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Author Topic: Silkypix Raw Worth a Try  (Read 10824 times)

Dennishh

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Silkypix Raw Worth a Try
« on: April 25, 2006, 12:44:17 pm »

This topic is a transfer from Rob Galbraith. Seeing we cannot talk openly/without cost I thought I would pick up the conversation over here. This Japanese Raw converter is doing some wonderful conversions with great skin tones. Read Stewart Hemley's review at http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_27/essay.html                                        At first their interface seems foreign, but that goes away very quickly. Try it against any other converters. I hope the other contributors to this tread find us here. The point of this topic was to discus the benefits and drawbacks of all the converters on the market and compare them, in this case to SP. No one has said that this is an end all product just one that should be tried.
Thanks
Dennis
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nemophoto

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« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2006, 10:27:02 am »

I used it for conversions on an entire catalog shoot recently, including images that were destined for 8' tall wall posters. I was impressed by the smoothness and noise free quality of the images, but found the interface a bit clunky and unintuitive. I didn't find it easy to crank through 80-images quickly. I miss the auto-open in Photoshop to fine tune/retouch.

If I didn't already own half a dozen converters, I'd buy this one. As I mentioned, it had the best noise-free images of any of the converters I use regularly with good recognition of my Custom WB embedded in the images. As Stewart Hemly said in his review, it has some of the best color I've seen in a conversion program with the least amount of PS fine tuning.

Nemo
« Last Edit: April 26, 2006, 10:33:40 am by nemophoto »
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bfox2

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« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2006, 03:14:03 am »

Since it's opened up for everybody to read at least, I thought I'd post the original thread here. Took me two days to read through the whole thing, but I'm going to try silkypix out as soon as I stop traveling.

http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthread.../0/fpart/1/vc/1
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Hermie

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« Reply #3 on: May 05, 2006, 06:03:55 am »

Quote
Since it's opened up for everybody to read at least, I thought I'd post the original thread here. Took me two days to read through the whole thing, but I'm going to try silkypix out as soon as I stop traveling.

http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthread.../0/fpart/1/vc/1
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
... and some more reading

Thread moved from RG to Outback Photo:
[a href=\"http://www.outbackphoto.com/tforum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=1911]http://www.outbackphoto.com/tforum/viewtop...hp?TopicID=1911[/url]
« Last Edit: May 05, 2006, 06:14:24 am by Hermie »
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stewarthemley

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Silkypix Raw Worth a Try
« Reply #4 on: May 05, 2006, 05:31:00 pm »

Hi Everyone

Thanks Dennis for starting this thread.

Just joined this site as a refugee from RG. I started the Silkypix thread there and stood back open mouthed as it raced towards the 12,000 hits mark. (Now over 12,000) Just shows how much interest there is in raw converters.

It's good to see SP being discussed in various forums. There's a healthy thread going on at Digital Outback as well.

RG is now "open to the public" so people can read about SP there but I suspect either here or DOP will get more traffic soon. RG has lost its heavy hitters, and with them went much of its authority. But that's OT.

I'm a real convert (sorry) to SP and I hope I can contribute here too. My recommendation is to try the free version, do some conversions and then directly compare them to your normal converter.  Don't be put off by the interface. It soon feels natural. Okay, advert over.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2006, 05:35:30 pm by stewarthemley »
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steveinessex

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« Reply #5 on: May 05, 2006, 06:35:40 pm »

Stewart you must do a search daily for a sp thread.I see your name everywhere I go and you then thank people for starting a thread,dedication or what!
I take it you don't photograph weddings?I find the white dresses,black suits and sunny days tax my poor old sensor and myself too! SP needs to be better in the highlight area.I know you say you've got it mostly sussed but I cannot get back some highlights that PS2 doesn't blow in the first place.The colours are very nice and the quality is almost 3D but for now Capture One and PS2 for me are better professional options.
Regards,
Steve
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Dennishh

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Silkypix Raw Worth a Try
« Reply #6 on: May 05, 2006, 08:50:28 pm »

