About SPP 6.X and 5.X

I now have two versions of SPP installed that I can run on one computer:

SPP 5.5.1 (M) - the M stands for "modified by @motionride " to show brighter labels;

SPP 6.8.2 - installed recently to process a couple of Quattro files from another member.

Why...

I have been using SPP 5.X to do all my SD1M and DP1/2 files. It seems to be good enough for them. But the other day on two Quattro files it chucked an error message (forgotten) and wouldn't open them.

So I installed the latest 6.X, onto an external drive to avoid any conflicts. It's a sort of "portable" installation. It opens the Quattro files in a flash, but DOES NOT see my internal (SSD) drives, only the external drives. A couple of years ago I had it installed on the internal C drive but I couldn't open anything except the Desktop.

And now a question...

Is there any advantage in using the 6.X version for SD1M files? Yes, I can shift them to the external drives, etc.

Ta,

atom14.

atom14 wrote:

I now have two versions of SPP installed that I can run on one computer:

SPP 5.5.1 (M) - the M stands for "modified by @motionride " to show brighter labels;

SPP 6.8.2 - installed recently to process a couple of Quattro files from another member.

Why...

I have been using SPP 5.X to do all my SD1M and DP1/2 files. It seems to be good enough for them. But the other day on two Quattro files it chucked an error message (forgotten) and wouldn't open them.

So I installed the latest 6.X, onto an external drive to avoid any conflicts. It's a sort of "portable" installation. It opens the Quattro files in a flash, but DOES NOT see my internal (SSD) drives, only the external drives. A couple of years ago I had it installed on the internal C drive but I couldn't open anything except the Desktop.

And now a question...

Is there any advantage in using the 6.X version for SD1M files? Yes, I can shift them to the external drives, etc.

Ta,

atom14.

In the past, if you opened (and edited?) a Merrill file in 6.X, you could no longer open it again in 5.X. Big disadvantage.

That is one good reason why I've never used 6.X apart from never owning a Quattro ...

atom14 wrote:

xpatUSA wrote:

atom14 wrote:

I now have two versions of SPP installed that I can run on one computer:

SPP 5.5.1 (M) - the M stands for "modified by @motionride " to show brighter labels;

SPP 6.8.2 - installed recently to process a couple of Quattro files from another member.

Why...

I have been using SPP 5.X to do all my SD1M and DP1/2 files. It seems to be good enough for them. But the other day on two Quattro files it chucked an error message (forgotten) and wouldn't open them.

So I installed the latest 6.X, onto an external drive to avoid any conflicts. It's a sort of "portable" installation. It opens the Quattro files in a flash, but DOES NOT see my internal (SSD) drives, only the external drives. A couple of years ago I had it installed on the internal C drive but I couldn't open anything except the Desktop.

And now a question...

Is there any advantage in using the 6.X version for SD1M files? Yes, I can shift them to the external drives, etc.

Ta,

atom14.

In the past, if you opened (and edited?) a Merrill file in 6.X, you could no longer open it again in 5.X. Big disadvantage.

That is one good reason why I've never used 6.X apart from never owning a Quattro ...

OOHWW! That'd be a pain. OK, ta. I will shift a stray file over to the ext drive and play with it there. Will advise if it still h ppens.

Edit: (Some minutes later.)

Ted. It DID NOT happen to me on an X3F I tried just now. First I put it in onto the external drive, opened in 6.X and processed then saved as jpeg. Reopened SAME file in SAME location in 5.X and stopped at the Save step. Ie, it opened the EXACT same file in both programs.

Looks like "they fixed that".

I don't know if "they" did fix anything. It may be that the Save Setting to Source X3F files check box was checked. Which suggests to me that if that option wasn't checked SPP 6.x should open the file without an issue, because nothing had been modified.

I'm using version 6.8 and abandoned the 5.x versions long ago because the processing (to my eyes) is the same but the speed and batch processing make it MUCH faster. Faster than the Sony Imaging software, which I load up every once in a blue moon.

