The new Nikon D300s is getting some raw-image support from Adobe.
(Credit: Nikon USA)Adobe Systems has released a test version of its Camera Raw 5.5 plug-in so Photoshop can handle raw images from the Olympus E-P1 high-end compact camera, Nikon's new D3000 entry-level SLR, mid-range D300s SLR, and Panasonic's DMC-FZ35 ultrazoom.
Raw images are made of data taken directly from cameras' image sensors without in-camera processing, and they offer more flexibility and higher quality to those willing to put up with the hassle of converting them to JPEG or other more universal formats with software such as Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple's Aperture and iPhoto, or Google's Picasa. But first, that software must be updated to support each new camera, since raw formats are proprietary and differ for each model.
Adobe released the new Camera Raw plug-in release candidate at its Adobe Labs site. Although there's no corresponding version of Lightroom, software engineered specifically for handling raw images, Adobe also issued a release candidate for its DNG converter 5.5 that can transform raw files from the Olympus, Nikon, and Panasonic cameras into Adobe's more digestible Digital Negative format.
The new software also corrects a problem experienced with "demosaic algorithms in the raw conversion process for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response," the company said. Demosaicing is a central step in raw conversion. In it each pixel records only data for only a single color of red, green, or blue, is interpreted so each pixel has values for all three colors. The checkerboard pattern of colors is called the Bayer pattern.
Update 10:30 a.m. PDT August 20:: I asked Adobe about what cameras are affected by the green issue in the demosaic algorithm, and Tom Hogarty, Adobe's Lightroom product manager, had this response:
"Sony, Panasonic, and Olympus are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files."
Some might be disconcerted to find that older raw images might look different when they're opened again with software that uses an updated algorithm. For those folks, I recommend exporting a JPEG or TIF to bake in your editing settings for raw images.
For the rest of us, this illustrates one of the advantages of shooting raw: new algorithms can make photos you took earlier look better than when you first took them.
Adobe also made a related change with the addition of profiles to its raw processing software; these can make photos more closely resemble results from camera settings such as portrait, landscape, or neutral, and I use them by default these days. Improvements to noise reduction algorithms is another area that springs to mind where new algorithms could take advantage of faster PC hardware to produce better photos.
Having the camera make these processing decisions when it creates a JPEG is convenient and fine for the vast majority of people, but for photo enthusiasts, raw shooting benefits from steadily improving software and hardware.
Adobe Systems, taking the same course with its forthcoming Creative Suite applications, will offer the next Mac OS X version of Photoshop Lightroom only on Intel-based machines.
Apple has chosen to discontinue support for Macs using PowerPC processors beginning with its next operating system, version 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, which is due to arrive in coming weeks. Adobe said last week that its next Creative Suite will follow suit. The CS family includes programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, DreamWeaver, and Flash Professional.
Lightroom, which is for editing and cataloging photos, isn't part of the suite, but it's headed the same route.
"The next full version update of Lightroom will not run on PowerPC-based Mac computers," Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty said in a blog post last week. "Lightroom 2 updates will continue to support PowerPC."
Meanwhile, Photoshop Principal Product Manager John Nack, while fond of PowerPC, took a pragmatic tone on his blog: "By the time the next version of the (Creative) Suite ships, the very youngest PPC-based Macs will be roughly four years old. They're still great systems, but if you haven't upgraded your workstation in four years, you're probably not in a rush to upgrade your software, either."
A high-powered programmer who'd left Adobe Systems to lead a Microsoft Windows interface design team is heading back after just over a year.
Mark Hamburg had worked on Adobe Photoshop since version 2.0 in 1990 and then was instrumental in designing its photography-specific cousin, Lightroom, which sports a radically different user interface.
Hamburg left Adobe for Microsoft in 2008 to become a "distinguished engineer" leading work on improving operating system usability. He called the job an opportunity that "was a little too interesting to turn down" because he found the Windows' experience "really annoying."
On Friday, Adobe's German public relations staff welcomed Hamburg back in a Twitter post. Added Lightroom programmer Troy Gaul, "Glad to have Mark Hamburg back at Adobe. Looking forward to his renewed impact on our products."