Hi Steve,
I agree that highlights do need more careful execution with SP but the sharpness and color are well worth the effort. Some more tweaking with contrast center and gamma sliders will solve most of the highlight problems. I would wager that the SP people are hard at work on the highlight recovery thing. I to use C1 and RSP but every time I do a test that includes SP, SP wins. I don't shoot weddings but do understand the workflow and tonal range headaches you must have to deal with. The best way to deal with these tonal ranges is to do two raw conversions, one for the highlights and one for the shadows and put the two together. I bet this wouldn't be practical with 2000 shots , would it?
Dennis
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steveinessex

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« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2006, 07:52:31 am »

.
Hello Dennis,
I think in th UK we're more conservative and pehaps less theatrical than the USA,well I am anyway! I take about 150 <> and the couple choose about 40 on average so it's more of a laid back affair.I suppose the prices reflect the output too! I'm semi retired now and do about 20 or so a year.
Now on to SP,I think the curves are a bit sharp and it's nigh on impossible to get some things back from the brink,they're gone but not so in PS2 and less so in C1.
When I'm at leisure then I prefer the SP look!
Regards,Steve
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stewarthemley

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Silkypix Raw Worth a Try
« Reply #8 on: May 08, 2006, 10:55:58 am »

Quote
Stewart you must do a search daily for a sp thread.I see your name everywhere I go and you then thank people for starting a thread,dedication or what!
I take it you don't photograph weddings?I find the white dresses,black suits and sunny days tax my poor old sensor and myself too! SP needs to be better in the highlight area.I know you say you've got it mostly sussed but I cannot get back some highlights that PS2 doesn't blow in the first place.The colours are very nice and the quality is almost 3D but for now Capture One and PS2 for me are better professional options.
Regards,
Steve
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=64625\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Steve
Not quite a daily search but not far off. Dedication? Hmm. Obsession? Maybe.

Actually, I think (hope) it's plain old self-interest. I really think that SP is the best converter out there right now by a significant margin. My impression is that they are a young company; YCs can last and grow... or disappear. They make my pictures look better and so I want them to grow and get even better. If I can spread the word, get them some more sales, it helps me. I must stress, that's my only connection. No trips to Tokyo, no commission, not even a free upgrade!

And if it spurs on the competition, then that's good for me (all of us). And there is proof of that happening right now if you check some of the other forum threads.


No, I don't do weddings but I do something even worse: theatre. The DR of theatre lighting sometimes makes black and white at a wedding look positively pastel. And yes, I agree that SP has a weakness with highlight control. For me, it's the biggest weakness of an otherwise great program. But, SP people know about this, they read these posts (they have told me) and they do respond. They have told me about some of the improvements on the way and I'm waiting with baited breath.

Usually you have to play with the slider in the Tone section, and a bit with exposure. Often I have struggled with a shot in SP, struggled even longer in RSP, thought I had got it better, opened both side-by-side and been surprised that in fact SP was as good with the highlights, and significantly better at colour, detail, contrast, etc. That's not bias or sales talk: it's a pro who needs to impress  his clients or he's out of work talking. Honestly, if RSP released a better converter I'd use it instantly.  I have to get the best image possible. There's a lot of new kids on the block all after my business and people willing to give them a chance.

Back to the HC thing: I'm just so busy right now but the moment I have time I'm going to have myself chained to the computer and not released till I've found the best settings for HC. If/when that happens I'll be more than happy to pass them on. Of course, I hope SP release something soon that means I don't have to suffer quite so much for my "art".

Cheers.
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ChrisWesnofske

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« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2006, 06:04:26 pm »

I've been watching all of the SP threads on various forums with much interest. Having used SP extensively in comparison with ACR, C1, and RSE, I agree with others about the lack of shadow detail. ACR, C1, and RSE pull out more shadow detail without the penalty of low contrast in the mid and high range. Though as others have pointed out, RSE does still need a tone tweak to avoid the dreaded "gray" effect. I've found that local contrast enhancement, using the settings 20/50/0 in Photoshop's unsharp mask, to be helpful there though not a solution.

I'm an architectural photographer shooting with a Canon 1Ds and 1Ds Mark 2, and usually contrasty exteriors just aren't well handled by SP. But the color, detail, and lack of moire are A++. So I'm seeking a solution.

IMHO, SP has the best color, ACR the best tonality range, and C1 a kind of combo of the two, but not quite as good as either. And I like the tethering of C1 too.

