[sbh]

In terms of detail in the image, I find Pentax DCU still ahead of any other app and quite impressive. Silkypix Dveloper Studio 9 is second regarding sharpness, but offers more editing options for colour, local adjustments etc. I haven't managed to get pixelshift quality out of Raw Therapee although I set it to Pixelshift. It is actually less detailed than Capture One. Maybe I am holding it wrong.

[biz-engineer]

ut of Raw Therapee although I set it to Pixelshift. It is actually less detailed than Capture One. Maybe I am holding it wrong

May depend on what corrections are enabled/disabled. There is some edge CA in your DCU image, none on the SP DS9 image. DCU does a good job, but lack tools and is slow to process.

[house]

In terms of detail in the image, I find Pentax DCU still ahead of any other app and quite impressive. Silkypix Dveloper Studio 9 is second regarding sharpness, but offers more editing options for colour, local adjustments etc. I haven't managed to get pixelshift quality out of Raw Therapee although I set it to Pixelshift. It is actually less detailed than Capture One. Maybe I am holding it wrong.

With rawtherapee you should select one of the presets not just change the demosaicer.

Processing profiles > bundled profiles > Pixel shift > PS*

Those presets should bring out plenty detail. If you want more, I think that's unlikely the PS settings are quite strong, you can sharpen more and add more local contrast etc.

[sbh]

May depend on what corrections are enabled/disabled. There is some edge CA in your DCU image, none on the SP DS9 image. DCU does a good job, but lack tools and is slow to process.

Agree, DCU is super slow and has this awful bug to randomly "undo" the last action (by itself) when working with adjustments.
These four images are all on default settings except RT is set to Pixelshift and in DCU "Fine" is enabled. So there is still some room for editing.

With rawtherapee you should select one of the presets not just change the demosaicer.

Processing profiles > bundled profiles > Pixel shift > PS*

Those presets should bring out plenty detail. If you want more, I think that's unlikely the PS settings are quite strong, you can sharpen more and add more local contrast etc.

Thanks. I found that setting in the Preferences panel. It didn't change the image. I found another setting by opening the thumbnail strip, right-clicking on the current image and selecting Processing profile operations > Apply > Bundled Profiles > Pentax Pixelshift > PS... . This did enable pixelshift level detail. Just in case someone else is looking for this.

Attached Images

 

[house]

Agree, DCU is super slow and has this awful bug to randomly "undo" the last action (by itself) when working with adjustments.
These four images are all on default settings except RT is set to Pixelshift and in DCU "Fine" is enabled. So there is still some room for editing


Thanks. I found that setting in the Preferences panel. It didn't change the image. I found another setting by opening the thumbnail strip, right-clicking on the current image and selecting Processing profile operations > Apply > Bundled Profiles > Pentax Pixelshift > PS... . This did enable pixelshift level detail. Just in case someone else is looking for this.

You can right click both thumbnails and the main image to access the Processing profile menu. There is also these tools at top right that control the behaviour when applying profiles. Tools in red box from left

First icon: folder line line icon controls wether you completely replace or just add the settings to the current image.
Second tool: dropdown box "(Last saved)" is selects the proflile,
Third icon: open preset from some location on hard drive
Forth icon: Save settings active in current image as preset, Ctrl click to select which tools to save.
Fifth icon: Copy the settings (Ctrl as above)
Sixth icon: Paste the settings (Ctrl as above)

[jcdoss]

It sounds like everyone else has found complicated and clunky ways to handle PS-RAW files also. So, where's the advantage of having this feature built into to this awesome camera if the company, or no other company is going to support it in an editor properly? Is the original intent for in-camera jpgs only? The inclusion of an HDR mode that also can't be post-processed without heroic measure and hours of internet research seems to suggest, yes, these special shooting modes are not intended for raw files. Why not just burst out a few frames (four if you want to be precise) and merge them? Won't you get the same, or a similar amount of detail without beating around the bush?

[house]

It sounds like everyone else has found complicated and clunky ways to handle PS-RAW files also. So, where's the advantage of having this feature built into to this awesome camera if the company, or no other company is going to support it in an editor properly? Is the original intent for in-camera jpgs only? The inclusion of an HDR mode that also can't be post-processed without heroic measure and hours of internet research seems to suggest, yes, these special shooting modes are not intended for raw files. Why not just burst out a few frames (four if you want to be precise) and merge them? Won't you get the same, or a similar amount of detail without beating around the bush?

No you won't get the same result and manually merging is more complicated than selecting your PA files and applying the preset.

[tduell]

No you won't get the same result and manually merging is more complicated than selecting your PA files and applying the preset.