QUESTION Why do y'all prefer the 5.x versions? Does it run better on older systems or on Macs? My laptop when new was a good gaming i7 Windows 10 machine, 3yrs on now it's pretty average, so that's not a big factor.

In any event, the 6.8 that I'm on does something annoying that I havent encountered before: the thumbnails are initially presented normally, but then after a file is developed, its thumbnail's colors go completely wonky. The look is similar to color film where the the colors are reversed....

For me there are a number of reasons to stick with the older SPP versions.

If you don't need Merill processing you can stick with SPP 4.2.2 or SPP 3.5.2. The difference between SPP 4 and 3 is different processing from ISO 400 onwards, and different black and white processing (which one the reason to prefer 3.5.2).

If you don't need Quattro processing you can stick with SPP 5.5.3.

In terms of underlying code base it seems that SPP 3 and 4 share the same code, then SPP 5 is different, and then again SPP 6 is different again. In particular, SPP6 is written using .Net.

SPP 5 is a lot slower than SPP 3/4 (on the same F13 files), but it has one advantage over SPP 6, namely that you can run SPP 5 (and 3 and 4) without any issues on a Windows emulator such as Wine on Linux. In contrast, to run SPP6 on Linux you need to jump through a lot of hoops, because you first need to install .NET libraries. It is possible, but it is quite complicated.

For example, here is a guide how to install SPP 6.8.0 in Wine:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/65074908

So in short, if you need to run SPP on an emulator then the latest is not always the greatest, and it makes sense to use an earlier version suitable for your camera.

PS: you may wonder why being able to run SPP on emulator is so important: it is for future proofing both your collection of RAW files as well as your Sigma cameras (clearly classical digital cameras)!

SPP is closed source and X3F a closed proprietory file format, so being able to run SPP on future computers is not a guaranteed thing. Software and computer operating systems become absolete very fast.

But because Wine is open source there will be a way to run Wine on a computer in 20 years! So an emulator such as Wine might be your only way to properly develop X3F files (as Sigma intended) in 20 years time!! And you want it to run without too many (ideally none) non-free dependencies, such as old versions of .Net that may be not available or legally restricted in 20 years...

The only other way for future proofing is to completely reverse engineer X3F files and the processing done in SPP. Unfortunately, Sigma has not disclosed openly how X3F files are processed in SPP so unfortunately a 100% replication of SPP in open source software is not currently available.

ascotinitaly wrote:

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In any event, the 6.8 that I'm on does something annoying that I havent encountered before: the thumbnails are initially presented normally, but then after a file is developed, its thumbnail's colors go completely wonky. The look is similar to color film where the the colors are reversed....

SPP was never too good on thumbnails in the Catalog View. For a long time, they were not color-managed and could have a completely different look to the Review image.

Not that that helps you much and, like #14, I've never used SPP6 and have no planes so to do.

ascotinitaly wrote:

I'm using version 6.8 and abandoned the 5.x versions long ago because the processing (to my eyes) is the same but the speed and batch processing make it MUCH faster. Faster than the Sony Imaging software, which I load up every once in a blue moon.

QUESTION Why do y'all prefer the 5.x versions? Does it run better on older systems or on Macs? My laptop when new was a good gaming i7 Windows 10 machine, 3yrs on now it's pretty average, so that's not a big factor.

In any event, the 6.8 that I'm on does something annoying that I havent encountered before: the thumbnails are initially presented normally, but then after a file is developed, its thumbnail's colors go completely wonky. The look is similar to color film where the the colors are reversed....

Wasn't that bug fixed in SPP 6.8.2

S

ascotinitaly wrote:

I'm using version 6.8 and abandoned the 5.x versions long ago because the processing (to my eyes) is the same but the speed and batch processing make it MUCH faster. Faster than the Sony Imaging software, which I load up every once in a blue moon.

