Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Iliah on May 14, 2014, 09:12:44 am
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Today we launched free public beta of out FastRawViewer,
http://www.fastrawviewer.com/
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Great! looks interesting, time to start testing it.
Regards
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Looks intriguing!
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I 'd rather have fast view mode in rawdigger though...
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Well, RawDigger needs to be precise.
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"It’s time to forget agonizing, sheer mind-boggling, soul-crushing monotony of countless hours spent checking, approving or discarding..."
YES !
"It’s time to forget the horror you surely feel when you are getting ready to start sorting and categorizing..."
YES !
"It’s time to forget the fear that you might miss the best shot..."
YES !
This is a sorely needed product, and you are a marketing genius.
Best of luck with it!
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Dear Dean,
I appreciate your humor ;D
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Well, RawDigger needs to be precise.
nobody says it has to be the same code inside RD for different modes - but with 1 "coder" (AT) I 'd rather have one product than 2 products he spends time on... specifically with multiplatform UI polishing, etc (including one website instead of 2 and so on).
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Technically, calculating statistics and histogram for RawDigger takes a lot of time (they need to be precise, as I mentioned), and RawDigger needs to run on Windows XP and Wine on UNIX.
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Technically, calculating statistics and histogram for RawDigger takes a lot of time (they need to be precise, as I mentioned),
but you do not need to do the same calculations for different modes... nothing prevents RD to use "FRV" calculations in "FRV" mode (but you have one piece of software to deal with instead of two) and precise calculations in "RD" mode...
and RawDigger needs to run on Windows XP and Wine on UNIX.
but it is not something that has to be no matter what forever... do you seriously have a lot of paying customers running RD in Wine/*x
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> nothing prevents RD to use "FRV" calculations in "FRV" mode (but you have one piece of software to deal with instead of two) and precise calculations in "RD" mode
That might cause a lot of confusion. After FastRawViewer will enter stable we may consider it, at least in part.
> do you seriously have a lot of paying customers running RD in Wine/*x
Couple of labs, yes. But every customer counts.
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Based on a 30 minute test run...
A great program that fills a number of "advanced user" needs. The people at LibRaw have their act together. Their code, their UI, and their documentation all display a quality that is superior to the vast majority of image processing utilities. I'd pay for this one.
The display speed is nice, but the quick and comprehensive raw file analysis tools are more important to me.
A couple of minor issues (using the Win7 64bit OpenGL version):
The "Start in full screen" option does not work for me. Not a big deal. I just stretched the default display to be full screen and the program remembers that on re-launch.
The program always launches with a blank screen, even when "Remember last opened file" is on. I have to navigate via File/Open to get started. I did discover that I can do a File/Recent Folders and it will open the last used file, so it does remember where I left off. However, if would be nice if it just opened that file on launch.
Thumbnails would be nice. I understand you don't want to slow things down or maintain a catalog by generating thumbs, but maybe consider adding some kind of option and let the user decide if thumbs are worth the time and trouble. Trying to jump around in a large list of files is too difficult without thumbs.
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Does it have the compare-and-select best image functionality comparable to Photo Mechanic?
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Thank you for your comments.
> The "Start in full screen" option does not work for me.
Can you please post the type of the video card you are using? Have you updated the video drivers to the latest version?
> The program always launches with a blank screen, even when "Remember last opened file" is on.
That is a valuable hint, we need to think about it.
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The way we do "compare and select" is to move the files to be compared to a separate folder and look through it, setting labels and ratings.
One of the main goals of the program is to quickly sort the shoot (like several thousands of shots taken while being in the field for 2 weeks, or wedding, or covering a sports event, etc.), rejecting all the shots that are obviously not worth keeping.
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Thanks Iliah,
My video card is a Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT.
No problems launching dozens of other programs full screen.
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The "Start in full screen" option does not work for me.
The full name of option is 'Start in full screen if program was closed while in full screen'.
It should work as it is written: FRV opens in full-screen after start only if you close it from full-screen on previous run.
Our (beta-team) users was confused by remembering full window state (including full screen) from previous run, so this option appear.
We'll add something like 'Always start in full-screen' option in next version.
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Hi,
I'd like to share my first impressions testing Fast Raw Viewer.
Overall: Positive,
Things that I like most:
- Speed
- Focus peaking (Fine detail mode)
- Boost shadow
- Over and underexposure, with configurable threshold for underexposure
pros: It is fast (see note about speed), useful functions
Cons: The inability to fast navigate to a image inside a folder. I mean, having a grid or filmstrip would be very helpful since currently you either have to view all files sequentialy or guess which image number you want to display without control of the order of images (I guess it is by date taken). This sole fact is a deal breaker for me. It may suit other workflows.
