Processing Challenge!

I recently began this thread about raw file processing over on the R Talk Forum - for people considering what to use and what's best for things like colour rendering, detail retention, noise mitigation, etc.. (It's a frequent topic of discussion - as I guess it is on many forums).

The idea is for a fun challenge (let's be kind to each other :-D ) to provide a comparison using one of my raw files - this can be found in Dropbox via This Link. (Please note - The link in the original post on the R Talk Forum was duff - amended as above in later post).

You would be most welcome to participate - any software and workflow may be used, but please provide details of what you used and if possible a little about what did with it.

There have been a number of responses (but so far nothing from anyone using On1, or Capture One - which I’m sure many, including me, would be interested to see).

If you would like to have a go and post the result(s) you can add to the existing thread on the R Talk Forum, or else post them here and I’ll provide a link to this thread from there.

I appreciate everyone will have their own workflow and if they’re happy with the results, that’s fine. The intention here is to give people the opportunity to look at the same raw file edited in different ways.

Stay safe and well...

Phil

(Note. The raw file will remain in Dropbox until the end of May).


As shot - converted to jpg to allow for upload...


Unedited except for crop...


My Edit 1: DXO PL 5 Elite - Lightroom Classic - Topaz DeNoise AI - Topaz Sharpen AI...


My Edit 2: Lightroom Classic - Topaz DeNoise AI - Topaz Sharpen AI...


My Edit 3: My Edit 2 - Topaz Studio 2 (Art/ Frame) - Photoshop (Watermark)...

I'll probably hate it when I look at it again in an hour, but here's my quick take with Lightroom Classic and Topaz DeNoise A.I. I have no idea what this bird is supposed to look like.


Lightroom Classic/Topaz DeNoise

Erik Baumgartner said:

I'll probably hate it when I look at it again in an hour, but here's my quick take with Lightroom Classic and Topaz DeNoise A.I. I have no idea what this bird is supposed to look like.

Lightroom Classic/Topaz DeNoise

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

Thank you for your time and efforts - much appreciated! (Really nice Lr + DNAI edit).

(This is a 'Robin', which was posing in Hartshill Country Park, Warwickshire, England).

Phil

PMUK said:

If you would like to have a go and post the result(s) you can add to the existing thread on the R Talk Forum, or else post them here and I’ll provide a link to this thread from there.

Click to expand...

Here is my edit. PhotoLab + Sharpen AI + Luminar Neo.





--
Annie

PMUK said:

Erik Baumgartner said:

I'll probably hate it when I look at it again in an hour, but here's my quick take with Lightroom Classic and Topaz DeNoise A.I. I have no idea what this bird is supposed to look like.

Lightroom Classic/Topaz DeNoise

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

Thank you for your time and efforts - much appreciated! (Really nice Lr + DNAI edit).

(This is a 'Robin', which was posing in Hartshill Country Park, Warwickshire, England).

Phil

Click to expand...

I’m in Connecticut, USA and our Robins look quite different, I’m actually looking at one on my lawn right now. If this bird is supposed to look the one on my lawn, I really messed up.

Hi Annie,

Many thanks for your time and efforts - a very fine result and the first use of Luminar Neo!

Phil

Erik Baumgartner said:

I’m in Connecticut, USA and our Robins look quite different, I’m actually looking at one on my lawn right now.

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

I've just done a quick 'Google' - and that's a very different look the Robins have over there!

(I think you've done the British Robin proud with your edit... :-D ).

Phil

Took raw into ACR, increased contrast, clarity, vibrance, texture, a little bit of sharpening, and some noise reduction. In PS, did two narrow color band hue shifts one for the post and one for the bird. I thought the closer colors of the bird to the post would be interesting yet found it to be less so that what I had imagined. All I had time to do though.







--
John Wheeler
Never give up. Never surrender. Galaxy Quest

Hi John,

Thank you for your time and efforts - this was an imaginative edit which has produced a fascinating and striking outcome.

Cheers.

Phil

Cool beans! We do something like this at discuss.pixls.us, called "PlayRaw". I've learned a lot from doing it, considering others' approaches.



I did this render of your .CR3 in rawproc, my hack raw processor. It implements a "tool chain" interface, where you can add the individual operations in any order you want, so I'll describe what I did in tool-chain terms...

Pre-demosaic, I assigned the default color profile for your camera given by libraw, then the camera-supplied black subtract and white balance. The demosaic algorithm is rcd, because the fellow who wrote it said it's very good . After demosaic I scaled the data to the white point, then applied a touch of HSL color saturation (it's a crappy algorithm, so I only use it sparingly on linear data), then a filmic tone curve, a crop to put the little birdie in prominence, finally resize to 800x600 and a touch of sharpen for acutance, save to JPEG with a color transform to sRGB. If DPReview doesn't strip the ImageDescription metadata tag, you can download the render and look at the toolchain.

