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04-14-2011, 02:17 AM   #31
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Thought I also add my attempt from jpeg

This was done with several color balance, hue & saturation, selective color and curves adjustments in Photoshop. I spent more time on this one than the raw and can see now I could have done better had I spent a few more minutes on the raw image.

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04-14-2011, 02:32 AM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by Ash Quote
Every camera I've bought from the K100D onwards had the CD-ROM for the SilkyPix software, both for RAW conversion and JPEG editing. Certainly nowhere near as refined as ACR and Photoshop (which is what I've always used) but at least Pentax gives you that option.
The Pentax cameras I have bought came with Pentax's stripped down raw converter based on SilkyPix's engine, not the full version of SilkyPix software.
04-14-2011, 06:33 AM   #33
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QuoteOriginally posted by MPrince Quote
The Pentax cameras I have bought came with Pentax's stripped down raw converter based on SilkyPix's engine, not the full version of SilkyPix software.
The actual SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro is nothing like the Pentax freebie - it is actually quite good, once you'd figured out the somewhat idiosyncratic interface and fought your way through the flowery English manual. It works for me http://flic.kr/ps/jaYW9
04-14-2011, 08:49 AM   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by dvest Quote
The first image is a screen shot of all that was done in Adobe Camera Raw. The second was after opening it in Photoshop and just making some color balance and Hue and saturation adjustments. I had to do it again to get the screen shot. The first time I was in a hurry and didn't notice the color of the curtains so I made them green this time.
I'm also impressed with what you did from the jpeg.
Thanks that was good - I never thought of using the saturation levels -
but obviously hindsight is always 20/20 - it absolutely makes sense since the horrendous magenta lighting could be reduced by reducing saturation.

Thanks for that - the beauty of these forums is that I learn from others' experiences and take.

Thanks for the comment on my attempt with the JPG -
see later in this post on what I actually did -

But I am even more impressed with your attempt on the JPG -

QuoteOriginally posted by dvest Quote
This was done with several color balance, hue & saturation, selective color and curves adjustments in Photoshop. I spent more time on this one than the raw and can see now I could have done better had I spent a few more minutes on the raw image.
Yes, yes!! that is very, very impressive -
a very, very worthwhile attempt -
I wish I could process as well as that -
kudos! on processing a JPG -

I hope everyone will note dvest's processing is on the JPG -
which shows that with the right skills one can do as well - and sometimes better than RAW.....

This is kind of the like the saying in photography -
it's not the camera - but the person behind it -

To be explicit - it's not RAW or JPG or the processor/converter -
but the person doing the processing......


OK, as promised - my processing steps:

I am actually doing it now while I am typing this to take screen shots of the processing steps -

1) open JPG with Pentax DCU (time taken = few seconds)

Note the magenta picture highlighted is the JPG version -
and PDCU is on the default "Camera setting"

2) select Gray Point Setting (highlighted in red outline)- then click on the bassist's white t-shirt (time taken = few seconds)

(note the highligting and selection is on the JPG)

That was it
- the result -

(total time so far less than 1 minute)
EXIF attached - check the time stamp to see I did this while typing this post.

All I then did, was to bring it into my regular photo editor and adjust brightness/contrast - I did deselect the bassist's white t-shirt so it would not be totally burnt out (time taken probably 1 minute)

So about a couple of minutes and almost no special skills used -
it's taken me more time to type this and doing all the screen shots and adding text to the shots,
than it took to get to this
end result in Post #29

(I did reduce saturation a bit so this would not be so garish)

So to salvage a horrendous magenta cast problem -
RAW is not necessarily the only solution -
one can work on the JPG
and in less than 2 minutes, I can get a presentable result
without any special skills or processing.

But I am very impressed with dvest's JPG result -
if you would be kind enough please give us a bit more detail
on what you did to achieve your results, please? Thanks.


Last edited by UnknownVT; 04-14-2011 at 01:35 PM.
04-14-2011, 11:00 AM   #35
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The screenshots below show how I got it started in the right direction. The first shot shows the only adjustment that had been made at that point. The rest was just tweaking using color balance, hue & saturation and curves adjustments. I'm not really a numbers person when using Photoshop. I just use the tools mentioned and try different things until I get what I like. With Photoshop there are several ways to do things and get similar end results.

One of the first things I tried was the eyedropper tool on the white shirt but that didn't work as well in Photoshop as in your example.

BTW - I personally prefer the raw image because it contains more detail, but as you say "RAW is not necessarily the only solution". I agree.
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04-14-2011, 01:07 PM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by dvest Quote
BTW - I personally prefer the raw image because it contains more detail, but as you say "RAW is not necessarily the only solution". I agree.
Thank you for the processing details - much appreciated.

