Photo Ninja review

[keith_cooper]

Just finished an initial Photo Ninja review.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/software/photo_ninja_1.html

Working very well on my Mac - not one crash.

A few foibles in V1.0 software, but the underlying conversion shows a lot of promise.

I can see how aspects of the workflow might grate with some, and it could benefit from some options for streamlining workflow, but it's good to see another option for handling some of my more awkward files...

[Hening Bettermann]

Thank you for this review. The CA correction is really impressive.

[Keith Reeder]

The more I use Photo Ninja the more I'm finding that false colours in recovered highlights are killing its usefulness for me.

For the price I want a lot more usability, fewer silly and obvious bugs, and far fewer workflow peculiarities.

[keith_cooper]

What camera are you seeing this with? - this is the sort of stuff that varies by camera.

Not an issue I noticed

It is V1.0 software - so I'm hopeful it will mature. I remember when DxO Optics Pro only processed JPEG files...

[robgo2]

The more I use Photo Ninja the more I'm finding that false colours in recovered highlights are killing its usefulness for me.

For the price I want a lot more usability, fewer silly and obvious bugs, and far fewer workflow peculiarities.

Late response:  The false colors in highlighted areas are caused by incompletely recovered color channels.  Photo Ninja has a neat Color Recovery tool inside the Color Correction module.  All that you need to do is move the slider leftward in small increments until the false color is neutralized.

Rob

[kers]

Late response:  The false colors in highlighted areas are caused by incompletely recovered color channels.  Photo Ninja has a neat Color Recovery tool inside the Color Correction module.  All that you need to do is move the slider leftward in small increments until the false color is neutralized.
Rob

Still i also have some color problems in highlights even with the slider to zero..; I very much like PN but only for some standard situations--Not for sun in the picture- no high iso night photos etc..
There it goes wrong - still on a majority of the pictures it does a very good job . ACR is more consistent in that respect. A very nice combo i find

[Vladimirovich]

no high iso night photos etc..

and that is about a converter written by author(s) of a popular NR plugin/software (noise ninja)... that's telling 

[robgo2]

Still i also have some color problems in highlights even with the slider to zero..; I very much like PN but only for some standard situations--Not for sun in the picture- no high iso night photos etc..
There it goes wrong - still on a majority of the pictures it does a very good job . ACR is more consistent in that respect. A very nice combo i find

True, it is not always possible to eliminate false colors by this method, so one can try lifting the highlight recovery slider in those instances.  Overall, I have found Photo Ninja to be an outstanding performer in terms of highlight recovery, but still, no program is perfect.  That's why it's good to have more than one raw convertor at your disposal. 

Rob

[kers]

and that is about a converter written by author(s) of a popular NR plugin/software (noise ninja)... that's telling 

I never liked noise reduction - it always is costing the detail and i must say i like grain in high iso photographs
Also if you print big the noise is much less than on screen and on screen you do not need the high resolution ; ergo no noise...  no problem..

What is see in a quick test using phase one7- capture NX2 - PhotoNinja1.03 - Photoshop ACR CS6 and DXO8 is - that i like ACR best for high ISO. PhotoNinja is worst. ( d800e)
I just did some 'normal' photos in PhotoNinja and they look better than ACR.. more real,  more detail- more 3d. It fully uses the d800e NEF quality by default.

[robgo2]

I never liked noise reduction - it always is costing the detail and i must say i like grain in high iso photographs
Also if you print big the noise is much less than on screen and on screen you do not need the high resolution ; ergo no noise...  no problem..

What is see in a quick test using phase one7- capture NX2 - PhotoNinja1.03 - Photoshop ACR CS6 and DXO8 is - that i like ACR best for high ISO. PhotoNinja is worst. ( d800e)
I just did some 'normal' photos in PhotoNinja and they look better than ACR.. more real,  more detail- more 3d. It fully uses the d800e NEF quality by default.

Photo Ninja uses a new version of Noise Ninja for noise reduction.  I find the default luminance noise reduction settings to be too strong.  The PN tutorial actually suggests manually starting with both the luminance smoothing and the detail sliders at zero and then raising them gradually until reaching the level of acceptable noise (not no noise).  I do smoothing first and detail second.  Using this method in very noisy images, I usually end up with smoothing at 8-16 and detail at around 2-3 times that value.  For less noisy images, the settings are lower.  I have done some comparisons with ACR, and I think that they are very close in terms of NR, but of course, the PN images look much better overall.

Why don't you try this method, and let us know how it works for you?

Rob