Monday 2 June 2008

Client Parking Only

GRD II, f4, 1/50, ISO 80, RAW

Another gray and rainy day here, did not have much time to take pictures and was not very inspired today.
But I've been inspired enough to trial out RAW Therapee and have to say I am quite happy with it so far. Could be a good alternative to use on my UMPC instead of the resource hungry CS3 or Lightroom. Need to test it a bit more but the first impression is positive. Soon I think I must've tried every RAW developer but so far only ACR works for me. Lightroom does not work at all since I don't like the idea behind the virtual files I work with and it has too much bulk. Silkypix has a messy interface so this does not work well either. Lightzone and Bibble are too slow on the UMPC so there is not much left. Wish FastStone would have a RAW developer included or ACR in Photoshop 7 would work with the Ricoh RAW files.

7 comments:

  1. Well, dry humour has a place in this world..I like the tongue in cheek idea after today´s image, and for sure parking trouble will be finished for good for whoever buys that box...

    Erik.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I also use raw therapee a lot. It's easy, freeware (i love underdogs) and I got good results!

    The noise reduction is aggressive though, I had to be careful not to smear detail!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Erik, I did like the irony in this shot. Funny thing is that I pass this every day on my way home but never saw the possibility for a shot till now.

    Thanks for the warning Ronald, will continue to use Noise Ninja to remove noise. Won it afterall at the Ricoh Forum competition.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fantastic ironic photograph.

    Funny that you write that Lightroom is resource hungry. Lightroom almost never exceeds 200Mb on my notebook, while RAW Therapee uses at least 350Mb. And RAW Therapee is really slow too. Even Silkypix uses more than 250Mb without any changes applied yet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wouter, I am comparing these from how fast I can open and edit an image on my UMPC and Lightroom takes too long. The fact it's even slow with jpgs is very annoying. I need to run a few extra tests and see what combination is best. So far for browsing jpgs FastStone is unbeatable and LR worst. For editing RAW files ACR is pretty good although the interface does not scale properly on the UMPC resolution.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You sure have some restrictions with your UMPC that are not appearent on my notebook.
    The main difference between all the named applications and Lightroom is that Lightroom is not only an editing app, but also a catalog app.
    I usely import all my photographs into Lightroom and delete those photographs from my Lightroom catalog I don't think are worth to edit. Those files still remain on my harddrive, but not in my catalog. That way I keep my catalog pretty slim.
    Have you tried Silkypix? It works great with Ricoh RAW files too.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yes, the UMPC poses some restrictions but I want to use the same software on it and my notebook at home.
    Lightroom does not work for me because of the way it works with the catalog. I would like it to act as FastStone so if I delete an image it deleted the file from my HDD and it allows me to browse the original and not processed jpgs fast.
    I tried Silkypix a few times but find the interface too confusing and never grew to like it.
    LR is great if it would only be a bit faster and allow me to work on physical files instead of virtual copies it could be exactly what I am looking for.

    ReplyDelete