Andrey,
Thank you, your response to the PM questions i sent you was valuable and may clear some things up for people who are testing this. I'm going to post that response here if you don't mind...
"Pete,
I've answered to you in the thread, but after reading this message I think I know what's wrong in your case - make sure you don't have mark 'Raw' selected. This one is special and means "don't color manage" and some other don'ts. We need it only sometimes to see what camera actually produces and in general you never need it for normal processing. So just unmark it and click Apply while holding Opt key - it will reset all settings to recommended defaults.
There is zoom option - unmark 'zoom to fit' to see image in half resolution 1:1. For final image make sure you pick AHD - RPP has default to Half resolution mode (for speed and accurate previews).
Rest of the problems with sliders should go away as soon as you disable Raw mode.
Regarding Apply button - there is shortcut Cmd-R to apply really quick. I can't eliminate the button completely now because quality is the only thing I can't sacrifice and this means slower processing and no real time adjustments."----
I just worked on an image that I've been frustrated with while working in ACR and I can't believe the results I'm getting here in your RPP. I love the film curve feature. The result is edgy and not "soapy" like in ACR. this applies to the gamma setting as well, much better color control with the channel sliders, contrast via contrast and local contrast, excellent. Great reds right our of the box..not pinky like in ACR-out of the box uncalibrated. I find this program to be very flexible once you get to know what's what.
The results are also sharper than ACR..I think it's more a matter of apparent sharpness, due to the film curve and the local contrast feature, which is a great thing to have. I'm going to go and mess with a few more and see how things compare.
Also, thrilled to notice in the documentation that you have a modest selection tool in this processor. I haven't tried it yet.
Two things:
As I was scrolling through the Black and White conversions I noticed that when I went back to the "color" setting, I lost the histogram..it compressed and moved over to the right side of scale and appeared as a narrow spike. It wouldn't respond after that.
Second, the VNG conversion/interpolation scheme did not do very well with an image that had telephone and electrical wires and small tree branches..gave it a candy cane stripe at all viewing percentages on my monitor, I'm pretty sure this imparted into the actual file. The AHD, as you suggested, was spot on for that small linear and diagonal detail.
You should make a new thread..
Thanks, Andrey, this looks pretty cool.