PerfectRaw information

[DanielJ]

Unorthodox perhaps, but I would like to invite GUI to talk here about his new project PerfectRaw. I've witnessed what can be achieved with another of his projects - ZeroNoise and am impressed at both the fresh approach of addressing a common issue with digital imaging as well as utility of the program whose results speak for themselves.
At first look, PerfectRaw appears to offer features other raw processing programs do not and seems to have a very good handle on highlight recovery. The documentation on the project page and in the forums at OjoDigital website are in Spanish, google does an adequate job of translating, but hearing from Gui in person would be ideal. For those of us looking to get the most out of our digital files Gui's work helps make this an exciting time.

[_GUI_]

Hi Daniel, thank you very much for your interest. Perfect RAW is not born to be 'yet another RAW developer'; on the contrary the approach is somewhat quite different.

Commercial (and non commercial) RAW developers trend to add more and more features that are in fact part of the post-processing stage. On the other side they hide to the user some features found on the RAW data that could be useful or at least interesting to explore to take your RAW files to their best.

In that way Perfect RAW is intended to be a low level RAW developer, providing the user maximum control of the development process, and NOT adding any of those features that in our opinion are best done in Photoshop (or your favourite edition tool), such as bright, contrast, saturation, curves,... Perfect RAW will provide a totally unprocessed image allowing to obtain it with all those features found in DCRAW plus some others we are planning to add, and with a graphical interface. It will not overlap Photoshop features.

We are happy to loose on speed and/or ease of use if that allows us to take a deep control of the development process.

I have to say that the idea is being carried out by 3 forum members, but because of my limited knowledge of C coding (all my programs are VB) the great programming tasks are being carried out by the other 2 guys (Manuel Llorens and Fernando Ariznavarreta) who are really impressing me. In a very short time they have been able to cut DCRAW's code in several parts and create separate dll libraries to divide the development process tasks and add new features to our taste.

I will translate the main features of Perfect RAW here:

Las principales características que estamos barajando son:

DISPLAY OPTIONS
- Split screen (L/R or U/D) to compare result of development before vs after
- High definition 16-bits histogram including logarithmic (f-stops) plot
- Highlight clipping blinking including precise info about partial saturation
- Quick zoom and drag options just using the mouse controls

DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
- RAW black and saturation points. Ability to calibrate our camera's precise saturation point
- Interpolation algorithms from DCRAW (bilinear, VNG, PPG or AHD)
- White balance: none, camera, automatic, linear multipliers, temp/tint or user defined patches (rectangular or elliptical) over the image

IMAGE IMPROVEMENT
- Exposure control -8EV to +8EV including n f-stops of highlight preservation
- Highlight recovery neutral or with several degrees of surrounding tone emulation. We are planning to try our own algorithm to improve DCRAW's
- Wavelet pre-demosaic noise reduction and median colour noise reduction
- Chromatic aberration correction

OUTPUT OPTIONS
- Colour management: none, standard profiles (sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, CIE XYZ, WideGamut) or user defined input and output table profiles. It includes monitor profile for proper image display.
- Gamma compensation (including linear, sRGB and standard gamma output)

If the idea is nicely finished, we have other projects in mind: translate Histogrammar into a poweful C new version, Zero Noise C version with 16-bit DNG output (so that every user can use his fav tool to develop it), curve editor (much more detailed than PS curves).

All the programs, as usual, being developed in English.
BTW if any of you know about a C coder with knowledge on the DNG format (ability to build a DNG RAW file from RGB data) do not hesitate to contact me.

BR

[Keith Reeder]

This looks very interesting, Guillermo - I absolutely agree that there is a place for a dedicated RAW converter that excels at that process without adding a multitude of "post processing" functions.

I really look forward to this!



And thanks to Daniel for asking Gui to talk about this project.

[evogel99]

Guillermo

I have downloaded perfectRAW alpha from your forum. I am having trouble using it. Are there instructions anywhere?

Thanks!


Eric Vogel

[atvinnys]

I wonder if you could find some info on their forum
http://www.ojodigital.com/foro/forumdisplay.php?f=125

(I use translator plugin on firefox to translate into english...not perfect, but gives the general idea..)

[evogel99]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I was able to use perfectRAW after I got to my home computer and expanded the screen. This made most (?) of the controls visible although some are still clipped. I was able to process images and save them successfully.

Not sure why I am getting the clipping on the controls ...

[evogel99]

The first round of public test yielded this nugget.

There is a TTF in the alpha distribution. This MUST be installed as a font. Once I did this, the GUI looked fine, no more clipping.

[_GUI_]

Originally Posted by evogel99

I have downloaded perfectRAW alpha from your forum. I am having trouble using it. Are there instructions anywhere?
Eric Vogel

This is a link to the last update: Enlace para descargar perfectRAW 0.5 alfa 1., it works fine in my Vista 323, but the program is still totally subject to heavy debugging.

Two things must be done before using it:
- Install the supplied font victor-pixel.ttf in %WINDIR%\fonts
- Edit the config.xml text file to:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
  <Config>
    <ICC>
      <InputProfile></InputProfile>
      <InputGamma></InputGamma>
      <OutputProfile></OutputProfile>
      <OutputGamma></OutputGamma>
    </ICC>
  </Config>
</xml>

if you don't have your own profiles.

This is a view, the program is really very promising (click "REVELAR" top right to develop and display):

but I recommend you to wait a bit for some more usable and English version, the program is still in a very early state, both in features and stability.

BR

[evogel99]

Guillermo,

Thanks so much for the information, and the fine work you have started!

Eric

[TonyJohnson]

DISPLAY OPTIONS
- Split screen (L/R or U/D) to compare result of development before vs after
- High definition 16-bits histogram including logarithmic (f-stops) plot
- Highlight clipping blinking including precise info about partial saturation

How do you select these Display Options?

Thank you

[evogel99]

Guillermo,

I have been working with Perfect Raw alpha 2 and am delighted with the results. I like being able to set recovery and noise reduction so easily.

I have noticed that EXIF information does not seem to come through. Is that correct?

Thanks

Eric Vogel

[poloriton]

Good evening,
Excuse my approximate English, I am French.
J' use Capture One and DCRaw for the photographs with great contrast and, I have just discovered PerfectRaw of which the concept is tempting.
The first results are very promising…
However, it is possible as of this version alpha to choose l' spaces ProPhoto color instead of sRGB for the continuation of the treatment in PhotoShop?
Thank you and good courage with the developers.

polo