If you enjoy photography, don't make the mistake I did.
Using my then-new SLR in 2005 and 2006, I photographed everything from my new son to otherworldly canyons we visited in Utah. The only problem: the photos were taken only in JPEG format.
JPEG is fine as far as it goes, and indeed for most folks it will suffice. But having rediscovered my enjoyment of photography in the digital era, I wish I'd used the raw image format that comes with SLRs and higher-end compact cameras.
This illustration shows the checkerboard Bayer pattern of a typical digital camera's image sensor. Each pixel captures either red, green, or blue.
(Credit: DxO Labs)My initial regret was from the realization that raw photos, although taking up about three times the storage space as a JPEG and requiring manual processing, offer higher quality and more flexibility. But what I've come to understand since then is a second advantage of raw: because processing software improves over time, raw photos in effect can get better with age.
For that reason, I've begun recommending friends who show some enthusiasm for photography that they should think about shooting important events in raw format alongside JPEG. You don't have to mess with the raw files today, but if it's an important event like a wedding, you might want them for later.
I've included below some samples of a noisy image shot in near-darkness at ISO 25,600 from my SLR. They may not convince you that shooting raw is a miracle cure for photo quality, but they do illustrate some differences with the camera's JPEG and that the raw-processing software isn't standing still.
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This view compares output from four raw-processing packages: DxO Optics Pro, Nikon's Capture NX2, Bibble 5 with the Noise Ninja noise-reduction filter, and Adobe Camera Raw that's in Photoshop. The original raw photo was taken with a Nikon D700 at ISO 25,600. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: DxO Labs)DxO Labs announced a new version of its raw image editing software Tuesday that sports what the company says is a streamlined, more adaptable interface and an ability to extract a better ultimate image from those that begin with lots of noise.
DxO Optics Pro is designed for the sometimes laborious process of converting raw images that come from higher-end digital cameras into more easily viewed and handled formats such as JPEG. Although it takes work, using raw images can provide more flexibility and quality than using JPEGs straight from the camera--and with the new DxO Optics Pro, lower noise at high ISO settings, the company said.
Specifically, the noise reduction technology in DxO Optics Pro version 6 can reduce noise well enough to effectively give a photographer one more usable F-stop out of a camera than the previous version did, said Cyrille de La Chesnais, director of sales and marketing for photography at the Paris-based company. That means a photographer could shoot at a faster shutter speed or in dimmer conditions.
That can be useful especially with modern SLRs; Canon's 5D Mark II and Nikon's D700 can both shoot at an extreme ISO of 25,600, and Canon's new 1D Mark IV and Nikon's new D3S can shoot at a whopping ISO 102,400. The images are extremely noisy in those cases, but noise reduction can help extract a more useful image. However, raw processing software can be slow even on machines with abundant processing power.
By underexposing an image in the camera and then increasing its exposure in the software, DxO Optics Pro can give a photographer a more sensitive camera. This image from a Canon G10 is effectively shot at ISO 3,200 even though the camera's maximum ISO is 1,600.
(Credit: DxO Labs)Getting a one F-stop improvement means a photographer could use ISO 25,600 instead of holding the line at 12,800. Alternatively, for a camera such as Canon's G10 high-end compact that tops out at ISO 1,600, photographers can effectively shoot at ISO 3,200 by underexposing the image by a full stop then brightening it later in software.
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Adobe Systems released the first Lightroom 3.0 beta only last week, but already people are adapting the software for their own ends. In Sean McCormack's case, time-lapse video.
Time-lapse photography, for those unfamiliar with it, compresses a sequence of still images into a movie that appears to speed up the passage of time. It's how nature documentaries get those clouds scudding over the mountains and the sun racing across the sky.
Most of us use just a small fraction of what our software can do, but McCormack is one of those people at the other end of the spectrum who figures out how to push software well beyond the built-in feature set. In Lightroom's case he took advantage of its ability to export a sequence of shots as a video, a feature designed to let photographers create easily shared slideshows.
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The Lightroom 3 beta will look familiar to current users, but there are changes under the hood. In addition, Lightroom catalogs can be synchronized with Flickr.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)With the release of its first beta version of Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 on Wednesday night, Adobe Systems is trying to improve the heart of the photographic editing and cataloging software.
"With Lightroom 3, we're looking at a performance and image quality rearchitecture," said Product Manager Tom Hogarty. Those two goals are in opposition, since better image quality demands more computing horsepower. But Hogarty said the software is more responsive when moving among photos, and images look better with new noise reduction and sharpening abilities.
There are other changes, too, though: a revamped import process for importing photos into the software catalog; built-in connections to upload photos to online services and keep them in sync; a more flexible mechanism for laying out photos to be printed; new abilities for stamping watermarks onto photos; and the ability to export photos and music as a video file.
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OnOne Software has announced version 6 of its Genuine Fractals software for expanding images up to mammoth sizes.
