Re: Camera Raw Plug-in
Re: Camera Raw Plug-in
- Subject: Re: Camera Raw Plug-in
- From: Ian Lyons <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:04:48 +0000
Whilst I welcome the introduction of Camera Raw and find many of its
features; especially speed of conversion, etc extremely useful I believe
many of the comments made here and elsewhere regarding its introduction
reducing the need for profiling the camera to be slightly exaggerated.
I use the Canon EOS D30 and have easy access to a D60. Users of both these
cameras are familiar with how Canon did less than a perfect job when
handling highlights. The Canon supplied software will often clip the
highlight region to the extent that even good data is trashed. Many
initially thought this down to their poor exposure technique but time,
practice and experience tells us differently. It is in fact down to
non-linear sensor saturation at the extreme end of the scale. Those of us
who have actually worked with these two cameras and profiled them are well
practiced in how this problem can be overcome. Those who haven9t profiled
these cameras in linear raw mode will have no idea how good data can be
retained. Nor have they got ANY clue as to the image quality that can be
captured and retained. Canons attempt is crap in comparison. Sadly Camera
Raw treats the highlight end EXACTLY like the software provided by Canon -
it blasts to hell much of the GOOD data so that we don9t see out of whack it
can become. So from my perspective Adobe have dropped the ball by not
allowing the user to convert the data into the linear state. Likewise they
haven9t allowed any headroom at the highlight end. So in this regard Camera
RAW is actually worse than the software supplied by Canon. So why should
this be and how come a group of folk so savvy in CM not recognise a foul-up
when it looks them right in the face?
According to all I read Camera Raw utilises a generic profile for each
camera. If this is true then it is likely that the profile was created using
techniques similar to those with which we are all familiar. If conventional
camera profiling techniques were used then this would explain why Camera Raw
screws up the highlights in the same way as Canon does. Either Adobe saw
the non-linearity issue or they got lazy - I prefer to believe the the
former. There are a number of profiling workarounds that allow us to hold
the highlights but I9m not sure that the final profile would be easily
integrated into Camera Raw as it is currently configured. This is sad and as
such does limit the usefulness of Camera Raw to those images that were NEVER
full-scale to begin with.
I have no idea how Cameras other than the D30 and D60 perform but the
description I give above for the sensor response to certain images for these
two cameras is accurate and is one reason why many who claim to know their
way round profiling digital cameras avoid linear raw mode like it was the
bubonic plague! Any application that either builds a profile on the
processed image data or simply adopts a 3least risk2 approach to automating
the conversion from a linear to fully processed image has already been
seriously compromised the highlights and thrown away perfectly good data.
Put bluntly - profiling the D30/60 is still a prerequisite for ultimate
image quality in some situations and sadly Camera Raw doesn9t seem to have
the tools that allow this - two steps forward and one back - we got speed of
conversion but still the same crap highlights :-(
If my description of the problem isn9t clear enough then you can see it
diagrammatically along with one profiling workaround at the following page:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/d30-profiling/d30_1.htm
Ian Lyons
http://www.computer-darkroom.com
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