Ok, I have finally figured out how to get it.
They fixed the Athlon issue! So it now works for me.
I have tried most of the trial versions of the other converters, and
also used some at colleague's computer. So I will try to compare to
other 3rd party offers. It's very long, skip to conclusion at the end
if you want.
It looks nice so far. Definitely very similar to Capture One from
Phase One. Even the image quality is similar (see point 3 below).
Which is IMO a good thing. For Nikons (gasp!) which I use, Adobe
Camera Raw sucks big time, and Nikon's own converter is a
GUI/memory/speed nightmare.
1) The user interface on Rawshooter is excellent, taking the best things
from PhaseOne's converter, and developingt them to a higher level. The
slideshow feature is great. Three priority tagging by hotkeys is
great. Et cetera. In many things the controls are simplified from
Phase One (perhaps so they may have a sellable more advanced "pro"
version later?). And they have dismissed the strange Captures/Sessions
discrepancy from C1 (which nobody except these using PhaseOne backs
apparently understood <g>), working just with folders.
One thing which was great in the more expensive option of PhaseOne, the
option to simultaneously develop the files to several formats,sizes and
colourspaces (e.g. full 16-bit TIFF in AdobeRGB plus small 600pixel
JPG in sRGB for web and a 2000pixel JPG in sRGB for archive previews)
is of course missing. Perhaps in some more advanced paid version.
The reset/restore and snapshot features are great as well.
2) OK, now to image corrections:
WB - strangely the temp in Kelvins is different in all the converters
for same image. Sadly :-(
Appearances - not detailed in the manual. It apparently messes greatly
with curves. With some images, I disliked them, artificial look, with
some, they worked well.
Fill light - just your usual selective shadows/midtones brightener. It
doesn't work very well - for most images of people it makes the image
very unnatural looking, except at teh smallest only adjustment. The
image in the manual, an example of fill light, looks ugly as well.
Gray all over. Both DEE in Nikon's software and Shadows/Highlights in Photoshop
work
much much better.
Shadow/Highlight contrast - these work very nicely. Easier to use than
manual curve changes (although these would give better control).
Sharpening & Detail extraction - I have mixed feelings about this.
They use similar algorythms as PhaseOne. That meast very good detail,
but sometimes with lots artifacts in the finest details. Especially
at higher ISOs, the noise gets an unacceptable look. Computer,
artificial look. Nikon Capture OTOH produces nice film-grain like
noise. CameraRaw produces ugliest noise. IMO. Noise reduction doesn't
help, see below.
So, both sharpening and detail extraction at are too definitely too
much aggresive for my taste. Detail extraction is useless even with
low iso images. It looks like simple 4x4 block sharpen function, which
has terrible artifacts. I ended up disabling them completely. Still,
though, it seems there is some sharpening applied nevertheless :-(
With low noise images, sharpening (but not detail extraction!) works
well, with not that much halos. The sharpening seems very similar to
PhaseOne (but slightly worse).
Noise reduction - bad. Produces ugly artifacts. Just like CameraRaw,
it smears the image by what looks like selective median filter. BUT it
leaves speckles of noise here and there. Like pepper grain. These
speckles get sharpened on top of that, if you use sharpening. Thus,
the image looks a) smeared, plasticky + b) with sharp pepper grain
visible every few tens of pixels! Do not use!
Colour noise reduction - good. Works well. Not as good as specialised
programs (Noise Ninja) , but still well.
BIGGEST PROBLEM - arbitrary sliders. no curves no levels
adjustments!!! without curves (or similar option in acr -
"brightness"), i am unable to recover overexposed highlights while
keeping the rest of image intact!!! without levels, i am unable to set
black point or white point if the light was low contrast and resulted
in grey image!!!
3) output - You can't select different Working and Output colour
spaces. The manual is not at all clear if the image adjustments are
carried in the DSLR Native colour space, or the selected Working
colour space. That could make a big difference to quality if you had
sRGB as your working space, if all operations were carried in sRGB!
Clearly, an error on their part for not clarifying this.
Quality - rendering seems similar to PhaseOne C1. Improved in some
areas (less artifacts in bright branches against sky!), worse in
other. Slightly better colour in near-clipped highlights, but
slightly worse colour overall (very camera specific though).
4) Conclusion.
The lack of levels and curves makes it unsuitable to me as a
standalone converter. It still needs a further image editing program.
>From workflow point of view, it would be good if one could do levels
inside the converter. The lack of it negates the other workflow
advantages, as I would have to still individually edit each and every
image after the conversion. What I like about C1 was that unless in
need of some layered advanced editing, everything could be done in C1
in batch mode and just submit the outputted files for printing -
everything from crop, levels, curves, resize and sharpen and profile
conversion. Though their price is high for me now :-(
Frantisek
DC> BTW, I use Firefox, and I didn't have any problems getting the download.
found out they were using some distributed content serving service
(Akamai) that is also used by many advertisers. I had the service
blocked in my adblock (THE extension to get for Firefox). But the
download link was an image only, NO text! The image was directly from
the Akamai server, so I didn't see any image at all! Normal web
practice is NEVER image-only links. Still idiots to me,
but only in the web part ;-)
Good light!
fra
