raw conversion of professional photos

Doubtless you already realize this:
If working with a film transparency the image is what it is with no assurance that colors were accurately recorded. Create the same image under identical conditions with different film stocks and the results, as we all know, are visibly different.
Your client can take an image of a commonly available gray/black/white card during a shooting session to provide you a reference point–a common strategy if "accurate" color is the main concern. In my albeit not universal experience many "professional" image processors forego accuracy altogether. If presented with a portrait of, e.g., a caucasian subject they tune skin tones to a predetermined range of rgb values. This is hardly "accurate" but is usually pleasing to the client. If you are distressed over the serious deficiencies of the Adobe raw converter in PS you are not alone in your feelings.
Hopefully CS4 will dispense with that monstrosity and open all images on the desktop with all tools available in non-destructive fashion, rather than the current one-way direction of the converter and its many ill documented adjustment tools. For one thing, wouldn’t it be nice to open a raw image and have access to the curves tool in PS as your first tool instead of having to do whatever you do in the converter and then move the image to PS?

This is exactly the problem I have right now. My Photoshop CS will not open a raw file from my Canon Rebel XTIS Camera in Photoshop and I have therefore to us The Canon utility program that came with the camera first converting it to a tiff file and then use Photoshop to do further processing there. Kurt Knoll.

"saycheez" wrote in message

Doubtless you already realize this:
If working with a film transparency the image is what it is with no assurance that colors were accurately recorded. Create the same image under identical conditions with different film stocks and the results, as we all know, are visibly different.
Your client can take an image of a commonly available gray/black/white card during a shooting session to provide you a reference point–a common strategy if "accurate" color is the main concern. In my albeit not universal experience many "professional" image processors forego accuracy altogether. If presented with a portrait of, e.g., a caucasian subject they tune skin tones to a predetermined range of rgb values. This is hardly "accurate" but is usually pleasing to the client. If you are distressed over the serious deficiencies of the Adobe raw converter in PS you are not alone in your feelings.
Hopefully CS4 will dispense with that monstrosity and open all images on the desktop with all tools available in non-destructive fashion, rather than the current one-way direction of the converter and its many ill documented adjustment tools. For one thing, wouldn’t it be nice to open a raw image and have access to the curves tool in PS as your first tool instead of having to do whatever you do in the converter and then move the image to PS?

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta) 4.5
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

and here is a link to camera raw 4.4.1
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

"Kurt Knoll" wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have right now. My Photoshop CS will not open a raw file from my Canon Rebel XTIS Camera in Photoshop and I have therefore to us The Canon utility program that came with the camera first converting it to a tiff file and then use Photoshop to do further processing there. Kurt Knoll.

On Jul 19, 1:13 pm, ""
wrote:

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta) 4.5http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

and here is a link to camera raw 4.4.1http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
"Kurt Knoll" wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have right now. My Photoshop CS will not open a raw file from my Canon Rebel XTIS Camera in Photoshop and I have therefore to us The Canon utility program that came with the camera first converting it to a tiff file and then use Photoshop to do further processing there. Kurt Knoll.

To me it seems that the real problem here is not so much the lack of a visual reference, gray balance and pure hue targets, which we had strapped on a drum in a viewing booth during trials, but with digital it’s the poor image quality that your stranded with upon the initial conversion process regardless of the tools used. I realize we have the ability to revert without destroying the original captured data, yeeha! assuming you can recreate the good moves and compensate for the bad decisions one initially made.

Today it’s like your handed this shoe box full of crapola and forced to pound the content into submission. I know the more you have to push the more the image breaks down. This is a major step back in my head, don’t get me wrong, digital is the way to go but holy jesus! the effort it takes to optimize and sharpen that raw data is painful. Now if your divorced from the shoot itself like I am, your having to reach inside the authors head and extrapolate from that "hi-end" digitally captured data and target the vision and expectations of the artist. Outside of hovering over the shoulder as they hit the button and taking a mental picture, I’m still baffled by the tools and workflow.

KB

KB ha scritto:

On Jul 19, 1:13 pm, ""
wrote:

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta) 4.5http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

and here is a link to camera raw 4.4.1http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
"Kurt Knoll" wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have right now. My Photoshop CS will not open a raw file from my Canon Rebel XTIS Camera in Photoshop and I have therefore to us The Canon utility program that came with the camera first converting it to a tiff file and then use Photoshop to do further processing there. Kurt Knoll.

To me it seems that the real problem here is not so much the lack of a visual reference, gray balance and pure hue targets, which we had strapped on a drum in a viewing booth during trials, but with digital it’s the poor image quality that your stranded with upon the initial conversion process regardless of the tools used. I realize we have the ability to revert without destroying the original captured data, yeeha! assuming you can recreate the good moves and compensate for the bad decisions one initially made.

