[kh1234567890]

Using "event" look profile in bibble... omg. I guess you have your camera set to "vivid" if "event" gives you the same oversaturated look as your cam jpg.

There's nothing wrong with LR, it gives almost the same colors as "neutral" image tone on the K-5. On the other hand Bibble has a broken camera profile for K-5 (and many other cameras), you may want to check the bugs section on their forum. Just saying as a Bibble and LR user.

The Bibble one looks way too oversaturated. SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro 5, which I use, on its defaults gives pretty much the same colours as the LR3 example. There are quite a few out of sRGB gamut areas though. The question is - which one approximates best the actual colours of the scene ?

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Last edited by kh1234567890; 07-30-2016 at 06:06 PM.

[pentup]

Then goto the preset tab in ACR, select the context drop down menu(on the left of the pane) and choose > Load Settings.

Sorry, I'm still confused. How do I install this in Lightroom, as opposed to ACR? The import preset dialog in LR won't even see your file in the directory that I unzipped it to. (and are we talking about the same thing as LR presets? I thought the color profiles were something different...) I can't find anyway to do it the lightroom interface. Thanks for any help.

[areidjr]

Your very welcome.
And since this discussion, I've taken it upon myself to replicate all of the K-5's camera profiles in ACR. Which I'll upload and post here to share with everyone interested in adding them to their workflow. Who knows... maybe this will motivate Adobe to follow suit one day

Thanks for your help with this also.
It's been a real eye opening experience.

JohnB

Thanks, John. I'm looking forward to having them. I downloaded the one you posted and I like it

[kent]

The Bibble one looks way too oversaturated. SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro 5, which I use, on its defaults gives pretty much the same colours as the LR3 example. There are quite a few out of sRGB gamut areas though. The question is - which one approximates best the actual colours of the scene ?

You can always choose another Look Profile in Bibble (still a tad more saturated saturated than LR and PS unless you choose Product Reduced profile).

[robgo2]

That's most interesting.
I'd be curious to see a comparison between ACR/LR and Bibble to try and figure out what is happening. But something tells me that the differences are likely in profiling(most likely custom curves etc). However, this wouldn't be the first time I've read of someone complaining about LR RAW output not being up to snuff either. Then again... I hardly use Adobe for RAW processing since I've discovered RPP and Raw Therapee. To which I should add are best used to produce complely neutral transition files. So no color profiling issues there either I guess.

John Bee,

I'm curious as to whether you are using Raw Therapee on a Mac. I have tried with the latest version and can barely get it to work at all. When I can, I find the conversions to be very inferior to RPP, which I really love. I still use Capture One for mass processing and save RPP for the good stuff. Too bad for Windows users that RPP will almost certainly never be usable of their platform (according to the developers).

Rob

[JohnBee]

John Bee,

I'm curious as to whether you are using Raw Therapee on a Mac. I have tried with the latest version and can barely get it to work at all. When I can, I find the conversions to be very inferior to RPP, which I really love. I still use Capture One for mass processing and save RPP for the good stuff. Too bad for Windows users that RPP will almost certainly never be usable of their platform (according to the developers).

Rob

Hi Rob,

Unfortunately, I've never tried using RT on Mac OS. In fact, the entire reason I installed Mac OS on my workstation was to exclusively run RPP(which I also love). However... I'm finding that the latest Raw Therapee build may in fact surpass RPP in a number of way(ie. sharpening, noise reduction, vibrance, color cast and highlight recover/control etc etc.) and so there is a good chance that I may hang-up my Hackintosh connection for good.

[robgo2]

Hi Rob,

Unfortunately, I've never tried using RT on Mac OS. In fact, the entire reason I installed Mac OS on my workstation was to exclusively run RPP(which I also love). However... I'm finding that the latest Raw Therapee build may in fact surpass RPP in a number of way(ie. sharpening, noise reduction, vibrance, color cast and highlight recover/control etc etc.) and so there is a good chance that I may hang-up my Hackintosh connection for good.

