in that. But let's see, PN certainly shows promise. I haven't tried it with RX100 raws BTW - does it have auto correction of distortion and CA for the RX100 as DXO does ?
 
mcshan said:
mcshan wrote:

Hi, Does Photo Ninja support the RX1 yet (does anybody know?). I seem to recall the RX100 is but nothing since.

I will have to look into it but if anyone can offer info please post. Thanks much.
Click to expand...
Yes, Photo Ninja does support the RX-1 and has an excellent built-in color profile for it. If you decide to try it, spend time learning the presets and the adjustment tools. It took me about a week of practice to really get good, not that it is difficult or complicated--just a bit different from other programs. I find that it takes less time to reach my goal with PN than with other programs, mainly because the presets are so good.

Rob
 
Marco Cinnirella said:
Marco Cinnirella wrote:
Marco Cinnirella said:
Robgo2 wrote:

For raw conversions, nothing can match Photo Ninja. Other programs may have more features, but PN's results are the best. ACR/LR, C1 and DxO are not even close. Run your own comparisons, and see for yourself. I do it all the time just for fun.

Rob
Click to expand...
Your enthusiasm for PN is obvious but I hesitate to state as fact something that is really more of an opinion. I have run these comparisons myself and arrived at slightly different conclusions - in fact, I seem to recall us possibly having a similar discussion on another forum?

The thing is, you place 100% on IQ - this is clearly very, very important, but I think that workflow is important as well, and my own experience with Photo Ninja (which I do have a licence for, as I quite like it), is that I can't quite get into the workflow as easily as I can with Lightroom. It also crashes regularly on my Win 7 64-bit PC whereas DXO and LR never crash on me. As for IQ, well I think that PN can extract a lot of resolution with its deconvolution detail extraction/sharpening/contrast engine. I'm not 100% convinced about its NR - it is good, but I find I can do better in PP and I like the way DXO tunes its NR to the specific sensor. I can't honestly see many pros who want to do batch raw processing of large numbers of shots necessarily being tempted away from ACR or LR by PN until the latter product becomes more fully featured and stable.

But clearly it works for you and you love it, so that's great. For me, with tweaking of sliders I can more or less match the output of PN in DXO Optics Pro 8 and come close in LR4. The only way I have found of making PN produce more resolution than these others can match is cranking up the detail so much in PN that artefacts appear, so I don't see the point in that. But let's see, PN certainly shows promise. I haven't tried it with RX100 raws BTW - does it have auto correction of distortion and CA for the RX100 as DXO does ?

--
Click to expand...
Well, if you are having stability problems on a Windows machine, I have no solution. On my 6 1/2 year old MacPro, Photo Ninja runs perfectly.

Regarding IQ, I have run numerous head to head comparisons with ACR, C1 and DxO, and there is no doubt in my mind that PN wins the IQ contest with relative ease. It has had batch processing since v1.05. Also, if you try the latest version 1.1, you will find that it contains a brand new upgrade of Noise Ninja (v4) which is a quantum leap better than NN3 and definitely superior to ACR, C1 and DxO's noise reduction. Regarding detail, PN produces more of it right out of the box without even touching the Detail slider. Some presets, such as Scenic, have additional Detail dialed in. However, it is up to the user to determine how much is optimal. It is completely adjustable, and you can even create your own presets to suit your taste. I am always amazed at how much detail PN can show without artifacts, but even so, not all images benefit from adding it. It's an aesthetic choice.

Nevertheless, I can understand how some users might consider workflow to be more important than IQ. For them, a full-featured, integrated program, such as Lightroom or Capture One, may make more sense. Personally, I do not find it slow or cumbersome to move images from one program to another. I use Photo Mechanic for file ingestion and management. I open raw images from PM or more often directly from PN's own browser, and I can easily move the rendered tiffs into Photoshop for local adjustments, fine tuning etc. It is not much more trouble than working in LR or C1, and the results are far superior, at least in my hands.

Rob
 
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Robgo2 said:
Robgo2 wrote:
Robgo2 said:
Marco Cinnirella wrote:
Robgo2 said:
Robgo2 wrote:

For raw conversions, nothing can match Photo Ninja. Other programs may have more features, but PN's results are the best. ACR/LR, C1 and DxO are not even close. Run your own comparisons, and see for yourself. I do it all the time just for fun.

Rob
Click to expand...
Your enthusiasm for PN is obvious but I hesitate to state as fact something that is really more of an opinion. I have run these comparisons myself and arrived at slightly different conclusions - in fact, I seem to recall us possibly having a similar discussion on another forum?

The thing is, you place 100% on IQ - this is clearly very, very important, but I think that workflow is important as well, and my own experience with Photo Ninja (which I do have a licence for, as I quite like it), is that I can't quite get into the workflow as easily as I can with Lightroom. It also crashes regularly on my Win 7 64-bit PC whereas DXO and LR never crash on me. As for IQ, well I think that PN can extract a lot of resolution with its deconvolution detail extraction/sharpening/contrast engine. I'm not 100% convinced about its NR - it is good, but I find I can do better in PP and I like the way DXO tunes its NR to the specific sensor. I can't honestly see many pros who want to do batch raw processing of large numbers of shots necessarily being tempted away from ACR or LR by PN until the latter product becomes more fully featured and stable.

But clearly it works for you and you love it, so that's great. For me, with tweaking of sliders I can more or less match the output of PN in DXO Optics Pro 8 and come close in LR4. The only way I have found of making PN produce more resolution than these others can match is cranking up the detail so much in PN that artefacts appear, so I don't see the point in that. But let's see, PN certainly shows promise. I haven't tried it with RX100 raws BTW - does it have auto correction of distortion and CA for the RX100 as DXO does ?

--
Click to expand...
Well, if you are having stability problems on a Windows machine, I have no solution. On my 6 1/2 year old MacPro, Photo Ninja runs perfectly.

Regarding IQ, I have run numerous head to head comparisons with ACR, C1 and DxO, and there is no doubt in my mind that PN wins the IQ contest with relative ease. It has had batch processing since v1.05. Also, if you try the latest version 1.1, you will find that it contains a brand new upgrade of Noise Ninja (v4) which is a quantum leap better than NN3 and definitely superior to ACR, C1 and DxO's noise reduction. Regarding detail, PN produces more of it right out of the box without even touching the Detail slider. Some presets, such as Scenic, have additional Detail dialed in. However, it is up to the user to determine how much is optimal. It is completely adjustable, and you can even create your own presets to suit your taste. I am always amazed at how much detail PN can show without artifacts, but even so, not all images benefit from adding it. It's an aesthetic choice.

Nevertheless, I can understand how some users might consider workflow to be more important than IQ. For them, a full-featured, integrated program, such as Lightroom or Capture One, may make more sense. Personally, I do not find it slow or cumbersome to move images from one program to another. I use Photo Mechanic for file ingestion and management. I open raw images from PM or more often directly from PN's own browser, and I can easily move the rendered tiffs into Photoshop for local adjustments, fine tuning etc. It is not much more trouble than working in LR or C1, and the results are far superior, at least in my hands.

Rob
Click to expand...

Thanks for the head's up - I have downloaded 1.1 and look forward to trying it.

But am I correct that there is no automatic distortion or CA correction of RX100 images in PN?
 
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