Wayne's response sums it up well. I also prefer to have more than one option for raw.
LR, does some things better than C1, namely Pano creation (single row all I do) and HDR. Sure the files are full of a lot of DR, but it's still nice to be able to go into a 2 part HDR image.
Both of these can be done from converted tif's but I find raw files work better. Especially pano's where you have moved across a near pure blue sky, no matter what I try, the imported tifs will create a darkened edge where the joins are made, where as a raw file blends much better. LR also has a much much better auto mask implementation currently. C1's auto mask works fine on solids like buildings etc, but can't handle a tree lined horizon at all. LR does this much better. Dehaze? another great LR tool, which works best on a raw file, and again nothing like that in C1 currently.
No it's not a show stopper by any means, but sad that two companies just can work it out. As if Phase is worried that someone else could possibly make a equal or better conversion. ( petty ). C1 has plenty of issues right now, in just operation at least on the windows side and Phase could spend more time on fixing those, mainly issues around GPU use and GPU is important on these larger files.
And it's not that Adobe has not been offered raw files, as I have several times. But I can see that the process of converting them can be difficult if the internal layout can't be determined. I thought that raw digger could open the Phase One IQ100 files, but may have that wrong. If so, then it can't be that hard to figure out.
Paul C
