Fast Raw Viewer

[Iliah]

Today we launched free public beta of out FastRawViewer,
http://www.fastrawviewer.com/

[fdisilvestro]

Great! looks interesting, time to start testing it.

Regards

[Chris_Brown]

Looks intriguing!

[Vladimirovich]

I 'd rather have fast view mode in rawdigger though...

[Iliah]

Well, RawDigger needs to be precise.

[DeanChriss]

"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!

[Iliah]

Dear Dean,

I appreciate your humor 

[Vladimirovich]

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).

[Iliah]

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.

[Vladimirovich]

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

[Iliah]

> 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.

[Redcrown]

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.

[Damon Lynch]

Does it have the compare-and-select best image functionality comparable to Photo Mechanic? 

[Iliah]

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.

[Iliah]

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.

[Redcrown]

Thanks Iliah,

My video card is a Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT.

No problems launching dozens of other programs full screen.

[alextutubalin]

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.

[fdisilvestro]

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,

[Rhossydd]

"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 ?

[Iliah]

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