Fast Raw Viewer

[Iliah]

> a product for the disorganised then?

For disorganized, too. BUt I see nothing wrong with postponing processing the shots until one has time.

[bwana]

recursive folder search seems to be absent. I have a deeply nested folder hierarchy and to view the raws I have to go to each folder.

[Vladimirovich]

"It’s time to forget the horror you surely feel when you are getting ready to start sorting and categorizing a 20-gig folder of mish-mash photographs: some taken yesterday, others maybe from 2001."

So a product for the disorganised then ?

you should the read the story behind (available in Russian) = once upon a time AT returned back home from his (summer ) trip w/ a lot (Ks, if not 10Ks) of (none field sorted) raws shot w/ UniWB and was highly irritated w/ Bridge (or whatever esle he tried) - he claims that he was not able to estimate the focus precision and raw exposure quality (AFAIK AT shoots landscapes, wild nature mostly) based on UniWB previews fast enough...

fine print : all errors and misinformations in this posting are mine.

[Iliah]

> once upon a time AT returned back home

Well, it is just one of the many stories when the shot is long, shooting a wedding, especially with an assistant, is also a typical case when one gets 2000-3000 shots easily and very limited time to select and process.

[Simon Garrett]

I agree with the positive comments, from a quick view it looks very useful.

As some others have said, a thumbnail, grid or film-strip view would suit my work style.  I tend to like random access to images while sorting and previewing. 

Also, when zoomed in, a where-am-I view to show where the zoom view is in the picture could be useful (unless I've missed that - barely scratched the surface yet). 

But speed is impressive.   

[Redcrown]

For what it's worth..

I just tried using the free FastStone image browser to feed FRV and it works great. So you can use FastStone to generate thumbnails or filmstrips, pick the one you want to analyze and pass it to FRV.

FastStone generates thumbs from imbedded jpegs. Takes some time, of course, but I think it's probably about as fast as you can get. FastStone can be configed to pass an image to FRV with a single keystroke (E). FRV immediately displays the raw and is positioned in the home folder, so next/prev works in FRV.

FastStone can display the raw too, but it's very slow at that (does a Dcraw conversion). The combination of FastStone+FRV is fast and easy.

[Manoli]

Just to add a quick 'first impressions' to the comments above ..

A big plus for:

- raw file analysis and exposure controls
- ability to view the individual rgb channels
- both focus peaking modes
- impressive speed
- integration with external programs, particularly ID and Lr.

At first, I too wished for a 'filmstrip' but after playing with the program, became quite used to it and adapted to Iliah's suggested workflow without any difficulty. One change I would suggest, though, is to have the option to select a separate  _Rejected files folder as opposed to it being a forced sub-folder.

( One minor bug note, I installed it on OS X 10.9.3 and though FRV found Photoshop, it didn't find Lr or C1 - not important as it's simple to add the programs manually, but just sayin' ..)

A great program - I can see this as a very useful adjunct to Lightroom.

M

[Iliah]

Dear Manoli,

> to have the option to select a separate  _Rejected files folder as opposed to it being a forced sub-folder

Something to consider, thank you.

[fdisilvestro]

Iliah,

Thank you very much for your detailed response,

>Fast browsing
We started designing FRV as a pre-viewer to make initial selection of shots to keep and shots to discard. This calls for sequential browsing, and no libraries to build that will be discarded later. Say, I simply connect the CF card to the computer, look through all the images, move those I need, and format the card. Second, we may be adding a filmstrip, but a little later, after having the core functionality finalized.

Understand. I actually found out (after reading Redcrown post) that I can use windows explorer in the "Extra Large Icons" mode as a "grid" and drag and drop an image onto FastRawViewer and it will position that image in the folder and then continue sequentially. If I want jump in a "nonlinear" fashion, then I just repeat the drag and drop from windows explorer. Working with a dual screen setup, this is all I need.

> Raw cache

In our testing increasing the cache past 40 does not help with performance.

> Number of simultaneous RAW decode threads

On the first run it is set to the number of cores. If you have other programs running you may want to decrease the number.

Thanks for the clarification

> Histogram

It is pure raw histogram. It is not affected by exposure adjustments, only the midpoint is shifted because the midpoint is changing. Midpoint is an arbitrary level in the raw, as you know, it is set depending on what exposure calibration is applied. Or, in other words, depending on how the ISO speed is defined; or, how much headroom in the highlights one wants. Initially it is set to 12.7%, that is 3 EV below the saturation.