These new features include texture presets that more rapidly tune the resizing algorithm, batch processing so bulk operations can be run in the background, tiling to split images up into pieces for printing on smaller printers, a gallery wrap feature to help when printed images are mounted on thick frames, and the ability to work with Adobe Systems' Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2 and with Apple Aperture 2.1.
The Standard and Professional editions cost $159.95 and $299.95, respectively. In the Professional Edition but missing from the Standard is the Lightroom and Aperture support, the ability to resize CMYK images, and gallery wrap. When used as a Photoshop CS4 plug-in, only the 32-bit version of Adobe's software is supported.
Also at the PhotoPlus Expo, the company also announced PhotoTools 2 in $159.95 Standard and $259.95 Professional editions will go on sale in January. With the new version, the company said, it's now easier to find the right choice among the 300 effects and adjustments; changes can be previewed before they're applied, preset adjustments can be saved, loaded, and shared; and masking features to apply changes only to a portion of an image. The Professional Edition includes a variety of photo effects and presets and also works with Aperture 2.1 and Lightroom 2.
The company also announced the $499.95 Plug-In Suite 4.5, which combines Genuine Fractals 6 Professional Edition, PhotoTools 2 Professional Edition, Mask Pro 4.1, PhotoTune 2.2, PhotoFrame 4 Professional Edition, and FocalPoint 1.0. That bundle will be available in January, the company said.
(Via PhotoshopSupport.com.)
(Credit:
Panasonic)
At first glance, this appeared to be some sort of new Panasonic TV with its buttons exposed in some retro type of design. But it turns out to be just a 17-inch LCD monitor--one that costs around $5,000, that is.
Why so much? The BT-LH1760 is designed for commercial photo and video editing, with a native resolution of 1,280x768 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate--which translates to Panasonic's claim of "faithful color reproduction with twice the response speed of other currently available professional LCD monitors," according to Engadget. That, in turn, means no more morbidly obese CRT monitors hogging all the desk space, so you can finally have a place to eat lunch.
Those of us who are artistically challenged need all the help we can get when it comes to design software. A new tool called Vector Magic--the result of Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda--seems to be a valuable addition to the arsenal of free apps available for creating and editing images online.
Basically, Vector Magic takes rasterized images (composed of pixels) and converts them to vector (or scalable) images. The result is an image that can be easily resized with no blur or pixelation--an ideal format for logos or other images that need to appear both large and small. Vector Magic supports the uploading of JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and TIFF formats, and can export its final products as EPS, SVG, or PNG files. A warning on the Vector Magic blog today warns users to be patient because of a recent upswing in the load on its servers, but I had no problem at all converting JPEG images of various sizes into vector images in no time at all. ... Read more
Update 9/6/07: Okay, I got the version names confused--two years ago the "X" in the product name meant "10," then was switched to mean "X." As a result, I miscalculated the product cycle. Corel actually shipped a new version last year. So please ignore my attempt at a clever lead-in.
It's been three years since Corel acquired Jasc Software, and about two years since its last major release of Paint Shop Pro; that's a couple of lifetimes in the consumer software market. Today Corel finally announced and shipped a new version, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. It offers a handful of oddly random new features that I suspect won't wow the program's existing fan base, and that doesn't really provide a compelling alternative to competitors such as Adobe Photoshop Elements or even Corel's own PhotoImpact 12.
In addition to the new tools enumerated in the accompanying slideshow--Express Lab, a gray interface skin, HDR Photo Merge and Visible Watermarking--designed for photographers, Corel adds some work-flow tools targeted at the more business-oriented crowd. These include a Save for Office and Copy Special, which allows you to resize images at save and copy; Crop as New Image for dealing with batch scans; and dynamic language switching.
Features aside, however, I found PSPX2's interface annoyingly sluggish. File operations, such as loading and saving, were fine, but screen redraws for operations like effects previews aren't as snappy as I like. (Performance didn't make the list of enhancements for this version.)
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is available now for $99 (full version) or $59 (upgrade).
LAS VEGAS--DxO has updated two photography programs, releasing DxO Optics Pro 4.2 with Windows Vista support and adding new options to its FilmPack 1.1.
DxO FilmPack 1.1
(Credit: DxO)The company also is working on a DxO plug-in to automatically export photos to Flickr, a Yahoo online photo-sharing site. The plug-in permits login, tagging as well as uploading.
The Paris-based company also released version 1.1 of its FilmPack software, which lets photos be altered to take on characteristics of specific films--for example, the saturated colors of Fuji Velvia or the black-and-white contrast of Kodak Tri-X.
Version 1.0 could be used to pick different films, including the grain of the film based on close measurements of the actual film. Version 1.1 adds the ability to pick photo tones, too, such as sepia or ferric sulfate.
DxO FilmPack costs $69 through May 31, then increases to $99. DxO Optics Pro costs $79 for the Starter version, $149 for Standard and $299 for Elite.
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