New profile making software: Lumariver Profile Designer

[Malcolm Payne]

A quick question on making C1 repro profiles in LRPD, please.

The manual (and indeed Phase One themselves) mandates using the Linear Scientific curve when making repro profiles. As far as I am aware, this specific curve is only available in the very specialised and hugely expensive Cultural Heritage version of the C1 software.

Is there any way of accessing this curve in the C1 Pro version, which otherwise only appears to include the standard Linear Response curve which has a (small) roll-off in the highlights? Or any other means of achieving the same effect?

Many thanks.

[Hening Bettermann]

I guess changing lenses shall probably inflict more changes than sample to sample / batch to batch variations in what lies on top of silicone starting from CFA, microlenses and all the way to IR/UV cut and AA (of whatever is simulating AA in terms of light path length) layers

This is in accordance with my experience. On a real world image shot with my earlier a7r1 I see practically no difference if I display it through a profile built for the a7r2. Whereas I see a striking difference between lenses compared to a test target.

[torger]

I've noted that some folks is pirating the software, some guy has made a crack and all...  we'll I guess this means that people actually want to use it. I'm not sure how I'm going to react to it. I've never really bothered making a hard-to-crack license protection as most photographers are honest people and niche software is usually not that interesting for crackers. Obviously this is not niche enough

I'm not keen on using license servers like for example BasICColor, but I'm not really fond of people pirating the software either. There's DCamProf for those that don't want to pay.

[torger]

A quick question on making C1 repro profiles in LRPD, please.

The manual (and indeed Phase One themselves) mandates using the Linear Scientific curve when making repro profiles. As far as I am aware, this specific curve is only available in the very specialised and hugely expensive Cultural Heritage version of the C1 software.

Is there any way of accessing this curve in the C1 Pro version, which otherwise only appears to include the standard Linear Response curve which has a (small) roll-off in the highlights? Or any other means of achieving the same effect?

I'm no expert considering C1 hacks (how to access various curves inside C1), but LRPD will in repro mode compensate for the slightly non-linear "Linear Response" curve, so it shouldn't be an issue except possibly very close to highlight clipping.

[scyth]

The manual (and indeed Phase One themselves) mandates using the Linear Scientific curve when making repro profiles. As far as I am aware, this specific curve is only available in the very specialised and hugely expensive Cultural Heritage version of the C1 software.

just rename the .fcrv file from a different camera - they are present in regular distribution too ... the difference is that a regular .fcrv curve file has some flag inside (byte or two) for C1 code to deal with data near clipping, roll it nicely ... and linear scientific does not

[Hening Bettermann]

> I've noted that some folks is pirating the software

This is really mean!

[Malcolm Payne]

@torger, @scyth

Thank you both.  I've found and renamed what is hopefully a suitable Lin Scientific .frcv file, so will experiment with that and see how it goes.

I bought a license for the repro edition at the weekend - I could probably have got by with the command line version, but LRPD was a lot less hassle, and also as a 'thank you' for all your efforts and hard work. My very preliminary and limited tests so far suggest that LRPD repro ICC profiles are at least on a par with the trial profiles that I produced with BasICColor Input 5 when that was released last year.

It's very disappointing to hear you're suffering from piracy already - hopefully most of the culprits are people who just want to play with it and/or wouldn't have paid for it anyway, so that you don't lose too much in sales. Good luck.

[scyth]

It's very disappointing to hear you're suffering from piracy already

from the practical standpoint - those who don't buy won't buy ... there is no point to suffer... it is not like a $1 app from an appstore

[torger]

from the practical standpoint - those who don't buy won't buy ... there is no point to suffer... it is not like a $1 app from an appstore

Yes the cyber-criminals from the countries that make the cracks is sort of not the problem, they won't buy any software anyway. It's just sad to see programming talent being wasted on cracking, viruses and hacking elections rather than contributing to society by making creative useful software.

It can become a problem for me though if cracked software spread to developed countries and the half-honest folks that can afford just choose the cracked version instead. It's a problem even here in Sweden, I know people that have a really good income but still pirate movies and software like crazy just because it's easy and relatively risk-free and they just don't see the point to pay for things they can get for free, through the help of some cracker. I'm quite offended by that behavior. If kids do it, okay, but I know grown-ups that do it...

Pretty pissed right now, but you're right, I can't do much about it and it's better to just ignore it, for my temper at least. It's a sport to the crackers, to me it's just boring waste of time in a game I will lose anyway, and I don't want to make the software a license-server-dongle-whatever pain to use for my paying customers.

[scyth]

and hacking elections rather than contributing to society

as a side note - showing how clintonites conspired against bernie was a service to society regardless ...

[Malcolm Payne]

Any piracy must be doubly frustrating when you've priced and licensed the software so reasonably in the first place, and when the alternative command line version is still freely available. But thank you for not imposing an arduous copy protection system on your legitimate users; as has been said before, copy protection merely serves to keep honest users honest, and does little to deter the dishonest ones.

[scyth]

some guy has made a crack

JFYI - the key generation was already reverse-engineered today ... no need for crack anymore ...

[GWGill]

from the practical standpoint - those who don't buy won't buy ... there is no point to suffer... it is not like a $1 app from an appstore

Pirating is a bit more nuanced than that - it's not black and white. The reality is that some people will buy anyway, some will never buy, and some people will buy if they have to. The latter is not a fixed number, it depends on the desirability of the SW, the price and the availability of pirate versions.