Did you mean PS files?
Yes, quite right that you won't get the same result as each normal shot interpolates the RGB values from the bayer filter to arrive at a value, whilst in PS mode the 'correct' RGB values are obtained from the shifted images.
One can get a 'better' image from a number of images each shot with very minor movements of the camera, and the result may give more detail than a single shot, and should give less noise, but that process does require special software and is very process intensive. It's called Super-resolution.
I've experimented with this and yet to get any results that match PS.

Cheers,
Terry

[BigDave]

I just did a test with PaintShopPro- ultimate- 2020. If opened the DNG file right up into the raw converter.

[tduell]

I just did a test with PaintShopPro- ultimate- 2020. If opened the DNG file right up into the raw converter.

A pixel-shift DNG?
Are you sure it didn't just open the first of the four raw files in the DNG container?

Cheers,
Terry

[BigDave]

OK, something is not making sense for me, and I have tried different settings on the K-1. When using the pixel shift function, I can turn on or off motion correction or turn PSR off completely. No other choices that I can see. The file that is generated with PS on is one DNG or JPG, not four. What am I missing here???

[Rondec]

It sounds like everyone else has found complicated and clunky ways to handle PS-RAW files also. So, where's the advantage of having this feature built into to this awesome camera if the company, or no other company is going to support it in an editor properly? Is the original intent for in-camera jpgs only? The inclusion of an HDR mode that also can't be post-processed without heroic measure and hours of internet research seems to suggest, yes, these special shooting modes are not intended for raw files. Why not just burst out a few frames (four if you want to be precise) and merge them? Won't you get the same, or a similar amount of detail without beating around the bush?

I think you make the process sound way worse than it is. The point of pixel shift is to have an image with more detail (particularly more color detail), better dynamic range and lower noise. You can shoot out of camera jpegs, but to me, these are not going to maximize your results.

The different programs I have used to edit the DNG files are as follows: Lightroom 6 -- this combines the four images with no motion correction. As long as there is no motion in your image, it works well. Any image that includes water, tree limbs, etc is probably going to have strange artifacts with it. DCU -- this has motion correction options as well as all of the presets that are available in-camera. You can also save a TIFF file from here for processing elsewhere. It works well, but doesn't have all of the features of Raw Therapee. In addition, it is really slow. Raw Therapee -- this is my favorite as it allows the most adjustments to the settings. You can choose auto setting which masks out the motion areas. You can do some different custom features as well and you can see the motion mask, which as I mentioned before, I find really handy. I do not do my final edit in RT. I have a preset that I use to create a TIFF file that I take into Lightroom and process, often with Nik Effects. Using the preset literally adds about 30 seconds to my work flow. My experience with super resolution techniques is that they are far less automated and require a lot of work to get similar results.

From Pentax's standpoint, they did include DCU with the camera and it is able to process those images and that is probably good enough. I would just say again that I feel like with a good pixel shift image I am getting close to medium format quality from my K-1 cameras. It is therefore worth it to me to have another minor step in my processing of these images, whereas with super resolution the extra step is a much bigger time commitment and didn't provide any benefit for pixel shift.

[house]

OK, something is not making sense for me, and I have tried different settings on the K-1. When using the pixel shift function, I can turn on or off motion correction or turn PSR off completely. No other choices that I can see. The file that is generated with PS on is one DNG or JPG, not four. What am I missing here???

The above is exactly as it should be. What do you expect to be different?

The motion correction setting in the camera only applies to the jpeg file. You can motion correct in post regardless of your in camera settings

A pixel shift DNG contains four raw files and at least one jpeg (the preview image). DNG is a container format and you can stuff serveral "files" into it. The same goes for Pentax HDR dng.
You can extract any one of those single raw files using various software, Rawtherapee being the most user friendly I know.

[sbh]

OK, something is not making sense for me, and I have tried different settings on the K-1. When using the pixel shift function, I can turn on or off motion correction or turn PSR off completely. No other choices that I can see. The file that is generated with PS on is one DNG or JPG, not four. What am I missing here???

You're not missing anything. It's that simple. In the jpeg you'll already see the pixelshift result. With the raw file you'll need an app that supports pixelshift to see it's advantages. Apps that don't support it will show the file as if it was a regular raw file (because they don't know how to calculate the pixelshift stuff).

Turning motion correction on or off will take affect when you shoot jpeg. It will apply motion correction immediately and write the final results to the jpeg file.
In raw files, MC it is a metadata that tells the raw converter app whether you want it to apply motion correction or not. You can still change your mind later and switch it on/off in the app because the raw file contains all the raw data for both on and off.

There is one exception. Silkypix Developer Studio 9 does not have that switch - at least i haven't found it.

[BigDave]

Apps that don't support it will show the file as if it was a regular raw file (because they don't know how to calculate the pixelshift stuff).

Excellent info! I just notic3eed the PS images are in the 157mb range, usually much lower for the DNG!