Quattro - SPP vs RawTherapee

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Dp2 quattro - iso 100

Direct spp: Color Mode Standard. NR Luminance and chrominance values by default SPP. sharpness 1

SPP - and RawTherapee: color portrait mode. Luminance NR 0. Sharpness 0.
NR RawTherapee. Treatment of micro-detail and sharpness RawTherapee.


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - et RawTherapee

Full Res:

Direct SPP

SPP - Portrait - RawTherapee

--
Photo SD9: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/natures-mortes/
http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/paysages/
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3269611
Gsm: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/architecture/
Illustrations photomontages: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/onirique-surrealiste/
http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/genese-et-naissance/
DP2s (pseudo Nobil):http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.50.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.75.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.100.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.125.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.225.html
 

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Dp2 quattro 100 iso

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRO...sigma-dp2-quattro-shooters-report-part-ii.htm

Direct spp: Color Mode Standard. NR Luminance and chrominance values by default SPP. sharpness 0

SPP - and RawTherapee: color portrait mode. Luminance NR 0. Sharpness 0.
NR RawTherapee. Treatment of micro-detail and sharpness RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee


Direct spp


SPP - and RawTherapee

Full res:



Direct spp






SPP - and RawTherapee

--
Photo SD9: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/natures-mortes/
http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/paysages/
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3269611
Gsm: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/architecture/
Illustrations photomontages: http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/onirique-surrealiste/
http://www.etrangeno.book.fr/galeries/genese-et-naissance/
DP2s (pseudo Nobil):http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.50.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.75.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.100.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.125.html
http://www.chassimages.com/forum/index.php/topic,215683.225.html
 

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I like just SPP better
 
In these examples I find that SPP appears more natural. RAWTherapee seems to unnaturally boost micro-contrast and has a leveling effect on the greens in the vegetation which makes it appear more like a Sony image than a Sigma image...

Best regards,

Lin
 
In these examples I find that SPP appears more natural. RAWTherapee seems to unnaturally boost micro-contrast and has a leveling effect on the greens in the vegetation which makes it appear more like a Sony image than a Sigma image...

Best regards,

Lin
Victor, Lin,

Y'all may be missing the point, which I believe is this:

Quattro, said to be "softer" than Merrill can be made to look the same, using RT. RT has many, many different sharpening and micro-contrast options. On the other hand, SPP has just a one-size-fits-all sharpening option and no micro or local contrast options at all and can't even crop!!! If I wanted to go the other way and turn a Merrill image into a Quattroesque one, it would not be that difficult in RT and, once done, the side-car .pp3 file is, of course, saveable and re-usable.

For me, SPP remains as just a converter - to be used in as neutral a manner as possible, nothing more than that.
 
Last edited:
Hi Ted,

Is there a way to control the leveling effect on greens? The majority of green hue differentiation in these RAWTherapee examples appear to have been mitigated to the point of only small differences. It's as if someone painted a single translucent green hue over everything green.

One of the beauties of the Foveon image to me is the way it reveals subtle shade differences in vegetation. One thing I dislilke about a number of my CFA cameras is that everything even close in green hue is made to look very much the same. This is especially true of some of my Sony cameras.

I haven't used RAWTherapee but I can easily enhance micro-contrast on any of my images whether Foveon or CFA using Topaz Labs Detail (2 or 3). RAWTherapee might be a nice alternative to SPP, but not if what I'm seeing with greens in these examples can't be changed.

Best regards,

Lin
In these examples I find that SPP appears more natural. RAWTherapee seems to unnaturally boost micro-contrast and has a leveling effect on the greens in the vegetation which makes it appear more like a Sony image than a Sigma image...

Best regards,

Lin
Victor, Lin,

Y'all may be missing the point, which I believe is this:

Quattro, said to be "softer" than Merrill can be made to look the same, using RT. RT has many, many different sharpening and micro-contrast options. On the other hand, SPP has just a one-size-fits-all sharpening option and no micro or local contrast options at all and can't even crop!!! If I wanted to go the other way and turn a Merrill image into a Quattroesque one, it would not be that difficult in RT and, once done, the side-car .pp3 file is, of course, saveable and re-usable.