Niche software can be particularly vulnerable, since  technically it can be just as hard & expensive to develop as mainstream software, but has a much smaller potential market, resulting in a relatively high price compared to "normal" software. The high price confronts peoples normal judgement of fair value, creating a larger pool of people who will pirate it if they can.

Copy Protection is a pain for everyone involved, but it is not necessarily always a waste of time from the creators point of view, particularly for niche software if they use a unique scheme, since skilled crackers are less likely to want to waste time on it. It has to be non-trivial though, something that will take more than a day to figure out in IDA.

Here's an additional thought I've had about pirated software :- its availability reduces the value of the software to those who have paid for it - it justifies the feeling that they may have been foolish in buying it. So attempting to maintain exclusivity by having an effective CP scheme may be a means of increasing the buyers satisfaction in purchasing your SW. :-)

[torger]

Pirating is a bit more nuanced than that - it's not black and white. The reality is that some people will buy anyway, some will never buy, and some people will buy if they have to. The latter is not a fixed number, it depends on the desirability of the SW, the price and the availability of pirate versions.

Niche software can be particularly vulnerable, since  technically it can be just as hard & expensive to develop as mainstream software, but has a much smaller potential market, resulting in a relatively high price compared to "normal" software. The high price confronts peoples normal judgement of fair value, creating a larger pool of people who will pirate it if they can.

Copy Protection is a pain for everyone involved, but it is not necessarily always a waste of time from the creators point of view, particularly for niche software if they use a unique scheme, since skilled crackers are less likely to want to waste time on it. It has to be non-trivial though, something that will take more than a day to figure out in IDA.

Here's an additional thought I've had about pirated software :- its availability reduces the value of the software to those who have paid for it - it justifies the feeling that they may have been foolish in buying it. So attempting to maintain exclusivity by having an effective CP scheme may be a means of increasing the buyers satisfaction in purchasing your SW. :-)

Thanks for your thoughts. I know I probably have to do something and just not stand and watch as people steal my income. I too realize that this type of software is the one that is most hurting of piracy due to price range (not too low, not too high) and that it's niche. I'm right now so f**king pissed I'm considering pulling the software all-together, but of course I have the responsibility to my paying customers. Priority one is to not make them suffer. I knew this could happen and I didn't think I would be so angry, but I really am. It's the exact same feeling as someone has stolen my property.

The problem is that making a copy protection worth its name is several weeks of full-time job. I did this about 12 years ago for my employee at the time and it was a real mess, and the methods since then needs upgrading for sure so I have a lot of reading to do. I don't have that much coding now, so it means post-poning features I had in mind in future updates possibly for months, just because going to war with crackers and make less honest people feel like "not being stupid to pay for something they can rip for free" -- and I know more people than you'd like have that kind of mindset, all this is really making me angry.

We'll, I'll try to leave this behind me and focus on questions and development related to profiling... I'm not making anyone happy by whining, except for that it felt a bit better for myself for a moment .

[sebbe]

Sad to hear about the piracy. I bought the software because I like to have a GUI and also to honour your work on DCamProf. Lumariver profiles are competitive to basICColor Input 5 profiles (which I own too). On top of that you can modify the profile in nearly any way. And all that for the third of the price. This is really a bargain.

As there is no big market for your product I don't think your software will have a lot of seeders. And therefore it may be cracked now but not shared anymore after a few weeks.
Maybe you should just put some comments on the biggest torrent/download sites with hints to dangerous virus inside the crack. Or write the truth in the same way you did it here. Both strategies may slow/reduce the sharing of the crack.

On the other hand I don't think that much people would use the crack. Creating a profile isn't that simple and users of profiling software are aware of the work behind such a program. Thats why I'm sure they are also willing to pay for it.

Did you made some marketing for the program on other sites/forums? Or did you asked lula for a review/interview? DCamProf created a lot of hits on their site and this would be a nice way to say thank you. This will not help with the piracy but you'll may get some more sellings.

I hope the best for you and thanks for your products.
Sebbe

[scyth]

The problem is that making a copy protection worth its name is several weeks of full-time job.

you actually want to consider doing this, because Lumariver HDR is going to be next... I just read the question about it in the same thread over there... btw, ~$15 FastRawViewer is absent from that place... just saying

[howardm]

Just bought it.  I respect the efforts of all software designers.

[scyth]

Or did you asked lula for a review/interview?

do you really need to ask ? I'd assume you can simply write a good article and submit it ... that shall indeed increase the bottom line too

[GWGill]

The problem is that making a copy protection worth its name is several weeks of full-time job.

Yep - it feels like a complete waste of development effort - effort that would be better spent on improving your software. About all I can say is that there is some satisfaction in devising things to slow the crackers down, and hopefully get them to give it up as being not worth the effort.

[scyth]

the most cheap way to slow enemy down is

1) publicly available binaries (for trial) have certain functionality simply not compiled in ( = not if, but #IF ) and certain other functionality hardcoded inside ( again the same way - so you can't change couple of bytes to bypass )

2) fully functional binaries are downloaded after purchase only - you email buyer a link, then remove it ... and again different versions have different code compiled in binaries (not if checks in code)