Fair enough. I was actually referring to the midpoint shift, not the shape of the histogram. Your explanation makes a lot of sense, thanks.

> browsing in the Lightroom library

Well, not much can be done to pre-built thumbnails; while in Develop, where one can change WB and adjust the exposure, the speed is quite different. What I'm trying to say is.

Agreed. In any case, I think that I won't be doing WB fine tuning, since I prefer to select first the DNG profile and then correct WB.
Anyway, It is very useful to be able to ballpark the WB especially when using UniWB.

please consider the current place of FRV in the workflow, it is mostly to filter the input A to Z, the way the camera recorded the shots

That is what I'm after,

Regards

[mouse]

Played with it for 15 minutes. 
I  love it!

[Rory]

I am very impressed with Fast Raw Viewer Iliah.  I appreciate the opportunity to comment on this beta you have made available.  For this type of program I am looking for speed and ergonomics.  The gold standard for me is Photo Mechanic.

Speed 

I tested on a i7 3 GHz with 16GB and a nVidiiia 7900GS display adapter (with latest drivers) on Win7 64x reading a Lexar 400X card over a USB3 connection.  The performance was good but there was a 0.6 second hesitation between images.  This pause is the same viewing the RAW or internal JPEGs.  The delay does not change if I give the program time to cache.  By comparison, there is virtually no delay between images using Photo Mechanic on my system. 

Ergonomics 

While reviewing images I want to focus on the images, not the keyboard.  I keep one hand on the keyboard and the other works the mouse.  The keyboard shortcut editor is excellent but does not quite do enough.  I want all my fundamental actions to be a single key, not a combination.  Also, in my workflow, I pick a few winners rather than a lot of rejects - I find this more efficient - and I mention this to clarify following comments.

The primary actions are forward, backward, zoom and select.  Ideally, I would like the forward, backward and zoom functions to be done with the mouse.  The forward and backward keys on the mouse work - excellent!  I really like the zoom function used in Lightroom, where a single mouse click zooms to the click spot and another click toggles the zoom back out.  Could you make this an option? 

The other function, selection, should be a toggle function.  Since ratings and/or labels are used as a selection criteria it would be useful to make them all toggle on/off.  For example, if I decide I am going to use RED as a selection criteria I would like to be able to press the same key to turn RED on and off.  This way I do not have to pick different keys on the keyboard.

Another function that is important in image review is compare.  I may have 20 similar shots and I want to pick the one winner.  Some form of filtering, to winnow down to the final pick, is very important.

Finally, when I have picked the winners, I want a way to quickly review the selection in context with all the images to make sure I did not miss something.  In Photo Mechanic I can quickly zip through the thumbnails to double check.  For me, this is important, and I frequently catch something I missed, either through a keying mistake or a change of heart after seeing all the images.

Fast Raw Viewer is very impressive, especially for a beta, and I want to thank you for making this available Iliah.  I would consider using it instead of Photo Mechanic if the performance is "instantaneous" (perhaps a function of my hardware), toggle is added to ratings and labels, 100% zoom is added to mouse click, compare functionality is included and a thumbnail window is added.

Best regards
Rory

[Iliah]

Dear Rory,

Speed: what camera the shots are from? Seems a bit slow, unless you were checking on something like Fujifilm S5Pro files. What are the settings for the number of caches and threads in Preferences - Other?

100% zoom with a mouse click is possible, just assign it to Actual Pixels (1:1) in shortcut editor it is under Image Zoom-Pan-Rotate. Also please see we have Shift + Left_Click and Shift + Right_Сlick as Quick Zoom and Drag/Pan.

Workflow - currently you can move the selected files to a folder of your choice instead of rejecting the unnecessary ones. Next, you can browse that destination folder, it will be immediately available as the second in the list of recent.

[Rory]

Speed: what camera the shots are from? Seems a bit slow, unless you were checking on something like Fujifilm S5Pro files. What are the settings for the number of caches and threads in Preferences - Other?

Canon 5D III.  20 caches and 8 threads.  I tried FRV with the same card and reader on a 2013 macbook pro and performance was just fine, so it just an issue on my PC.

