piccure+ demo questions

[earlybird]

Hi,
 I have been reading the threads about convolution sharpening and capture sharpening and the info led me to try out piccure+.

 I have it installed on a Win7 x64 system and work with Photoshop CS6, Bridge, and ACR.

 Last night I installed piccure+ and used it as a plug in in Photoshop as a first step after opening a Canon .CR2 file with ACR. I have been converting from RAW into 16bit ProPhoto color space for work in Photoshop. It seems as if the piccure plugin is not color managed as my colors were all whacky in the piccure GUI. When I saved the results of the process, Photoshop did display the file properly. The colors just shifted within the piccure GUI. I guess that the math is the same, and that the display happens well after the deconvolution processing.

 Is this just the way it is or is there an option to manage color space in the piccure GUI?


 I see that there is also a free standing mode for piccure and I have read about the possibility of batch processing the RAW files. How will using the free standing mode effect the outcome of the process? I rely on ACR to reduce highlights, raise shadows, and compensate for ETTR capture. I also use a custom made camera profile for color. How, when, where, would using the free standing mode of piccure interact with the other steps I need to do before actually editing in Photoshop? I am having trouble imagining how the free standing process might implicate limitations with my other RAW conversion interests, and so I am not even sure how to ask the questions.

 Any thoughts?

 Thank You.

[kirkt]

Piccure+ gives you no control over raw conversion.

kirk

[earlybird]

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I went ahead and ran the free standing version of piccure+ and processed one of my Canon .CR2 files. The piccure application ran and then automatically saved a 16bit TIFF in a C:\Users\*my-name*\My Documents\Piccure directory.

That leaves me to realize that I would never use the free standing version of piccure+ as I do not want to bypass using the RAW conversion processes to prepare my image nor do I want to forcibly stuff data into the USER folder on my C:\ drive.



Can anyone confirm if, or explain why, it seems as if there is no color management within the piccure+ Photoshop plugin GUI?

Thank you.

[kirkt]

I believe that the PS plug-in interface that does not appear to be color managed is probably not color managed, and probably interprets the image numbers as sRGB-ish (i.e., in your monitor color space).  It does not matter as far as the results go - it will return the processed image to the host application and the appearance will be unchanged from the original (with the sharpening applied).  Images in ProPhotoRGB appear to exhibit the most noticeable deviation in color once the PS plug-in interface displays the image preview in Piccure+, as one would expect for a large color space like ProPhoto.

kirk

Edit: see- http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/plugins/piccure_plus.html

Keith mentions this in his review.

[earlybird]

Thank you for the info.

The piccure+ web page says it works with ICC profiles. I guess working with and displaying as are two different things.

Thank you.

[Tim Lookingbill]

The color shift issue is a known bug and has been address in one the several LuLa discussions you've read through.

You need to contact Piccure+ support to get a fix.

I don't remember which LuLa thread that addressed the color managed preview issue by Piccure+'s Lui.

[earlybird]

Thank you for the information Tim.

I was reading the threads about capture sharpening and convolution sharpening and just noticed there is a specific "piccure" thread in the RAW processing forum.

Are you suggesting that they have some sort of unreleased patch that they provide if you send in a request, or are you explaining that I should add my name to their list of people who would like to see this fixed in a future update?

[Tim Lookingbill]

Are you suggesting that they have some sort of unreleased patch that they provide if you send in a request, or are you explaining that I should add my name to their list of people who would like to see this fixed in a future update?

I couldn't say specifically if there is a fix. I can only suggest you contact Piccure+ support to get an official answer. From what I remember this doesn't happen on all systems so it may be specific to a combination of OS, video card driver and ICC v2 vs v4 profiles. Can't be sure.

[earlybird]

Thank you Tim,
 I went back and re read the threads and see the discussion about the color shift was convoluted with a MAC OS install issue so I had skimmed over that portion.

 I am on a Win7 and using ProPhotoRGB so I didn't think it would be related to v2 or v4 sRGB differences. I doubt my laptop has much more than a basic graphics card, I have the impression it uses Intel embedded and a supplementary Nividia chip depending on what it needs to do.

 I'll write to piccure if I stick with the plugin after the demo period.

 Thank you.