QUESTION Why do y'all prefer the 5.x versions? Does it run better on older systems or on Macs? My laptop when new was a good gaming i7 Windows 10 machine, 3yrs on now it's pretty average, so that's not a big factor.

In any event, the 6.8 that I'm on does something annoying that I havent encountered before: the thumbnails are initially presented normally, but then after a file is developed, its thumbnail's colors go completely wonky. The look is similar to color film where the the colors are reversed....

Hey Scot, if you use older versions of SPP you will not get the automatic lens color cast correction for the latest lenses, which is applied to raw files in processing. For me that's the main reason to use the newer versions of SPP with my SD1 Merrill files. I have three Art lenses, and two of them are a couple of the newest lenses available in the SA mount. I also have a 100-400 OS C lens, and if I remember correctly, it also has a color cast that is not corrected in older versions of SPP. As you probably know, SPP 4 and older versions can not process Merrill files, so you need SPP 5 and newer for that.

Have you ever used a really old SA mount lens on your SD1 Merrill? One of my old 18-50mm lenses (presumably from the early days of the SD9) has a pretty bad color cast problem in the SD1 Merrill OOC jpegs, because Sigma never updated the firmware in the camera to fix the color cast produced by that old lens. Weird, huh? Maybe they did, but my particular lens just had a problem with it, or maybe it's such a rare lens that they decided not to make a profile for it. I don't know.

atom14 wrote:

I now have two versions of SPP installed that I can run on one computer:

SPP 5.5.1 (M) - the M stands for "modified by @motionride " to show brighter labels;

SPP 6.8.2 - installed recently to process a couple of Quattro files from another member.

Why...

I have been using SPP 5.X to do all my SD1M and DP1/2 files. It seems to be good enough for them. But the other day on two Quattro files it chucked an error message (forgotten) and wouldn't open them.

So I installed the latest 6.X, onto an external drive to avoid any conflicts. It's a sort of "portable" installation. It opens the Quattro files in a flash, but DOES NOT see my internal (SSD) drives, only the external drives. A couple of years ago I had it installed on the internal C drive but I couldn't open anything except the Desktop.

And now a question...

Is there any advantage in using the 6.X version for SD1M files? Yes, I can shift them to the external drives, etc.

Ta,

atom14.

What lenses are you using on your SD1 Merrill?

Scottelly wrote:

ascotinitaly wrote:

I'm using version 6.8 and abandoned the 5.x versions long ago because the processing (to my eyes) is the same but the speed and batch processing make it MUCH faster.

QUESTION Why do y'all prefer the 5.x versions?

Hey Scot, if you use older versions of SPP you will not get the automatic lens color cast correction for the latest lenses, which is applied to raw files in processing.

Scott, that gives rise to an odd thought!

What about the OOC and the embedded JPEGs from the camera, do they get color-cast corrected in-camera, I wonder?

Does SPP6 do the same stupid trick like SPP5 for Merrill X3Fs, i.e. does it show the embedded JPEG for initial adjustments and, if so, does the color change when you click on the button that opens up the raw for final review?

P.S. "Scot" might not be his first name if his ID means 'a Scotsman living in Italy' ... e.g. his first name could be "Jimmy" if he is a Glaswegian

The future-proofing makes sense. I don't keep X3Fs anymore; I use SPP to make a vanilla, low-contrast 16-bit TIFF that I can use as my original and then adjust for the destined size and medium.

I only wanted to make sure that in upgrading to the latest versions that I wasnt missing out on some "secret sauce" that the earlier versions had....

Thanks

Scot

P.S. "Scot" might not be his first name if his ID means 'a Scotsman living in Italy' ... e.g. his first name could be "Jimmy" if he is a Glaswegian

Indeed, Ted! I am a Scot only in name (American by birth, now an "expat" myself though nearly all of my ancestors are Scots....