Today it’s like your handed this shoe box full of crapola and forced to pound the content into submission. I know the more you have to push the more the image breaks down. This is a major step back in my head, don’t get me wrong, digital is the way to go but holy jesus! the effort it takes to optimize and sharpen that raw data is painful. Now if your divorced from the shoot itself like I am, your having to reach inside the authors head and extrapolate from that "hi-end" digitally captured data and target the vision and expectations of the artist. Outside of hovering over the shoulder as they hit the button and taking a mental picture, I’m still baffled by the tools and workflow.
KB

Have you ever wondered why a 10+ Mpixels RAW file only weighs around 6 to 8 Mbytes (depending on the camera maker), while the same image in TIFF weighs 30+ Mbytes ? Any CCD camera sensor only *captures* around 1/3 of the data needed at a given resolution. That’s the maximum you get. In order to restore the *missing* data when processing a RAW file, software algorithms are applied (demosaicing). The better the algorithm the better the image. (and there isn’t a standard algorithm either, thus results may vary…thus forget about *the original picture*) In the end, that’s all you get after spending $800+ on your professional digital camera. ;))

—

"erpy" wrote in message
KB ha scritto:
On Jul 19, 1:13 pm, ""
wrote:

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta)
4.5http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

and here is a link to camera raw
4.4.1http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

"Kurt Knoll" wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have right now. My Photoshop CS will not open a raw file from my Canon Rebel XTIS Camera in Photoshop and I have therefore to us The Canon utility program that came with the camera first converting it to a tiff file and then use Photoshop to do further processing there. Kurt Knoll.

To me it seems that the real problem here is not so much the lack of a visual reference, gray balance and pure hue targets, which we had strapped on a drum in a viewing booth during trials, but with digital it’s the poor image quality that your stranded with upon the initial conversion process regardless of the tools used. I realize we have the ability to revert without destroying the original captured data, yeeha! assuming you can recreate the good moves and compensate for the bad decisions one initially made.

Today it’s like your handed this shoe box full of crapola and forced to pound the content into submission. I know the more you have to push the more the image breaks down. This is a major step back in my head, don’t get me wrong, digital is the way to go but holy jesus! the effort it takes to optimize and sharpen that raw data is painful. Now if your divorced from the shoot itself like I am, your having to reach inside the authors head and extrapolate from that "hi-end" digitally captured data and target the vision and expectations of the artist. Outside of hovering over the shoulder as they hit the button and taking a mental picture, I’m still baffled by the tools and workflow.

KB

Have you ever wondered why a 10+ Mpixels RAW file only weighs around 6 to 8 Mbytes (depending on the camera maker), while the same image in TIFF weighs 30+ Mbytes ? Any CCD camera sensor only *captures* around 1/3 of the data needed at a given resolution. That’s the maximum you get. In order to restore the *missing* data when processing a RAW file, software algorithms are applied (demosaicing). The better the algorithm the better the image. (and there isn’t a standard algorithm either, thus results may vary…thus forget about *the original picture*)
In the end, that’s all you get after spending $800+ on your professional digital camera. ;))

For now i am oksy hoping they will come out with and updatet version for the raw conversion.
KK

For now i am oksy hoping they will come out with and updatet version for the raw conversion.
KK

Which version of Photoshop CS do you have? I looked through the thread and seem to have missed you mentioning your PS version. The updated Adobe Camera Raw listed in this thread works only with PS CS3.

The only version i do have is Photoshop CS. The plugin version here i already have but does not work with the Rebel cr2 version. Kurt Knoll.

"Boskey" wrote in message

For now i am oksy hoping they will come out with and updatet version for the raw conversion.
KK

Which version of Photoshop CS do you have? I looked through the thread and seem to have missed you mentioning your PS version. The updated Adobe Camera Raw listed in this thread works only with PS CS3.

"Kurt Knoll" wrote in message

The only version i do have is Photoshop CS. The plugin version here i already have but does not work with the Rebel cr2 version. Kurt Knoll.

http://www.adobe.com:80/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html About half way down this page it reads, "Camera Raw 4.0 and greater is not compatible with Photoshop CS2." I believe you will need to upgrade your PS software to the latest version to get the ACR support for your camera model.

Thanks i will look into it just as soon i find a cah cow. Kurt Knoll.

www.kurtknoll.com/midway.html

"Boskey" wrote in message

"Kurt Knoll" wrote in message

The only version i do have is Photoshop CS. The plugin version here i already have but does not work with the Rebel cr2 version. Kurt Knoll.

http://www.adobe.com:80/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html About half way down this page it reads, "Camera Raw 4.0 and greater is not compatible with Photoshop CS2." I believe you will need to upgrade your PS software to the latest version to get the ACR support for your camera model.

wrote:

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta) 4.5
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

<sorry for my bad english.>

anyone knows where can I download DNG converter 4.5? i read here http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3943 "Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter" but when i download the zip comes with nothing else but the plugin.

am I wrong?
this is my only way to convert new raw files (D3, D1mkIII and so on) mantaining RAW parameters , using DNG and then opening DNG with my CS/CS2

</sorry for my bad english.>

"Ferry" wrote:

wrote:

Kurt,
make sure you have the latest camera raw plugin

here is a link to camera raw candidate (beta) 4.5
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5

<sorry for my bad english.>

No need to be sorry, but try to type the good "English" *not* "english"

anyone knows where can I download DNG converter 4.5? i read here http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3943 "Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter" but when i download the zip comes with nothing else but the plugin.

am I wrong?

I don’t use RAW->DNG converter but have downloaded couple versions to know what it’s, and if you download the right one then it should be an .EXE file.

this is my only way to convert new raw files (D3, D1mkIII and so on) mantaining RAW parameters , using DNG and then opening DNG with my CS/CS2

If I am not mistaken DNG converter is a Stand Alone *not* plug-in, but I may be wrong as I have never tried to run it myself.

</sorry for my bad english.>

Try "English" which is the good English.