DOWNLOAD PERFECT RAW v0.6 ALPHAHi all, I wanted to present you a new RAW developer currently under development:
Perfect RAW. It uses DCRAW as development engine, but it is not simply a DCRAW front-end, please read more...
CONCEPT OF PERFECT RAWCommercial (and non commercial) RAW developers trend to add more and more features that are in fact part of the post-processing stage. On the other side they hide to the user some features found on the RAW data that could be useful or at least interesting to explore to take your RAW files to their best.
In that way Perfect RAW is intended to be a
low level RAW developer, providing the user maximum control of the development process, and in principle not adding any of those features that in our opinion are best done in Photoshop (or your favourite edition tool), such as bright, contrast, saturation, curves,... Perfect RAW will provide a totally unprocessed image allowing to obtain it with all those features found in DCRAW plus some others we are adding, and with a powerful and fast graphical user interface.
We are happy to loose on speed and/or ease of use (no real time sliders found on other developers) if that allows us to take a deep control of the development process specially regarding.
I have to say that the idea is being carried out by a team of 4 forum members, but because of my limited knowledge of C coding (all my programs are VB) the great programming tasks are being carried out by the other 3 guys (Manuel Llorens, Fernando Ariznavarreta and Egon) who are really impressing me I will try to be up to date on their code in the next months. In a very short time they have been able to cut DCRAW's code in several parts and create separate dll libraries to divide the development process tasks and add new features to our taste. Also a OpenGL expert is preparing a fast GUI focusing on a before/after display.
I will try to show the main features of Perfect RAW here:
DISPLAY OPTIONS
- Before/after option to check influence of change in any of the development parameters. User will be able to:
* Switch between 2 developments
* Split the display (L/R or U/D) so each part of the image is display according to a particular development
* Symetrical display (L/R or U/D) so the image will be display twice being able to compare the two developments
- High definition 16-bits histogram including logarithmic (f-stops) plot (like those found in
Histogrammar)
- Highlights clip blinking including precise info about any partial saturation
- Quick zoom and drag options just using the mouse controls (OpenGL support, that's really fast)
DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
- RAW black and saturation points. Ability to calibrate our camera's precise saturation point
- Interpolation algorithms from DCRAW (bilinear, VNG, PPG or AHD) and the new AFD
- White balance: none (1.0 multipliers), camera, automatic, linear multipliers, temp/tint or user defined patches (rectangular or elliptical) over the image like those found in
Zero Noise.
- Black and white RAW development, specially interesting when the AFD algorithm is used
IMAGE IMPROVEMENT
- Exposure control -8EV to +8EV including n f-stops of highlight preservation both when exposure is adjusted up or down
- Highlight recovery neutral or with several degrees of surrounding tone emulation (DCRAW's implementation). We are planning to try our own algorithm to improve DCRAW's if possible.
- Wavelet pre-demosaic noise reduction and median colour noise reduction (DCRAW's)
- Chromatic aberration correction (DCRAW's)
OUTPUT OPTIONS
- Colour management: none, standard profiles (sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, CIE XYZ, WideGamut) or user defined input and output table profiles. It includes monitor profile for proper image display.
- Gamma compensation (including linear, sRGB and standard adjustable gamma output)
CURRENT PERFECT RAW IMPLEMENTATION AND FEATURESThis is just a preliminary state, to check the development process is being properly done. The low level DCRAW options will be available to the user:
This is a B&W sample of the improvement of AFD over AHD in noisy images. Manuel is already trying some noise elimination strategies for those impulsive black noisy pixels:
OPENGL GUI IMPLEMENTATIONUsing OpenGL allows a super fast image display (dragging, zooming, rotating) and also will speed some of the time consuming processes, although speed will never be a priority over precision and user control.
Before/After mode with left/right split display:
Before/After mode with left/right symetrical display:
Before/After mode with up/down split display during a rotation:
I don't want to create false expectations, but I have them looking at the preliminary results. Any
comments or suggestions are welcome.
Version 1.0 will be totally free and the source code made public. A functional version is expected around Christmas.
For those who want to follow the evolution of the project (Spanish or online translation required) just follow this link:
Perfect RAW.
BR