Jeff Schewe, a Photoshop consultant who knows Hamburg, said the Adobe engineer again will work in Adobe's digital imaging department.
"His decision to return to Adobe is more a statement of desire to again work on products in the digital imaging realm rather than a more research driven project," Schewe said in a blog post. Hamburg isn't expected to be working on Lightroom again, though, Schewe added.
Earlier this month, I encountered an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom analysis by consultant Lloyd Chambers that expressed surprise with a facet of the image editing and cataloging software: it didn't export photos as fast as possible.
Chambers found that if a photographer wants to produce JPEG or TIF images from the originals in the program, the fastest way is to divide the batch into thirds and export each third separately. Using a modern Mac Pro system, exporting a test set of photos took 351 seconds as one batch and 189 seconds divided into three batches running at the same time.
"The big disappointment is the sluggish performance importing and exporting files, which are tasks that are key to efficient workflow--tasks one has to do over and over. Most of the 'juice' of a Mac Pro goes untapped," Chambers concluded. "You have to load it up with more than one job to force more of the available CPU cores to be used. Lightroom should do this automatically!"
The study caught the attention of others, including Scott Kelby, head of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I was intrigued, too, because although many programming chores are difficult to spread across multiple processor cores, exporting photos is trivially easy since it breaks conveniently into independent bite-sized pieces. So I thought I'd see what Adobe had to say for itself.
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Nikon's D3X is now supported by Adobe Lightroom.
(Credit: Nikon)LAS VEGAS--Adobe Systems has released the final version of Lightroom 2.3, its photo-editing and cataloging software, along with its close relative, the Camera Raw 5.3 plug-in to let Photoshop CS4 edit raw images from higher-end cameras.
The new software (available as a download for Windows and Mac OS X) supports Nikon's top-end D3X, an $8,000, 24.5-megapixel machine whose owners likely will usually prefer raw files for their flexibility and quality advantages over JPEG. Also supported is Olympus' new midrange E-30.
The Lightroom 2.3 update also fixed a number of bugs and adds support for eight new languages: Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Korean, and simplified and traditional Chinese. Adobe made the announcement Monday just as the Photo Marketing Show (PMA) was getting under way here.
The Camera Raw software works with Adobe's flagship CS4 version of Photoshop, but also with the consumer-oriented Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 for video editing, and Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac OS X.
Since I helped open this particular can of worms, I feel responsible for sharing the latest news about an issue in which Adobe Systems' software opens Internet Explorer even when Chrome is set as the default browser.
I had a Twitter tirade in January after the umpteenth time that Lightroom showed me the location of a photo in Internet Explorer when I clicked the Lightroom's GPS photo location icon. Internet Explorer also showed when using Adobe Photoshop's browser-based help and when Lightroom launched my Flickr page after uploading images to the Yahoo Web site. The problems showed on my home machine with 64-bit Vista, but not my work Windows XP laptop.
Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's project manager, was sympathetic and brought the issue up with the company's engineers. They ultimately pointed the finger at Chrome, though, not at themselves. Lo and behold, the Chrome 2.0.164.0 update included this bug fix: "Fixed several problems with making Google Chrome the default browser on Windows Vista," according to Google.
But that fix is for the latest developer-preview version of Chrome--the fast-moving, relatively untested version that's not as reliable as the stable or beta versions Google also offers, which means most folks won't get it until the changes are better tested. Moreover, I installed the new version and still had the default-browser problem. Though I certainly wouldn't rule out some error or omission on my part, I decided to try the another fix suggested Thursday in an Adobe blog post by Jeffrey Tranberry: manually setting the default browser.
I eventually emerged victorious--but it took a lot of fiddling with Vista and a Chrome reinstallation.
Windows Vista offers multiple ways to set defaults. I had the best success with the topmost option.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Vista helpfully offers a "Default Programs" option from the start menu, but then makes it unclear where to perform the action; I tried "Set your default options," "Associate a file type or protocol with a program," and "Set program access and computer defaults."
I had more success with the more straightforward first option, but not without a detour in which Photoshop's help system wouldn't load in any browser at all, instead throwing an error message at me suggesting I reinstall the application.
