Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Mirrorless Cameras => Topic started by: bill t. on May 21, 2014, 02:41:55 am

Title: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: bill t. on May 21, 2014, 02:41:55 am
Thought I'd post this, since there is a lot of misinformation online about this subject.

You can hack GH4 .rw2 files to be editable in both LR and ACR with a simple exiftool.exe trick.

For PC's, download exiftool.exe.  Be careful to get it from a reliable source, check it with Norton, etc.  Can't remember where I got mine.  Put exiftool.exe on your desktop, or anywhere you can remember.  Exiftool.exe doesn't require a formal installation, you simply put the file in some directory such as the desktop.

Load the PC Command Line dialogue (remember DOS?).  There's something similar in the Mac OS, I think.

At the command line prompt, type:

cd desktop
exiftool.exe -model="DMC-GH3" -overwrite_original c:\gh4\folder01\*.rw2


If everything works OK, you will be told how many files were converted.  If you are told "file not found" it probably means the system can't find exiftool, or there's a typo.

I'm sure you can figure out the path statements.  "c:\gh4\folder01" is on my system, but your folder may be named differently.  Remember that exiftool itself must have a path specified, or exiftool.exe must be within the current directory, which is why I did the "desktop" thing.

So now LR and ACR will think those are GH3 files and will load and process them quite well.  OK, so there are probably some subtle things that will be different in the officially supported versons, but right now you can edit those .rw2's to about 27 times the quality of a jpg.

Have fun!

OH, did I say back up your original GH4 .rw2's?  There is no free lunch.  Theoretically you could later use exiftool to set the model name back to DMC-GH4, but I don't know if LR or ACR make their own changes to the raw files that would later conflict with that, or if there would be .xmp file issues.
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: PhilHarvey on May 21, 2014, 12:07:42 pm
Be careful to get it from a reliable source

The ExifTool home page is the most reliable source:  http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

- Phil
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: Pete Berry on May 21, 2014, 02:01:04 pm
Thanks, Bill. My GH4 should be here next week. I use ACR for the majority of my PP workflow. What's your take on higher ISO RAW's so far?

Pete
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: bill t. on May 21, 2014, 03:13:03 pm
It's a simple fact that the GH4 is a 4/3 camera, and noise levels are higher than we are used to from APS-C and FF sensors.  For most purposes ISOs up to about 1000 can give you clean looking prints up about 20 inches on the large dimension, assuming exposure, focus, and PP are everything they could be.  The excellent noise reduction in LR and ACR will come into play more often with these smaller files, and I have found Noiseware handles GH4 noise pretty well.  It's probably best to chose between Noiseware and LR/ACR noise reduction, rather than using both, keeps artifacting down.  Certain subjects may be more friendly to higher ISOs than others.  Exposure is always critical, because the higher the ISO the less you can pull detail up out of the murk, and the more those highlights will block up.  Higher ISOs come with less exposure latitude.  And this camera definitely rewards good glass, because an image that is sharp in the original goes a long way towards masking process artifacts.  And as always, the best anti-noise tool is a tripod.

GH4 raws benefit from careful PP finessing.  The line between too much and too little is finer that with larger formats.  Oversharpening and over de-noising are much more deadly with the small format that with its big brothers.  One needs to develop a somewhat modified image aesthetic.

The ability to process the raws is critical with this camera.  The jpegs are very limited in PP, you can't open those jpeg shadows without revealing a lot of artifacting.  There is a big difference between out of camera jpegs and finessed raws.

If big prints are your thing, I have noticed that Resize 7.5 upsizing by 200% mitigates edge artifacts like stepping and roughness without introducing new artifacts.  It may be the tool of choice of large exhibition work.

I bought my GH4 for video, and for that the high ISO performance is excellent.  If city exterior night is your thing, go for it!  There is a bit of an enigma there, in that the high ISO video indeed does look much cleaner on the screen than the high ISO stills.  Go figure.  BTW, the 4k is gorgeous, and the 1080P reductions from 4k can easily compete with very high end video and film gear.  But I digress.
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: w7ox on May 21, 2014, 08:58:46 pm
Today GH4 support was released for DxO Optics Pro 9 (the Standard Edition, fortunately).

I've installed it and await arrival of my GH4 on Friday  :)

Phil
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: bill t. on May 21, 2014, 10:49:16 pm
Some lean and mean maneuvering from DxO!  Somebody in marketing is paying attention.

Wish I'd known yesterday, because I would not have spent the time figuring out the exiftool thing.  As of last night Dx0 was only promising GH4 support "in June" on their site, which was at least a small improvement on Adobe's "maybe on the next major release" stance.

Does Dx0 allow imports to and from Photoshop, Photomatix, Helicon, etc?  Maybe this a good time to take another look.
Title: Re: Edit GH4 raws in LR and ACR on PC's and maybe Macs
Post by: w7ox on May 21, 2014, 11:56:01 pm
Some lean and mean maneuvering from DxO!  Somebody in marketing is paying attention.

Wish I'd known yesterday, because I would not have spent the time figuring out the exiftool thing.  As of last night Dx0 was only promising GH4 support "in June" on their site, which was at least a small improvement on Adobe's "maybe on the next major release" stance.

Does Dx0 allow imports to and from Photoshop, Photomatix, Helicon, etc?  Maybe this a good time to take another look.

They've added a plug in "Install the DxO Optics Pro plug-in for Adobe Lightroom" (optional) about which is says "This plug-in lets you integrate DxO Optics Pro in your Adobe Lightroom workflow.". I'm not a Lightroom user (though I have it) so do not know what this portends.

Phil