That's probably a lot more information than you want, but I think it's important to understand what it takes to render a raw. Which is why I wrote that software...

Hi ggbutcher,

Wow, now that’s what I call getting your head under the bonnet and fiddling about with the mechanics! I think it’s safe to say this is the first example we’ve had of this workflow.

Many thanks for your time and efforts - a fascinating path you’ve taken and fine outcome.

(I wonder if, one day, I’ll understand what you’re talking about… :-D - mighty impressive!).

Cheers.

Phil

Another DxO/Topaz combination:




PhotoLab 5 + a round trip through Gigapixel AI



I'm not sure where Gigapixel has picked up the pattern in the right background, as it's not in the PhotoLab original it was upscaling:




PhotoLab 5 (only)

PMUK said:

Erik Baumgartner said:

I’m in Connecticut, USA and our Robins look quite different, I’m actually looking at one on my lawn right now.

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

I've just done a quick 'Google' - and that's a very different look the Robins have over there!

Click to expand...

Yup, you learn something new every day.

Phil and Karen said:

(I think you've done the British Robin proud with your edit... :-D ).

Phil

Click to expand...

Thanks

I considered a tighter crop like most folks are going with, but I felt that a sense of space and 3D pop was being lost, so went with the wider view instead.

Erik

PMUK said:

I recently began this thread about raw file processing over on the R Talk Forum - for people considering what to use and what's best for things like colour rendering, detail retention, noise mitigation, etc.. (It's a frequent topic of discussion - as I guess it is on many forums).

The idea is for a fun challenge (let's be kind to each other :-D ) to provide a comparison using one of my raw files - this can be found in Dropbox via This Link. (Please note - The link in the original post on the R Talk Forum was duff - amended as above in later post).

You would be most welcome to participate - any software and workflow may be used, but please provide details of what you used and if possible a little about what did with it.

There have been a number of responses (but so far nothing from anyone using On1, or Capture One - which I’m sure many, including me, would be interested to see).

If you would like to have a go and post the result(s) you can add to the existing thread on the R Talk Forum, or else post them here and I’ll provide a link to this thread from there.

I appreciate everyone will have their own workflow and if they’re happy with the results, that’s fine. The intention here is to give people the opportunity to look at the same raw file edited in different ways.

Stay safe and well...

Phil

(Note. The raw file will remain in Dropbox until the end of May).

As shot - converted to jpg to allow for upload...

Unedited except for crop...

My Edit 1: DXO PL 5 Elite - Lightroom Classic - Topaz DeNoise AI - Topaz Sharpen AI...

My Edit 2: Lightroom Classic - Topaz DeNoise AI - Topaz Sharpen AI...

My Edit 3: My Edit 2 - Topaz Studio 2 (Art/ Frame) - Photoshop (Watermark)...

Click to expand...

Nice shot of a Robin...

A lovely shot Phil. Thank you for posting it to let us play with it

Here are a couple of edits. Just trying to go for a natural look.


Canon Digital Photo Professional


SILKYPIX Developer Studio Pro 10

OOB. (Out Of Bounds)





--
Cheers.
Gary
It turns out that being an adult now is mostly just Googling how to do stuff.

--
PX

PMUK said:

Hi ggbutcher,

Wow, now that’s what I call getting your head under the bonnet and fiddling about with the mechanics! I think it’s safe to say this is the first example we’ve had of this workflow.

Many thanks for your time and efforts - a fascinating path you’ve taken and fine outcome.

(I wonder if, one day, I’ll understand what you’re talking about… :-D - mighty impressive!).

Cheers.

Phil

Click to expand...

I started out shooting JPEGs and damaging them in Picasa. Long story short, I wanted a better outcome and it led me to this. Now, I'm a programmer by trade so writing programs isn't daunting, but all this color stuff sure is.

I learned a LOT writing rawproc, and found that raw processing is really not as heady as it looks. I also leveraged some very good image processing libraries, libraw to open raw files, LittleCMS to do color management, lensfun for lens corrections, and exiv2 for (some) metadata. Oh, and librtprocess, the mighty fine demosaic algorithms of RawTherapee packaged by their developers for others to use.

https://github.com/butcherg/rawproc

Not sure if I'm doing this right (I'm posting from a phone)

Hi Nigel,

Many thanks for your time and efforts and for posting the two fine results for comparison.

The first example posted using Topaz Gigapixel I believe.

Phil