For me, SPP remains as just a converter - to be used in as neutral a manner as possible, nothing more than that.

--
Ted
 
Hi Ted,

Is there a way to control the leveling effect on greens? The majority of green hue differentiation in these RAWTherapee examples appear to have been mitigated to the point of only small differences. It's as if someone painted a single translucent green hue over everything green.
There were many examples posted, Lin. Could you pick one pair that best represents what you mean and I'll be glad to take a look.

Forget that, my yard has green galore so I took a SD14 snap. That way I'm not working with someone else's post-processing . .

--
Ted
 
Last edited:
Hi Ted,

Is there a way to control the leveling effect on greens? The majority of green hue differentiation in these RAWTherapee examples appear to have been mitigated to the point of only small differences. It's as if someone painted a single translucent green hue over everything green.
My yard has greens galore so I took a SD14 snap. That way I'm not working with someone else's post-processing . .
I opened the X3F in SPP 5.5.3 and saved it as a sRGB JPEG, quality 9.

Then I exported the same X3F to RawTherapee as a ProPhoto 16-bit TIFF. With no adjustments at all (RT uses a neutral profile for TIFFs), I saved from RT as a sRGB JPEG, quality 90%.

I opened both in FastStone Viewer in comparator mode:

Please view original size to see which is which
Please view original size to see which is which

There being no visible "hue leveling" or reduction in "hue differentiation", I am unable to answer your original question, sorry.

--
Ted
 
Last edited:
Interesting things you can do with RawTherapee.
Looks like etchings. Flat, with very high local contrast.
 
Hi Ted,

The images below seems a good one to see the differences:



Look at full size - to me the differences are immediately apparent - bottom image "flat"
Look at full size - to me the differences are immediately apparent - bottom image "flat"

Best regards,

Lin
Hi Ted,

Is there a way to control the leveling effect on greens? The majority of green hue differentiation in these RAWTherapee examples appear to have been mitigated to the point of only small differences. It's as if someone painted a single translucent green hue over everything green.
There were many examples posted, Lin. Could you pick one pair that best represents what you mean and I'll be glad to take a look.

Forget that, my yard has green galore so I took a SD14 snap. That way I'm not working with someone else's post-processing . .

--
Ted
 
Hi Ted,

The images below seems a good one to see the differences:

Look at full size - to me the differences are immediately apparent - bottom image "flat"
Look at full size - to me the differences are immediately apparent - bottom image "flat"

Best regards,

Lin
Hi Ted,

Is there a way to control the leveling effect on greens? The majority of green hue differentiation in these RAWTherapee examples appear to have been mitigated to the point of only small differences. It's as if someone painted a single translucent green hue over everything green.
There were many examples posted, Lin. Could you pick one pair that best represents what you mean and I'll be glad to take a look.

Forget that, my yard has green galore so I took a SD14 snap. That way I'm not working with someone else's post-processing . .

--
Ted
Too small to pass an opinion and I have no idea what post-processing was used, Lin. So, assuming you have no comment on my last post, I'll be on my way.

--
Ted
 
In these examples I find that SPP appears more natural. RAWTherapee seems to unnaturally boost micro-contrast and has a leveling effect on the greens in the vegetation which makes it appear more like a Sony image than a Sigma image...

Best regards,

Lin
Victor, Lin,

Y'all may be missing the point, which I believe is this:

Quattro, said to be "softer" than Merrill can be made to look the same, using RT. RT has many, many different sharpening and micro-contrast options. On the other hand, SPP has just a one-size-fits-all sharpening option and no micro or local contrast options at all and can't even crop!!! If I wanted to go the other way and turn a Merrill image into a Quattroesque one, it would not be that difficult in RT and, once done, the side-car .pp3 file is, of course, saveable and re-usable.

For me, SPP remains as just a converter - to be used in as neutral a manner as possible, nothing more than that.
 
In this case the images are quite similar - not sufficiently different to distinguish...

Best regards,

Lin
 
Hi Ted,

Other than the image on the right being slightly flatter than the one on the left, I see no hue differences. Perhaps something else was done differently in the original images presented?