From a comment in the FastRawViewer forum, it seems that a grid will not be included, but the filmstrip is being considered.
Other coments:
Raw cache: Decoded RAW cache size (number of cached file) - The maximum value is 40. In computers with lots of RAM (>16 GB), why don't let this number go higher? Can't I have 200 images in the cache?
I tested with SSD and high speed Raid 0 configurations, and RAM is always faster. If you have a standard hard drive the difference is bigger.
Number of simultaneous RAW decode threads: I'm not sure how high I can go with this, Should this number be related to the number of processors / cores / threads?
Histogram: The Raw histogram is affected by the exposure compensation (so it is not a "pure" raw histogram). I did not understand at first why I had a difference between this and rawdigger (in terms of EV) and then found out that it was due to exposure compensation.
Boost shadows: I love this, since I commonly shoot in "Iso-less" mode and this function allows to quickly evaluate the image in the dark areas
Focus peaking:
- High contrast edges: I find this of limited use, especially if you are a "pixel peeper" since it does not really relate to sharp focus areas. Granted that it can be turned off
- Fine detail: Much better at identifying sharp focus areas with the only drawback that it can be fooled by noise, I don't know if there is an easy solution for this.
Please consider including a "Navigator" or thumbnail view. This would be helpful when displaying an image at 100%, to help locate where in the image you have the view.
Note about speed: This program allows to view RAW files really fast, which is a plus especially with large files, such as 36Mpx @ 14 bits.
Having said that, it is not much faster than browsing in the Lightroom library provided that you build the previews beforehand. I know this is not a fair comparison since building the previews for a large number of images takes a lot of time, but once they are created, the browsing is pretty fast in LR.
This of course will depend on the workflow and computer used. If using a laptop on location, FastRawViewer is really an interesting option to browse over large quantities of images as soon as they are downloaded to the computer. The usefulness of this will be improved a lot if there is a filmstrip or grid.
Just in case, the computer specs:
Windows 7 64 bits
FastRawViewer x64 OpenGL
Intel Core i7 2600
Ram 16 GB
Video card AMD Radeon HD6850 1GB
OS and application on a 256 GB SSD
Images on 2 x 1GB HD WD Black Caviar in Raid 0
I'll add more comments as I continue testing.
Regards,
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"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 ?
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Dear Francisco,
Thank you for the testing and analysis.
> The inability to fast navigate to a image inside a folder
Two things here. 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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 - 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.
We are very grateful for your detailed observations, and please give us more ;)
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> a product for the disorganised then?
For disorganized, too. BUt I see nothing wrong with postponing processing the shots until one has time.
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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.
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"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.
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> 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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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Played with it for 15 minutes.
I love it! :) :)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Thanks Iliah. No luck.
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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
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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 :)
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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 :D
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,
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The "official" announcement will follow a little later, but so that you see we are trying to listen and follow your suggestions - you can download version 0.9.1 for your platform from http://updates.fastrawviewer.com/data/
Few bugs that were found are fixed, and also, following the discussion here:
* 'Start in full-screen if...' is replaced with 'Start program in full-screen'.
* 'Hide bottom window bar' checkbox is added to Preferences - Interface (this controls the behavior of Tab key when hiding informational windows)
Thank you for your time and feedback, gentlemen.
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Beta 0.9.1 is officially out, please see http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ and download from http://www.fastrawviewer.com/download
Thank you for the help, Gentlemen.
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I tried the lasted beta using the DirectX option and it is much faster Iliah. As you say, my video card is starting to get long in the tooth.
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Dear Rory,
You may want to consider an upgrade for the video card. These days 100 to 150 dollars can buy you excellent video performance. And if your computer has PCI Express 3.0 ×16 slot you can look at something like GTI 650Ti.
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IMHO if the objective is to help select the best images from a set of thousands, and not just the reasonable ones, then it's essential to be able to compare two images side by side, and select the superior one as easily as possible. Photo Mechanic's approach to this problem is good. I don't know of anything else like it, which is a pity: http://wiki.camerabits.com/en/index.php?title=User_Manual_Flat_View#Greg_Gorman_Key
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Dear Damon,
We do side-by-side comparisons by starting multiple instances of FastRawViewer.
Alex adds:
- selecting between 2 good images is better done after processing, and FastRawViewer is hardly the right tool for it;
- currently, for initial selection, starting 2 instances is a way to do culling, finding the shot with preferred composition, facial expression, better sharpness, better exposure, etc.;
- our place in workflow is to sort the input to delete 90% of unwanted shots.