100% zoom with a mouse click is possible, just assign it to Actual Pixels (1:1) in shortcut editor it is under Image Zoom-Pan-Rotate. Also please see we have Shift + Left_Click and Shift + Right_Сlick as Quick Zoom and Drag/Pan.

I missed that!  I assigned left click as quick zoom and Drag.  Perfect!

Workflow - currently you can move the selected files to a folder of your choice instead of rejecting the unnecessary ones. Next, you can browse that destination folder, it will be immediately available as the second in the list of recent.

I understand, but this seems cumbersome.  I would like a filter that can be set to any combination of rating and label.  Then I can pick (label) the best images from a group that are all similar, then filter on the group, and progressively toggle the labels to eliminate.  Perhaps there is a better workflow - this is just a suggestion.  But if I understand correctly, the FRV paradigm is to copy the current image to another folder, rather than make a multiple select in FRV and then bulk copy.  This delegates final selection of a keeper to a secondary program like Lightroom.  Perhaps that is a better workflow... and keeps FRV simple and small.

[Iliah]

Dear Rory,

In regards to performance - is it OpenGL or DirectX version? Have you updated DirectX to the recent (if using that version)? Have you updated video drivers to the latest? If it does not help, maybe try reducing the number of threads to 4. The bottleneck might be disk speed.

> I would like a filter that can be set to any combination of rating and label.  Then I can pick (label) the best images from a group that are all similar, then filter on the group, and progressively toggle the labels to eliminate.

That might be one of the options, sure. Actually, workflow options is something we are thinking about.

[Rory]

I selected OpenGL as that is what is recommended for nVidia in your manual.  I checked the video drivers were up-to-date before commenting.  I reduced the thread number to 4 but that does not make any difference. 

I am running DirextX 11, which I believe is the latest version for Win7.  Do I reinstall to try the DirectX option?

Another thing - I am running two 30" Dell 2560x1600 monitors from the nVidia card, but I have been keeping the FRV window fairly small - less than 1200 pixels across.

[Iliah]

Dear Rory,

7900GS is not a newest one, and here is what you may try to speed things up: in Preferences, under GPU processing, set No Resampling as Image Resampling Method; and None as Downsampling Options.

If you are running OpenGL, than DirectX version does not matter. You may however try DirectX version and see if it boosts performance.

[Rory]

Thanks Iliah.  No luck.

[xpatUSA]

Hi Iliah,

Are there any plans to include Sigma X3F files?

Currently I use FastStone Viewer for sorting the wheat from the chaff but it's pretty slow and doesn't even show thumbnails for SD9/SD10!

best,

Ted

[alextutubalin]

Are there any plans to include Sigma X3F files?

Currently I use FastStone Viewer for sorting the wheat from the chaff but it's pretty slow and doesn't even show thumbnails for SD9/SD10!

FRV shows embedded JPEGs for Sigma X3Fs. There is a small bug when you try to see .X3F+Extenal JPEG  file (use 'Preferences - File Handling - Default image to Display: External JPEG' to avoid this bug in current version). The bug will be fixed in FRV 0.9.1 coming soon.

Full Foveon support is another story. It requires very different  processing pipeline (different from Bayer and common 3-color RAWs such as Canon sRAW). So, fast and accurate X3F processing is separate challenge.
We definitely do not do anything with X3F raw processing in current 'beta' cycle (from 0.9.x to 1.0).

After 1.0 we'll hear for user voices (Filmstrip? Or X3F? Or touchpad support? Or all three and 100+ other user's requests

[xpatUSA]

FRV shows embedded JPEGs for Sigma X3Fs. There is a small bug when you try to see .X3F+Extenal JPEG  file (use 'Preferences - File Handling - Default image to Display: External JPEG' to avoid this bug in current version). The bug will be fixed in FRV 0.9.1 coming soon.

Thanks, Alex. That would be useful if it shows the medium size for SD9/10 or the full-size for later models.

Full Foveon support is another story. It requires very different  processing pipeline (different from Bayer and common 3-color RAWs such as Canon sRAW). So, fast and accurate X3F processing is separate challenge.
We definitely do not do anything with X3F raw processing in current 'beta' cycle (from 0.9.x to 1.0).

No problem for me, I rarely shoot more than 10 shots in a session 

After 1.0 we'll hear for user voices (Filmstrip? Or X3F? Or touchpad support? Or all three and 100+ other user's requests

Thank you,