John,

I discovered RPP about 3 months ago and have been in love with it ever since. An important point to appreciate is that it is not intended to be a full featured image editing program, a la Lightroom and Capture One (and which I think Raw Therapee aspires to be as well). With RPP, you just try to get the best possible histogram for subsequent PP in Photoshop. In other words, the image is not nearly a finished product at the time of output. The developers make this point clearly on their webpage. (Think of RPP as producing an optimal negative from which to make a print.) But the file from RPP that you open in PS has more detail and tonal information than you can get from any other raw converter. (RPP's compressed exposure is a brilliant innovation that gives film-like roll-off of highlights and shadows.) But the user has to be willing and able to make all the proper adjustments in PS in order to get the best final results. I'm sorry to say that RT, when it works for me, does not really come close.

I realize that many photographers want to do all of their image editing within their raw conversion programs. I understand this desire from a workflow point of view, and it is the reason that RPP is not a raw converter for the masses. Nevertheless, it is the best raw converter that I have found, bar none.

Rob

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Last edited by robgo2; 11-27-2011 at 07:43 PM.

[JohnBee]

John,

I discovered RPP about 3 months ago and have been in love with it ever since. An important point to appreciate is that it is not intended to be a full featured image editing program, a la Lightroom and Capture One (and which I think Raw Therapee aspires to be as well). With RPP, you just try to get the best possible histogram for subsequent PP in Photoshop. In other words, the image is not nearly a finished product at the time of output. The developers make this point clearly on their webpage. (Think of RPP as producing an optimal negative from which to make a print.) But the file from RPP that you open in PS has more detail and tonal information than you can get from any other raw converter. (RPP's compressed exposure is a brilliant innovation that gives film-like roll-off of highlights and shadows.) But the user has to be willing and able to make all the proper adjustments in PS in order to get the best final results. I'm sorry to say that RT, when it works for me, does not really come close.

I realize that many photographers want to do all of their image editing within their raw conversion programs. I understand this desire from a workflow point of view, and it is the reason that RPP is not a raw converter for the masses. Nevertheless, it is the best raw converter that I have found, bar none.

Rob

Hello again,

I'm happy to hear you're enjoying RPP. And I felt the exact same way you do about it when I discovered it about 2.5 years ago. Mind you, there were many changes over the years with the software though for the most part, I think RPP's best feature is its simplicity.

Having said that, I never really gave-up on RPP per say given that it has never let me down. However... I've always found RPP's lack of chroma NR and inline filtering to be somewhat of a letdown since features such as these are best implemented in RAW(prior to demosaic). which means that I had to import my TIFF's into ACR prior to post processing, which was a bit of a pain at times. However... I still preferred using RPP as my main developer because there was no other solution that could render the level of detail that it provided.- or so I thought...

That as until I came across Raw Therapee's new demosaic engine dubbed(Amaze) which claimed to be better than any other RAW developer engine to date. Which I was skeptical given that I had past experience RPP, but.. I figured I'd give it a look just the same to see just what all the fuss was about. And that's when I saw for myself that the claims were true! - RT was visibly rendering better(more) detail than any other RAW developer I had ever used including RPP! And before I go sticking my foot in my mouth, I should state for the record that my tests were conducted about a year ago. And so there is always the possibility that RPP has been updated since then. However those were my findings at that time.

Whatever the case, RT has undergone several major updates since that day and in the process, some of which I must say turned-out to be rather intuitive. For example: on the RAW side of things, RT sports both input and output WideGamut color profiles. It also has an an HSV channel control panel that allows for parametric color control(ie. magenta cast removal) which is amazing for high ISO color shift corrections. Another very powerful feature, is referred too as an inline noise filter. Which allows noise patterns to be muted-out with very little impact on IQ. Then there is a Chroma NR filter that rivals ACR's legendary performance and finally a RAW white/black point controller that works in conjunction with the highlight reconstruction tool(which is second to the none the best I've ever seen). And of course, the most important feature of all, which is the Amaze demosaic engine, that comes with a false color suppression controller. And then my personal favorite, a post demosaic artifact noise reduction tool(phew) that helps eliminate for high ISO artifacts. All of which fall into a host of other nifty features that could easily fill an entire page. Though for the most part, make-up for a very powerful RAW deveoper solution.

Having said all that, I think what really stand-out with most of these functions is that they take place at the pre-processing stage rather than at the post-processing level, which allows for the processor to take full advantage of the overhead data that comes with RAW files - Anyways... I didn't intend to turn this into some technobabble lecture, but I couldn't come-up with a better way to share some of the highlights behind RT's functionality.

