Perfect RAW

[Guillermo Luijk]

DOWNLOAD PERFECT RAW v0.6 ALPHA


Hi 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 RAW

Commercial (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 FEATURES

This 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 IMPLEMENTATION

Using 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

[jjj]

I'll be intrigued by this as Tone Hacker and Amenábar were very interesting.

[Schewe]

Commercial (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.

You have not made a case (at least so far) that things such as "bright, contrast, saturation, curves" should _NOT_ be done in a full feature raw processing utility. Doing these with the raw data (as opposed to post-processed gamma encoded images) seems better done in linear space than after the processing. If you don't handle these functions till AFTER the raw processing (unless you have an ability you don't mention regarding linear output) is, I think, sub-optimal.

[ejmartin]

What is the idea behind the AFD demosaic algorithm?  What aspects of interpolation does it perform better than AHD?

[Guillermo Luijk]

What is the idea behind the AFD demosaic algorithm?  What aspects of interpolation does it perform better than AHD?

Hi Emil, AFD is a quite particular algorithm. It performs first the calculation of the luminance of the final signal (that's why the examples are B&W), and then it interpolates colour finally mixing both concepts to obtain the resulting image.

In general it seems a very 'pixel oriented' algorithm so noise does not spread from noisy pixels to the surrounding area (see in the example that when a single pixel appears noisy in AFD, it propagates to form little straight lines in AHD). AHD is very good for noise-free images, but in noisy images or noisy areas of regular images it trends to interpret noise as detail making those patterns appear. These shot noisy pixels are easy to detect and eliminate with median or whatever in AFD since they remain isolated, and in any case provide a kind of 'grain' more pleasant to the eye than AHD.

On the other side it seems AFD is not so good as other algorithms to detect geometric patterns like straight lines, we are still testing.


For more info please refer to Manuel, the guy who is implementing AFD into Perfect RAW (manuelllorens(at)gmail.com). I want to be clear that AFD is an algorithm created by another author (I couldn't tell his name now), and Manuel bought the paper from the original source and is doing the implementation with good results (if I am not wrong, the original article contained the fundamentals of the algorithm and also a Matlab implementation).

BR

[Guillermo Luijk]

Some more tests done by Manuel Llorens, comparing ACR vs AHD (Perfect RAW using DCRAW's native algorithm) vs AFD (only Perfect RAW). See AFD's particular grain:





BR

[brianchapman]

Some more tests done by Manuel Llorens, comparing ACR vs AHD (Perfect RAW using DCRAW's native algorithm) vs AFD (only Perfect RAW). See AFD's particular grain:





BR

Pretty impressive.  It has a very organic look to me (esp with noise and chroma smoothing)  - when can we try it?

[Guillermo Luijk]

Pretty impressive.  It has a very organic look to me (esp with noise and chroma smoothing)  - when can we try it?

Just click the link at the beginning of the thread  
It requires no installation, just copying it to some folder. I think there is a font that need to be installed in Windows for proper GUI.

Manuel is thinking of doing a combined AFD/AHD mode, so in dark (noisy areas) AFD would be used while for the bright areas AHD would be chosen. AHD is better to demosaic geometrical patterns and detail but worse in the presence of noise.

BR

[brianchapman]

Just click the link at the beginning of the thread  
It requires no installation, just copying it to some folder. I think there is a font that need to be installed in Windows for proper GUI.

Manuel is thinking of doing a combined AFD/AHD mode, so in dark (noisy areas) AFD would be used while for the bright areas AHD would be chosen. AHD is better to demosaic geometrical patterns and detail but worse in the presence of noise.

BR

Oh, haha     Next time I'll look before I open my mouth!

[BernardLanguillier]

Just click the link at the beginning of the thread  

Any plan for a Mac version later on?

Cheers,
Bernard

[sniper]

I can't get it to open an image it goes to stage 4 and hangs up.  Wayne

[gabriele]

I'm trying perfect RAW to develop RAW files from a Canon EOS 500D but I get an image that is completely colored in magenta. I think the library dcraw.dll needs to be updated.
Where can I download an upadated versiona of dcraw.dll?

[MarkL]

Jumping the gun a bit but are there any plans to include the raw fusion process?

[Guillermo Luijk]

Any plan for a Mac version later on?

Jumping the gun a bit but are there any plans to include the raw fusion process?

A Mac version is not impossible, it all depends of the developers and the idea is portable C code. Allow them to come back from their vacation (we have very long vacations in Spain).

Including the RAW fusion process is another idea. Recently I provided the source code to a guy who translated it into C and a Linux version of Zero Noise is already working (in fact it runs 4 times faster than the VB-Windows version):



Let's see what the coders have to say.

BR

[papa v2.0]

talking about zero noise

I load in the .nef files (three) and they process fine via DCRAW. (The quick develop works so DCRAW must work) But when I go to develop even just one file  Zero noise seems to stick.

it status is
"developing 1 Raw file
PLEASE WAIT"

how long does this take. Nikon .nef raw files  running on Windows vista. 2gb ram

[Guillermo Luijk]

talking about zero noise

I load in the .nef files (three) and they process fine via DCRAW. (The quick develop works so DCRAW must work) But when I go to develop even just one file  Zero noise seems to stick.

Not necessarily, the quick develop is done at half the size (DCRAW's -h option), and because of that it probably doesn't need so much memory to make DCRAW fail. When you develop at full size it doesn't work. You need a Vista compilation of DCRAW, which allows the program to reserve the needed memory.

BR

[papa v2.0]

Ah!

I get my DCRAW from
http://www.insflug.org/raw/

is this correct and which version no should I use.

thanks

edit

way hay up and running

cheers

[Craig Murphy]

Link to Perfect Raw is broken.

[francois]

Link to Perfect Raw is broken.

You might try to grab it from this  page

[alexsershu]

Hi there,
I downloaded perfect raw 6.5 and work under win xp pro 32. No way to use it because an interface problem. Several buttons are hidden under the image section and the software does not answer by changing the screen resolution. The zoom 1x could not be changed since no reaction to mouse.
Is there any one who can tell what to do ? Should I wait for a version which works?
Thanks