Best regards,

Lin
 
As fascinating as it is at a pixel peeping technical level to experiment and speculate over 1% differences in rendering of hardware and software, I can't help feeling it would be more productive to use the hardware and software to produce attractive photographs - the making of which is almost entirely divorced from this stuff.

By all means expend efforts exploring technologies that make an "effective" difference i.e. differences that materially determine the success for failure of a piece of art: but those require gross differences in output, not miniscule effects that only visible on a 20 foot bill board.

Any reasonable sized print (say 24" wide) would not be materially affected by this level of finessing. Indeed, I satisfactorily proved to myself with my recent trip, that as long as negative effects are not too gross, even camera shake and inadequate depth of field, obvious at pixel level, can be irrelevant as long as the pictures are not over enlarged.

I know there are lots of experts around here whose work does make useful contributions to the final result and a good few decent photographers to boot who would be very interested in techniques that make a significant different but I think Ted's tests kind of show that there is very little if any difference that isn't explained adequately by post processing settings.

It is wise to bear in mind that minor technical differences that are invisible in a practical image are of academic interest. Almost all photographic imaging technology flaws go away if a little restraint in the print size used is employed. However, nothing technical will ever rescue an uninteresting subject photographed in an uninteresting way. Use time productively!

(What I mean is that there are some activities related to image making that reward the effort with a fine picture and some activities which might be interesting in their own right but are substitutes for making fine pictures. Choose wisely...).

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
 
Last edited:
Hi Dave,

Your point is, from a photography as art perspective, correct, but it once again demonstrates a bias toward smaller prints.

If all that were important to the user of a camera were smaller prints, they would be probably equally served by a phone camera. Some who use Sigma equipment are interested in that "1 % difference" (I'm not certain that 1% is actually an accurate estimate) and this being more of a technical forum than a photographic art forum these things will continue to be matters of interest.

The question about whether or not a significant difference exists between outputs of SPP and RAWTherapee bears on workflow. For a single photo, it's of no great interest if a satisfactory image can be achieved in post with a little tweaking. On the other hand, if the photographer has multiple images to process, spending only a couple minutes more per photo can become an important issue.

For the landscape photographer who may only have a few dozen frames to deal with, the importance might be minimal. On the other hand, for a wedding photographer who perhaps must process as many as a thousand photos and averaging over six hundred, it can be a serious consideration. Now obviously most wedding photographers are not using the Q cameras but they indeed may be using the next dSLR which could have the same or very similar sensor. I myself have used my SD15 to shoot weddings where I had to deal with over eight hundred images. SPP is relatively slow but the output is, in my experience, very, very good. I know if I had to spend an extra say three minutes making post tweaks to each photo that represents forty hours or about a week of extra work.

So perhaps the small difference might be more important to some than to others. Just saying.....

Best regards,

Lin
As fascinating as it is at a pixel peeping technical level to experiment and speculate over 1% differences in rendering of hardware and software, I can't help feeling it would be more productive to use the hardware and software to produce attractive photographs - the making of which is almost entirely divorced from this stuff.

By all means expend efforts exploring technologies that make an "effective" difference i.e. differences that materially determine the success for failure of a piece of art: but those require gross differences in output, not miniscule effects that only visible on a 20 foot bill board.

Any reasonable sized print (say 24" wide) would not be materially affected by this level of finessing. Indeed, I satisfactorily proved to myself with my recent trip, that as long as negative effects are not too gross, even camera shake and inadequate depth of field, obvious at pixel level, can be irrelevant as long as the pictures are not over enlarged.

I know there are lots of experts around here whose work does make useful contributions to the final result and a good few decent photographers to boot who would be very interested in techniques that make a significant different but I think Ted's tests kind of show that there is very little if any difference that isn't explained adequately by post processing settings.

It is wise to bear in mind that minor technical differences that are invisible in a practical image are of academic interest. Almost all photographic imaging technology flaws go away if a little restraint in the print size used is employed. However, nothing technical will ever rescue an uninteresting subject photographed in an uninteresting way. Use time productively!