At any rate, unfortunately... I wasn't able to find the test images that were generated in my last comparison between RPP and RT. However I did find some RT preliminary test crops that were used to evaluate Raw Therapee's Amaze engine. And so I'll post those to help explain what I saw and perhaps, give you the opportunity to download the source file and compare them with your own RPP build.

The RAW file I used can be downloaded here: http://216.18.212.226/PRODS/K5/FULLRES/K5hSLI00080_NR_0.DNG



In this image, I focused on the thin horizontal lines inside the letters of Lager Beer title. This proves to be a challenge for most demosaic engines as traditional rendering seem to muddle detail in areas such as these.


In this sample, I focused on the pattern definition of the red and visibility of the weave in the fabric. While taking note of the consistency of the neutral grey background to gauge overall grain quality. This evaluation helped establish the overall detail contrast in against the artifacts produced in oversharpening.


And the final area that I found useful to evaluate was in the shadow quality(SEE: bottle cap) as well as the fine threads fraying from the pink fabric edge.

Well there you have it in a nutshell. This was the test method that caused me to give Raw Therapee a serious look over a year ago and I hope it proves useful to others as well. And since RAW developers are all subject to updates and improvements, I thought I'd post this to give you the opportunity to check for yourself if these results are still worth considering.

Hope this helps.
JohnB

PS. I forgot to mention this in my initial comment that Raw Therapee also produces slipstream negatives with Photoshop.

[robgo2]

John,

That is some serious pixel peeping, but I must admit that the detail is terrific in those crops. I have downloaded the file and processed it in RPP, and I do not think that I can get quite as much detail as what you have shown here, although it is close. Still, RT does not run on my Mac, so I am unable to give it a fair trial of my own.

Rob

[JohnBee]

John,

That is some serious pixel peeping, but I must admit that the detail is terrific in those crops. I have downloaded the file and processed it in RPP, and I do not think that I can get quite as much detail as what you have shown here, although it is close. Still, RT does not run on my Mac, so I am unable to give it a fair trial of my own.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I just wanted to let you know that I've downloaded and updated to RawTherapee 4.0.5.2 and found that the IQ has improved since my last version. Granted... the differences are not major though identifiable nonetheless(better grain and edge definition).

Hope this helps.

[robgo2]

Hi Rob,

I just wanted to let you know that I've downloaded and updated to RawTherapee 4.0.5.2 and found that the IQ has improved since my last version. Granted... the differences are not major though identifiable nonetheless(better grain and edge definition).

Hope this helps.

I am replying late to this post, because John and I communicated with each other through private messages. I was finally able to get Raw Therapee to work passably well on my Mac, although the only output color profile available to me is sRGB. (Upcoming builds are expected to remedy that.) Putting this aside, I am less than pleased with RT's performance, and by performance, I mean the quality of the images that it produces. They are slightly murky, and the colors are garish. On their own, images don't look so bad, but when I compare them to the same files processed by RPP and finished in CS5, the differences are quite striking. I cannot come close doing the same with RT and CS5, and, believe me, I have tried.

So, in my estimation, Raw Therapee has lots of neat features (too many, perhaps) but is still not ready for the big time. I think that part of its appeal is the fact that it is a collaboration of many people doing it for their own pleasure and wanting to share the fruits of their labors with others. I really appreciate that. However, I would point out that RPP is also freeware, although it is the product of a closed circle of only 2 or 3 developers (who really know what they are doing). My recommendation to Mac users who want the very best raw conversions and are willing to spend some time on their images is to give RPP a try. The user interface seems unintuitive at first, but it could hardly be simpler once you get to know it. The feature set is rudimentary, but it is enough to deliver superb files for subsequent editing in Photoshop.

Rob

[jpzk]

I read in this thread that PDCU (Pentax Digital Camera Utilities) is probably the best RAW converter to use because it is specifically made for Pentax.
I can see the difference when looking at the same RAW file from within PDCU vs. CS5.
The PDCU RAW files look sharper, and more saturated, with those "Pentax colours".

I use it quite a bit but I also have to use CS5 when there is a specific need for opening the RAW file(s) diferently ... for instance, there are times when the exposure will need to be adjusted and I found that CS5 does a better job but that could be me not using the software properly.