All my efforts to set the default browser consfused Photoshop to the point where its browser-based help system wouldn't work at all. Reinstalling Chrome fixed the problem.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Instead, I reinstalled the stable version of Chrome and set it as the default during its installation process. That cleared up Photoshop's problems, and Lightroom now shows map links in Chrome as well.
The moral of this story: be careful assigning blame to one company or another for problems involving multiple applications and the operating system. Happily, I sidestepped that pothole in my irate tweet, but I confess that inwardly I thought Adobe the culprit since other programs seemed to have no trouble picking Chrome.
Nikon D3X
(Credit: Nikon USA)Adobe Systems on Friday issued near-final release candidate versions of Lightroom 2.3 and the Camera Raw 5.3 Photoshop plug-in, software that can support Nikon's new top-end, $8,000, 24.5-megapixel D3X camera and Olympus' mid-range, $1,299, 12.3-megapixel E-30.
According to the release notes, the new Lightroom version also fixes a few bugs: a memory leak that could crash the software while people were making local editing adjustments to photos, a processing error handling smaller sRAW photos from the Canon 5D Mark II, a slideshow glitch, and problems uploading and burning files to discs.
Lightroom is designed for editing, labeling, and cataloging photos--in particular, the flexible but non-standard raw files from higher-end cameras. Adobe Camera Raw is used to handle raw files in the more general-purpose Photoshop software, letting people convert them into JPEG, TIF, or other more portable formats.
... Read MoreAdobe Systems released Lightroom 2.2 on Monday night, catching up the photography software's support for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and several other newer cameras, building in the camera profiles feature, and mashing a number of bugs.
The update (downloads available for Mac OS X and Windows) is the second half of Adobe's one-two punch for supporting the "raw" image files produced by several higher-end cameras. The first half came in late November when Adobe updated Photoshop's raw-conversion software.
Canon's 5D Mark II full-frame SLR
(Credit: Canon)Raw files provide more editing flexibility than camera-produced JPEGs, but they also require manual processing. Software such as Lightroom and Apple's Aperture can handle this processing, along with cataloging, labeling, and printing. With the constant parade of new cameras, the software must be frequently updated.
Another change in version 2.2 is built-in camera profiles, which give photographers various options for tone and color for their images. I've been strongly recommending them since their release on Adobe Labs; I apply the "camera faithful" profile when importing my images to give what I feel is a more natural look. However, Lightroom profiles aren't available for all cameras.
Since Canon started shipping the 5D Mark II in late November, photographers have been avidly blogging about the arrival of their new $2,700, 21-megapixel, full-frame SLRs--or not-so-avidly about them being backordered. One refrain notes the absence of Lightroom support; Adobe and Apple write their own raw conversion software, which must be updated for each new camera's proprietary raw file format.
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I'm a big fan of Adobe Systems' camera profiles, which when editing the raw images that higher-end cameras can produce imbues photos with what I find to be more natural hues. So I was glad to hear camera profiles are moving out of Adobe Labs and into Photoshop and Lightroom.
I apply the "camera faithful" profile by default when I import photos from my Canon SLR into Lightroom. But when I tried to use the profiles on some photos I took with an Olympus E-3, I found I couldn't.
Now seemed a good time to find out exactly which models are supported, and Adobe obliged with a list.
All SLRs from Canon and Nikon, which dominate the SLR market, are supported in the profiles that ship with Adobe Camera Raw 5.2, and that's a good start. But things get thinner after that.
The Pentax K10D, K20D, and K200D SLRs also have profiles, as does Leica's expensive and somewhat exotic rangefinder, the M8. Only two compact cameras, Canon's PowerShot G9 and G10, have profiles.
There are no profiles for Sony, Olympus, Samsung, or Panasonic SLRs so far. No doubt Adobe is working on it, though. I'll update this post if I hear further details.
Updated 9:03 a.m. PST Nov. 9--See additional information below; the plug-in now can write the geographic data to files.
Jeffrey Friedl, an enterprising photographer and programmer, has released a geotagging plug-in for Adobe Systems' Lightroom, one data point in a trend that shows the image editing and cataloging software is gradually acquiring some of the clout of the more mainstream sibling Photoshop products.