(What I mean is that there are some activities related to image making that reward the effort with a fine picture and some activities which might be interesting in their own right but are substitutes for making fine pictures. Choose wisely...).

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
 
Hi Lin

Our life histories, places of abode, local culture etc are inevitably different. But given we now live in a world where in the scheme of things, hardly anyone bothers to print and when they occasionally do, it is a bunch of machine printed 6x4", how much demand is there for a large print?

Where I come from, I'd guess most people would consider an 10 x 8 inch photo as large and would probably possess only a couple of family photos this large. A fine art print, of the type you see in galleries, would not have any place in a typical family home.

For example. I don't recall ever seeing a 24 x 16" original print of a landscape in anyone's home that I know (unless I've provided it for them!). Younger people with modern home decor tastes might venture to buy the occasional landscape poster from Ikea, but who buys fine art landscape prints? No one I've ever met. There is zero market for such things outside camera club enthusiasts hanging their own works. I remember having a chat with a photographer at an arts & crafts fair who was attempting to sell his own fine art landscape work. He said lots of people looked at his pictures, oohed and aahed but rarely bought. And he only charged £20 for a well presented, matted and packaged A3 print. I bought one, a rather nice shot of the Angel of the North, I have it in a cupboard somewhere. But the truth is that while people will buy paintings and prints of paintings, they won't buy photographs, especially big ones. So who are all these 60" prints aimed at? Galleries and museums can only take so many...

Hi Dave,

Your point is, from a photography as art perspective, correct, but it once again demonstrates a bias toward smaller prints.

If all that were important to the user of a camera were smaller prints, they would be probably equally served by a phone camera. Some who use Sigma equipment are interested in that "1 % difference" (I'm not certain that 1% is actually an accurate estimate) and this being more of a technical forum than a photographic art forum these things will continue to be matters of interest.

The question about whether or not a significant difference exists between outputs of SPP and RAWTherapee bears on workflow. For a single photo, it's of no great interest if a satisfactory image can be achieved in post with a little tweaking. On the other hand, if the photographer has multiple images to process, spending only a couple minutes more per photo can become an important issue.

For the landscape photographer who may only have a few dozen frames to deal with, the importance might be minimal. On the other hand, for a wedding photographer who perhaps must process as many as a thousand photos and averaging over six hundred, it can be a serious consideration. Now obviously most wedding photographers are not using the Q cameras but they indeed may be using the next dSLR which could have the same or very similar sensor. I myself have used my SD15 to shoot weddings where I had to deal with over eight hundred images. SPP is relatively slow but the output is, in my experience, very, very good. I know if I had to spend an extra say three minutes making post tweaks to each photo that represents forty hours or about a week of extra work.

So perhaps the small difference might be more important to some than to others. Just saying.....

Best regards,

Lin
As fascinating as it is at a pixel peeping technical level to experiment and speculate over 1% differences in rendering of hardware and software, I can't help feeling it would be more productive to use the hardware and software to produce attractive photographs - the making of which is almost entirely divorced from this stuff.

By all means expend efforts exploring technologies that make an "effective" difference i.e. differences that materially determine the success for failure of a piece of art: but those require gross differences in output, not miniscule effects that only visible on a 20 foot bill board.

Any reasonable sized print (say 24" wide) would not be materially affected by this level of finessing. Indeed, I satisfactorily proved to myself with my recent trip, that as long as negative effects are not too gross, even camera shake and inadequate depth of field, obvious at pixel level, can be irrelevant as long as the pictures are not over enlarged.

I know there are lots of experts around here whose work does make useful contributions to the final result and a good few decent photographers to boot who would be very interested in techniques that make a significant different but I think Ted's tests kind of show that there is very little if any difference that isn't explained adequately by post processing settings.

It is wise to bear in mind that minor technical differences that are invisible in a practical image are of academic interest. Almost all photographic imaging technology flaws go away if a little restraint in the print size used is employed. However, nothing technical will ever rescue an uninteresting subject photographed in an uninteresting way. Use time productively!

(What I mean is that there are some activities related to image making that reward the effort with a fine picture and some activities which might be interesting in their own right but are substitutes for making fine pictures. Choose wisely...).
 

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