I'll have to try that too -
I didn't realize that one could select magenta
and then desaturate just that color - brilliant.

Re: more detail in RAW - if you're only referring to my paired RAW+JPG -
then there is a slight wrinkle that you may not have noticed.

I shoot JPGs at 10Mp -
so when I switched on RAW+JPG -
the DNG/RAW is at 12Mp
and the JPG is still at 10Mp -
so that may account for the detail in the RAW -

But when we resize for the web - even a largish size of 1200x800 which would overflow most people's screens - the differences if any become moot -
as would printing up to about 20"x16". So the differences are almost at the pixel peeping level.

Sure lots will say 12Mp is bound to be superior to 10Mp....
well I know you've looked at K-x and K-r images and compared them side-by-side to the K-5 -
yes, of course we're bound to see the differences at pixel peeping level
- but really does it make that much difference in real practical output?
04-14-2011, 04:45 PM   #37
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Here's a 100% crop of each untouched. First the jpeg then the raw. At smaller sizes the jpeg would probably be fine for many applications but you can see there is a noticeable difference in detail at 100% between the two without looking too hard.

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04-14-2011, 06:11 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by dvest Quote
Here's a 100% crop of each untouched. First the jpeg then the raw. At smaller sizes the jpeg would probably be fine for many applications but you can see there is a noticeable difference in detail at 100% between the two without looking too hard.
I will give you that -
however there is more to it than that -
the magenta is very hard on details -
JPG has a very hard time compression it properly

for example this small overall shot that I had posted above is almost devoid of detail -and looks mushy -

that's because the magenta (red & blue only) are hard to compress - thus losing detail
(look in particular at the drummer's face).

Then there is in camera noise reduction - Pentax are actually very good at retaining detail with NR -
but with no NR obviously there would appear to be more detail albeit with more noise.

Can't do anything about the NR - but I kind of like Pentax's NR -
but we can do something about the detail destroying magenta -
This is the JPG -

it's revealed a bit more detail (and one can see the sharpening artifacts) -
but an improvement over the magenta JPG crop you posted which had masked the details?

Good conversation. Thank you

Last edited by UnknownVT; 04-14-2011 at 06:24 PM.
04-15-2011, 01:26 AM   #39
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Ok, I'll play.

SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro v4.1.35 with default settings
Load DNG
Grey balance tool on the bloke's t-shirt takes out the magenta cast
Take the exposure up one stop
Still not right, use dodging set to 50, better
Check for blown highlights - set DR expansion to +2 to compress these
A bit noisy, set denoise/sharpness to 'faint sharp' preset - no need to overdo the NR
Can be lived with - develop

All in all less than a minute including thinking time. Full size should be visible on Flickr.


IMGP4490 on Flickr

Last edited by kh1234567890; 04-15-2011 at 01:36 AM.
04-15-2011, 02:20 AM   #40
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QuoteOriginally posted by UnknownVT Quote
I will give you that -
however there is more to it than that -
the magenta is very hard on details -
JPG has a very hard time compression it properly

for example this small overall shot that I had posted above is almost devoid of detail -and looks mushy -

that's because the magenta (red & blue only) are hard to compress - thus losing detail
(look in particular at the drummer's face).

Then there is in camera noise reduction - Pentax are actually very good at retaining detail with NR -
but with no NR obviously there would appear to be more detail albeit with more noise.

Can't do anything about the NR - but I kind of like Pentax's NR -
but we can do something about the detail destroying magenta -
This is the JPG -

it's revealed a bit more detail (and one can see the sharpening artifacts) -
but an improvement over the magenta JPG crop you posted which had masked the details?

Good conversation. Thank you
If you are happy with the jpeg for your intended use of the image, that's what matters. Sometimes I shoot jpeg, other times raw. It depends on my plans for the images. I'm glad we have both to choose from.
04-15-2011, 08:35 AM   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by kh1234567890 Quote
SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro v4.1.35 with default settings
Load DNG
Grey balance tool on the bloke's t-shirt takes out the magenta cast
Take the exposure up one stop
Still not right, use dodging set to 50, better
Check for blown highlights - set DR expansion to +2 to compress these
A bit noisy, set denoise/sharpness to 'faint sharp' preset - no need to overdo the NR
Can be lived with - develop
All in all less than a minute including thinking time.
Excellent! - this shows that SilkyPix in its non-Pentax form (Pentax DCU is based on SilkyPix) is capable to rendering this awkward magenta lit picture simply and quickly.