What would satisfy me is trying to combine the color of SP with the tonality of ACR. So what I've been doing is two conversions: one is SP, one in ACR, and then pasting the ACR conversion on top of the SP in Photoshop and choosing "luminosity" for the layer mixing.

Presto, I've got the tonality of ACR with the spectacular color of SP. Alternately, you can paste the SP on top of the ACR one, and layer by choosing "color". Same result. I've created a Photoshop action that handles all of this, even fixing the 1 vertical pixel misalignment between the two converters.

Since SP offers numerous color preset options, even emulating different color films, they should also offer several default tone curves as a starting point. And I don't mean overall lower contrast, which is what the sliders and current presets give, but rather a native raw curve which preserves shadow detail without altering the midtone and highlight portion. For example, C1 has an "extra shadow" preset curve at the linear to working gamma conversion stage, and does not paste a curve on top of a curve.

I'm sure the shadow detail is there in SP, it's just that their default curve is a little steep and more like an in-camera jpeg. Just offer us more default curve options so I don't have to do my luminosity trick in ACR.

Other weaknesses are the sharpening, which isn't that great, and I get far better results in post with Photoshop. The sharpening in RSE and C1 though is excellent.

Also there is a bug that gives different shadow detail between the sRGB and aRGB option. Which is the correct shadow detail? Apparently aRGB is a textbook gamma 2.2 curve, while sRGB is defined by a slightly different curve that is not textbook 2.2 gamma, and SP is not taking this into account.

Speaking of which, SP should offer wider colorspace options, especially as the main reason people are using SP is for its incredible color accuracy and punch. They're surely not using it for its UI beauty, which is uninspired and could use a real graphic designer and some tidying up.

Would love to see a tethered option, though I know I'm just dreaming there. But, please, please, please, A NATIVE INTEL MAC VERSION! Though in Rosetta it works just OK, albeit rather slow.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2006, 06:06:31 pm by ChrisWesnofske »
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newtimes

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« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2006, 01:00:58 pm »

There is a new Silkypix version just out, fully operable trial programme unlike Bibble which you can only try bits of.

I have been using RSP, now I'm going over to the Silky crowd, there help is bad, the english tolerable. the results very vry good, color much better than RSP, edges much cleaner.

I will go to Lightbox when it's out but it had better be good after all this time.  I just hope it's not monumental like Photoshop.

Cheers Chris Calderbank
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Geoffrey

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« Reply #11 on: July 09, 2006, 08:48:22 am »

I've been trying SP for a while (off and on) with a Leica DMR. It offers some pretty good advantages - the controls are quite varied, and its lens correction, fine exposure control, WB, and sharpening all off one menu are remarkably convenient.

It also opens up RAW files on my portable (an older 800 mhz G4) very quickly, more than anything else I've found, so it is a nice "home" program.

For more refined colors a few months ago I did a test with some subtle light transitions (rainy days, cloud work) between SP and Flexcolor (which is native Imacon, like the camera). I found the subtleties were captured more distinctly in Flexcolor's Raw conversion.

Has anyone else seen that?

There was a lot of discussion of different RAW conversions in FM thread on the Leica, and there was quite a bit of variation. Most people seem to like C1 the best, at least for that camera back.

Geoff Goldberg
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ChrisWesnofske

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« Reply #12 on: October 02, 2006, 07:29:18 pm »

Just a few thoughts about Silky 3.0.

The good news is it appears 3.0 for Mac is a universal binary, and works much faster and is more stable.

Secondly doing comparisons between 2.0 and 3.0 with the parameters in their default position shows much better shadow detail. Literally night and day.

One major flaw still exists in 3.0. When you choose to output to Adobe RGB, you can see posterization in the deep shadows. This does not happen outputting to sRGB.

Viewing the histogram compared to an sRGB output, there is shadow clipping going on. This should not happen. All that should happen between sRGB and Adobe output is saturated colors should be better represented.

The temporary solution? You need to do two conversions: one in sRGB and one in Adobe. Then layer the Adobe image on top of the sRGB one in Photoshop with the blending mode set to color. Then you'll have the correct shadow detail of the sRGB output, with the better color gamut of the Adobe output.

This is a real pain, but necessary until Silkypix fixes this bug.
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