Hi, Larry I'm not Alex, but since I'm going off-list for a couple of days, I thought I might put in my opinions as well. Last week, I tried the best I could to compare the raw-file converters from PhaseOne, Photoshop CS, Pentax (both photo lab and the PS plugin), FotoStation v5.1, ThumbsPlus v7beta and BreezeBrowser v2.9. I will try to compile my findings on a web page, but don't have the time in a couple of weeks yet so here's a short version...:-)
I suppose you know the Pentax tool. The only features I like in there is the ability to use a curve tool, and the ability to read lens information out of the EXIF. In other respects, I think it's terrible to work with... FotoStation 5 is a very good archiving program that claims raw file support just like ThumbsPlus, BreezeBrowser and Photoshop CS. However, as a user on their support forum said (discussing Nikon NEF-files), "it just plainly sucks". With Pentax raw files, all thumbnails are displayed arbitrarily as black or white rectangles. So it's off my list of candidates. The ThumbsPlus "converter" is just an extraction robot without any adjustment options at all. No good for conversion, but as an archiving program it's great value for the money. The BreezeBrowser (v2.9) conversion is actually pretty good. In addition to preset white-balances, you can select whitepoint with an eyedropper, and there is a Levels tool. There is also a histogram, which imo is a very essential graphic to peek at in the process. The preview window is a bit small, and there's no zoom function in it. To compensate, there is a "100% preview" button that brings up a full size preview, but it takes an awful lot of time to produce the preview, and you have to close that window to make further adjustments. The sharpening tool is not quite up to the same standards as Photoshop and PhaseOne, but it's fair enough. Still, I find it quite easy to get good results with this converter, especially if I concentrate on what the histogram tells. Another big plus for BreezeBrowser is that it has the fastest thumbnail generation I've seen so far. Great value for the money at USD 60. The Photoshop CS tool is also nice. I like the adjustment of chromatic aberration and the possibility to tune hue and saturation for separate colours. What I miss, though, is the Levels and Curves on the converter. Of course it's possible to do that afterwards in Photoshop, but I haven't been able to conclude on any optimal guidelines for setting the conversion controls to the best possible starting point. For me, using CS to get the results I want takes longer time than either ThumbsPlus or PhaseOne C1raw. It's a good thing that CS remembers the settings used for each image it has previously converted, so that you can at least start from what you had last time. In my opinion, the best of the pack is the PhaseOne C1raw. There are eyedroppers for both whitepoint and blackpoint in addition to preset whitebalances. One little curious thing, though, is that it seems to select different combinations of colour temperature and tint than do the other programs for a given whitebalance. Not sure if has any practical importance. There are both levels and curves tools, and you work with them directly on the histogram graph, so it's easy to see what you're doing. In the PRO version you can also adjust the curves of R, G and B separately. The sharpening tool also works very well, and you can select to rescale and resample the images both up and down. The program also has a very neat way to organise batch jobs. You can choose to apply your adjustments to series of selected images, and when you're done adjusting them you put them in a queue. When you're ready for a cup of coffee, you start the batch. There are three versions of the C1raw. The LE costs USD99 and have some limitations, but it's a bit hard to justify the price jump to the SE version at USD299. It's even harder to justify the jump up to the PRO version (USD599) unless you have a need to process a *huge* lot of images in each batch. The PRO batch queue can hold 100, the SE 20 and the LE 10, IIRC. Phew... this became a bit longer than I intended... Thanks for reading me so far...:-) As I said, I have plans to make a web page out of this, but I haven't even gathered all my notes from the testing yet. So all this is off the top of my head, and apologies if I have misremembered some hard facts. However, all the programs have trial versions that you can download and test for yourselves, and I suspect that the question of finding something that suits your workflow might be just as important as a feature comparison. Cheers, Jostein ----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Hodgson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 10:01 PM Subject: Re: using C1 DSLR > Hi Alex, > > You wrote: > > >I use C1DSLR for my conversions. > > >alex > > How do like C1DSLR? Have you compared it to the results from Photoshop? Is > it worth the money? Please give some thoughts on your experience with this > product. > > Larry from Prescott > > >