I took twice as long as you at under 2mins!

Thank you very much for the confirmation of SilkyPix's capabilities.

Last edited by UnknownVT; 04-15-2011 at 09:00 AM.
04-15-2011, 08:57 AM   #42
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QuoteOriginally posted by dvest Quote
If you are happy with the jpeg for your intended use of the image, that's what matters. Sometimes I shoot jpeg, other times raw. It depends on my plans for the images. I'm glad we have both to choose from.
hmmmm.... I wasn't arguing with you -
merely pointing out that the JPG has "unrevealed" detail masked by the strong magenta lighting - plus detail is actually lost by the K-x in camera NR.

So that we can compare apples to apples -
taking your RAWcrop,jpg - if it's run through NR
(and I did everything to recover detail/reduce blur) we get:

this is not so different from the JPGcrop - of course doing lighter NR on the RAW image one can tailor it so that there is less detail loss -
but the main point I am making here is that the most of the perceived detail in the RAW crop is actually grain/noise......
04-15-2011, 09:19 AM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by UnknownVT Quote
I took twice as long as you at under 2mins!
Thank you very much for the confirmation of SilkyPix's capabilities.
Well, it might have been just over a minute - I wasn't timing myself.

The noise structure from the K-x is interesting - my K-7 tends to give more random 'uniform' noise at high ISO rather that the 'spikey' noise that your K-x produces.

In any case, if I had a shot like that and wanted to play with it some more, I'd dump it from SilkyPix as a 16-bit TIFF, reload into PS and try to clean it up some more with Topaz or Noise Ninja.
04-15-2011, 09:37 AM   #44
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QuoteOriginally posted by kh1234567890 Quote
Well, it might have been just over a minute - I wasn't timing myself.

The noise structure from the K-x is interesting - my K-7 tends to give more random 'uniform' noise at high ISO rather that the 'spikey' noise that your K-x produces.

In any case, if I had a shot like that and wanted to play with it some more, I'd dump it from SilkyPix as a 16-bit TIFF, reload into PS and try to clean it up some more with Topaz or Noise Ninja.
Neah, that was one of my not used shots -
I merely use it to demonstrate that RAW is not a panacea for awkward photos.

The blanket advice given as soon as any awkward problem is mentioned is to shoot RAW and all one's problems are solved (including world peace )

Well that shot normally causes no end of problems for non Pentax DCU/SilkyPix users
(that is why I was so impressed with dvest's results -
and he managed it on the JPG too) -
and in the end I can show that in less than two minutes I can manage to get a presentable result from the JPG.


To see the original "challenge" and how it came about:
I had a real doozy of a challenge of a photo summarized in Post #101
(in thread: Modern LED Stage Lighting & photography problems ( 1 2 3 ... Last Page) )
By request I also posted the original paired RAW/DNG+JPG (see post #103)
see the attempts from post #106 on.........


Finally my apologies to the OP - outsider - for the apparent hijacking of this thread -
it wasn't deliberate -
but this got way too interesting not to continue.

Nevertheless my apologies.
04-15-2011, 12:03 PM   #45
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One last try...

QuoteOriginally posted by UnknownVT Quote
hmmmm.... I wasn't arguing with you -
merely pointing out that the JPG has "unrevealed" detail masked by the strong magenta lighting - plus detail is actually lost by the K-x in camera NR.

So that we can compare apples to apples -
taking your RAWcrop,jpg - if it's run through NR
(and I did everything to recover detail/reduce blur) we get:

this is not so different from the JPGcrop - of course doing lighter NR on the RAW image one can tailor it so that there is less detail loss -
but the main point I am making here is that the most of the perceived detail in the RAW crop is actually grain/noise......
...or maybe I should have said, one more attempt at this image.

Oh, Niether was I arguing. Hope you didn't take it that way.

Here is what I would have done with the raw image had I taken it. First the raw then your jpeg. Some may prefer the jpeg, others the raw. These are at 100% so either would look better at a smaller size.

Compared to the jpeg in my opinion the difference in detail is more than percieved. Yes there is more noise but the detail hasn't been smeared away by the cameras noise reduction. At least when you start with the raw file you have a lot more control over how much noise reduction is used. For this image to have been taken at 5000 ISO with an entry level body and kit lens in this lighting is amazing anyway when you think about it.

If you want to get rid of ALL noise as in the jpeg then you might as well shoot jpeg and save yourself some time. Nothing wrong with that.
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Last edited by dvest; 04-15-2011 at 12:29 PM.
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