So, my questions:

1. Can one obtain/download and install a complete set of Pentax K5 profiles in CS5 ?
2. If available, iwhere can I get the K5 profile(s) ?
3. Where could I find instructions on how to load the said profile(s) in CS5 ? Of course, I always have trouble with this part of installing any software ... I need VISUAL instructions.
4. Are there specific lens(es) profiles out there for us to use in CS5 ? ie.: let's say I want to load a profile for the FA 31 Ltd.

Any advice on this ?

Cheers,

JP

[JohnBee]

I am replying late to this post, because John and I communicated with each other through private messages. I was finally able to get Raw Therapee to work passably well on my Mac, although the only output color profile available to me is sRGB. (Upcoming builds are expected to remedy that.) Putting this aside, I am less than pleased with RT's performance, and by performance, I mean the quality of the images that it produces. They are slightly murky, and the colors are garish. On their own, images don't look so bad, but when I compare them to the same files processed by RPP and finished in CS5, the differences are quite striking. I cannot come close doing the same with RT and CS5, and, believe me, I have tried.

So, in my estimation, Raw Therapee has lots of neat features (too many, perhaps) but is still not ready for the big time. I think that part of its appeal is the fact that it is a collaboration of many people doing it for their own pleasure and wanting to share the fruits of their labors with others. I really appreciate that. However, I would point out that RPP is also freeware, although it is the product of a closed circle of only 2 or 3 developers (who really know what they are doing). My recommendation to Mac users who want the very best raw conversions and are willing to spend some time on their images is to give RPP a try. The user interface seems unintuitive at first, but it could hardly be simpler once you get to know it. The feature set is rudimentary, but it is enough to deliver superb files for subsequent editing in Photoshop.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I'm thinking your issues are limited to the Mac system. However, in order to give RT a fair shake against RPP, we would need a TIFF for closer examination. Otherwise... it is very difficult if not impossible to determine were the issues are taking place in your particular case.

Having said that, I gathered a quick comparison of 5 major RAW developer software(including Raw Therapee) that were processed using AUTO Ev, and default settings(no sharpening) and adjusted them Photoshop using iCorrect Edit Lab Pro, which I trust to be a very accurate WB, Level and Color Calibration tool.


click thumbnail for larger image


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Needless to say, under Windows, RT stands-out in terms of IQ, color gradations and contrast detail. However... I'd also add that there are no doubts that any of these packages could be adjusted to match. And so I don't think its feasible to assess any of them at this point in the development process. Though this does help establish Raw Therepee's capacity to run along with the remainder of the pack. Unfortunately... I didn't have access to the Pentax RAW Utility to add to the list at the time of making this, though I might try and add it down the road.

Hope this helps shed a little more light on the issue for you.

[robgo2]

Hi Rob,

I'm thinking your issues are limited to the Mac system. However, in order to give RT a fair shake against RPP, we would need a TIFF for closer examination. Otherwise... it is very difficult if not impossible to determine were the issues are taking place in your particular case.

Having said that, I gathered a quick comparison of 5 major RAW developer software(including Raw Therapee) that were processed using AUTO Ev, and default settings(no sharpening) and adjusted them Photoshop using iCorrect Edit Lab Pro, which I trust to be a very accurate WB, Level and Color Calibration tool.


click thumbnail for larger image


click thumbnail for larger image


click thumbnail for larger image


click thumbnail for larger image


click thumbnail for larger image

Needless to say, under Windows RT stands-out as producing better IQ in terms of color gradations and contrast detail. However, I'd also add that there are no doubts on the fact that any of these packages could be adjusted to match. And so I don't think its feasible to assess any of them at this particular level. However.. I think this does however show that RT's output is well positioned to compete with even the toughest of competitors insofar as the main RAW developers are concerned. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the Pentax RAW Utility to add to the list, though I might try and dig it up this evening.

Hope this helps shed a little more light on the issue for you.

I'm not sure why the Mac version should differ, but as the old saying goes, YMMV. In a personal communication, one of the RT developers told me that it is not ready for prime time.

Rob

[kh1234567890]

Unfortunately, I did not have access to the Pentax RAW Utility to add to the list, though I might try and dig it up this evening.

Pentax DCU4 v4.34


SilkyPix 5.0.10.1


Both on program defaults - WB, contrast etc 'as shot'. Output from each to 1280x848 JPEG, no additional sharpening.

RT is very good, the interface needs simplifying though - there are too many tweak options at the moment. It is also not all that stable at times.