Geotagging is getting easier with cameras such as Nikon's high-end compact camera, the Coolpix P6000, but it's a somewhat onerous process that today requires some technical abilities and sometimes specialized software. Writing the location metadata into digital photo files pay off later, though, for example by letting you see on a map just where you took that vacation photo or look up pictures by typing in the name of the city where you took them.
Frieldl's Lightroom geotagging plug-in reads a GPS unit's track log, then deduces a photo's location based on the time it was taken. Although that's the same basic mechanism many other geotagging programs employ, Friedl's plug-in brings some welcome flexibility to the process by moving the process within Lightroom.
Lightroom and Aperture are gaining in popularity when it comes to processing raw images from higher-end digital cameras.
(Credit: InfoTrends)More broadly, it shows that third parties are making Lightroom a more useful, customized tool. Another example are the wealth of downloadable editing "presets" that accelerate processes such as whitening subjects' teeth or brightening a dark foreground that's been overwhelmed by a bright sky. However, Lightroom still has nothing like the level of add-ons of Photoshop.
A survey by market researcher InfoTrends shows the gradual acceptance of Lightroom for its core ability, editing the raw images from high-end digital cameras. Professional photographers and enthusiasts like raw images for the flexibility, but unlike JPEGs, raw images must be processed by software such as Photoshop, Lightroom, or Apple Aperture.
InfoTrends asked what software North American companies use to process raw images in 2007 and again in July 2008. Lightroom increased in usage from 23.6 percent to 35.9 percent, while Photoshop declined from 66.5 percent to 62.2 percent, according to a blog post by Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty. Aperture, available only on the Mac, increased from 5.5 percent to 7.5 percent.
Lightroom limits
One of Lightroom's advantages is that all changes made to photos are nondestructive, meaning that unlike many Photoshop effects they can be reversed. The approach also means the changes can be saved as a small set of editing instructions stored in the image's metadata, along with captions and camera information. But one drawback of the nondestructive approach is that it limits the variety of plug-ins Lightroom can accommodate.
But Adobe is gradually expanding the software's abilities. With Lightroom version 1, one of the few ways to expand the software's abilities was with an export interface--an interface Friedl used to build a Lightroom plug-in for exporting photos directly to Flickr, Smugmug, and Picasa. With Lightrom 2, Adobe added a metadata interface that lets programmers add customized metadata to images. It's that ability that let Friedl build the geotagging plug-in.
But for now, though, Lightroom stores only the metadata in its catalog, not writing the changes to the actual image file or to an accompanying XMP "sidecar" that can house an image's metadata. (XMP, short for Extensible Metadata Platform, is an Adobe creation that sidesteps complications of storing metadata in proprietary raw image file formats.)
That limitation means Friedl's geotagging records only "shadow" GPS coordinates. That's still useful, though, since Lightroom users can set the software to embed the real metadata when exporting images as JPEG or uploading them to a Web site, for example, but it's not as good as writing it into the file.
But Adobe expects eventually to enable that ability, Hogarty said in an interview.
"Storing custom metadata in the Lightroom catalog is only the first step, and the ultimate goal is to embed the custom metadata in the XMP metadata block," Hogarty said.
It's not going to happen at a breakneck pace, though. "I can't speak to specific timeframes for when that functionality would be part of the Lightroom API (application programming interface), but I will say that any metadata implementation requires a great deal of consideration and testing," Hogarty said.
Update 9:03 a.m. PST Nov. 9: A newer version of Friedl's plug-in now can write the metadata into files so it's not just carried as shadow GPS data, Friedl said in an e-mail.
"It's still more kludgey than it needs to be, but now at least it's possible to upgrade the shadow data to 'real' GPS data," Friedl said. For raw images, the plug-in writes the metadata to an accompanying XMP sidecar, he said. The updated plug-in uses the ExifTool open-source software package to handle the writing.
"Lightroom still doesn't know about that data, so...you have to do a sync," he added, meaning that a photographer must command Lightroom to read in the geographic metadata. "It's pretty silly that one has to go through these gyrations, but that's how it is. I hope 3.0 will be better."
The plug-in also includes some support for reverse geocoding, which converts latitude-longitude coordinates into the actual names of cities and countries. It uses a new Google interface for the service. Reverse geocoding in general can make it easier for people to search for photos based on their location.
