New Image Editor

New software ... looks interesting. Seems to be based on Ansel Adams' Zone System. Haven't played with it ... just poked around. It is here:

http://www.lightcrafts.com/

For those with interest (well ... even if you haven't an interest it is still there).

Gary

Lightzone has been around for a year or so now and is a fascinating product since it brings selective editing to raw files and saves versions as editing metadata. I really liked it - it had one or two weaknesses that led me not to do so - see getting a grip.

John

John Beardsworth said:

Lightzone has been around for a year or so now and is a fascinating product since it brings selective editing to raw files and saves versions as editing metadata. I really liked it - it had one or two weaknesses that led me not to do so - see getting a grip.

John

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John,

The reference to the Online Photographer is in itself worth this thread!

I have tried out LightZone and am impressed with it. It is unlike anything else, for sure. One should be able to switch to a CS2 type interface at will to see what is happening and I didn't find this. Further, one needs to be able to pull out sections and expand this to full height and just optimize this section. To me at least, it is a challenge to make very small adjustments.

These detractions aside, this is a very unique and clever program. It is specialized.

I feel its place is to use principally with files intended for B&W prints where tone optimization is key. The faults of slow speed, metadata loss and so forth are not really problems for pictures that are very valuable and due for a gallery print.

Of course, integration with other software would make it magic, but this is only the begonning.

This new stacked Zonal tone paradigm is worth exploring. Sometimes a person's brain works better with a particular interface! This may be Nirvana for some people working in B&W who attempt to understand Ansel Adams' view of the world!

Asher

Well Asher, I was less excited by the Adamsesque mapper than I was by the region masking tools - like Photoshop masks but done as twin vectors and so requiring much less overhead. I found them very intuitive, with the inner line indicating 100% effect of an adjustment and the outer one indicating 0%. Drag the two lines apart to feather the effect - wonderful. I found the mapper too fiddly.

Digital Outback also has some how-to articles, and Andrew Rodney reviewed it.

I'm sure Microsoft must be eyeing up various raw converters to add to iView - they could do a lot worse than Lightzone (but I bet they buy Capture One).

John

John Beardsworth said:

Well Asher, I was less excited by the Adamsesque mapper than I was by the region masking tools - like Photoshop masks but done as twin vectors and so requiring much less overhead. I found them very intuitive, with the inner line indicating 100% effect of an adjustment and the outer one indicating 0%. Drag the two lines apart to feather the effect - wonderful. I found the mapper too fiddly.

Digital Outback also has some how-to articles, and Andrew Rodney reviewed it.

I'm sure Microsoft must be eyeing up various raw converters to add to iView - they could do a lot worse than Lightzone (but I bet they buy Capture One).

John

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That prospect John of them being gobbled up is good and bad news!

I don't like the small fry being gobbled by barracudas but that is the life of little fish.

With software, we often get programs ripped apart just for particular sub parts and the program and developers are trashed after a short while.

Thanks for pointing out twin vectors. I spent really no time on that and I'll now go back and also look at the references.

As usual you are so helpful.

Asher

There's a review here:

http://bonus.ppmag.com/2006/04/review_light_cr.html

Lack of integration with a Photoshop-centric (and in particular, ACR-based) workflow stops me from getting really interested in items like this.

At least DxO took the leap with their forthcoming 4.0 release to operate as a raw plug-in. It remains to be seen how well it works, because the just-published Beta left that part out (the part I was really interested in seeing, of course). I don't want it for its color balance, exposure control, etc. settings. I want to use it for what it really was invented for -- optical corrections for various lens/body combinations.

At the recent Photoshop Soup 2 Nuts workshop with Thomas Knoll, I challenged him and the other Photoshop developers that were in attendance to come up with a plug-in system for ACR, such that we could pick and choose from our favorite noise reduction, sharpening, chromatic aberration, etc software, and be able to use them at the most appropriate point in the raw conversion process.

While ACR does provide some tools like luminance/chroma noise reduction, I'd say that no one (not even Thomas) would defend it as best in class. Instead of trying to be the best in all things, it would be far more useful to provide a platform that would allow one to plug in their favorite pieces (seasoned to taste) and use them directly in their raw workflow.

I acknowledge that this may well be nigh impossible, given the way that ACR was designed and operates. On the other hand, Lightroom is prima facia evidence that one can re-assemble reusable bits and pieces of a given raw convertor and other filters/processes and present them in a non-destructive editing stack with a new user interface.

I'd like to see a good bit more progress on this front, perhaps with an industry consortium that can agree on the means for interfacing modules like this in non-destructive editing stacks (a kind of a DNG of photo editors, if you will). That way, DxO, for instance can concentrate on what they are really known for, instead of trying to also be a general-purpose RAW converter, as well, just so they have something to house their optical correction stuff in.

Dave,

Perhaps follow through with a note to Tom Knoll.

I think it always helps to put these things in writing after a busy conference as so many ideas get lost. Reference to the S&N conference!

Did you enjoy the show? I really wanted to go but I was out of the country at the time. The program looked very high level.

How useful was it?

Asher

The Soup 2 Nuts was worthwhile for me. I came back with a ton of notes from the various sessions I attended. I'm trying to get a balance of artistic and technical 'take aways' from venues like this, and it certainly helps to have a nice conference like this practically in my backyard (SE Michigan).

I especially enjoyed the Photo Safari to the Toledo Zoo, and hanging out with Jeff Schewe, et al, taking shots of the zoo (and human) animals. You pick up quite a bit of technique in such mini-workshops. Thomas, of course, showed up for the safari with the Mother of All White Canon Lenses (and got some good-natured ribbing for it, as well).

I am currently working a lot with LightZone to prepare a review. I am actually blown away. It is not only the concept, which I have been writing about positively in the past, but how it is implemented. Like Capture NX - good in principle, poorly done in actuality - LightZone uses a very easy to use non-destructie editing scheme. While U-Points in NX have a very good mask-feather combination to blend changes with the non-changed parts of the photo (using colour and tone based masking in addition to a more classical selection) automatically, in LZ the user defines the mask manually.

LZ's masks are paths, not selections [in Photoshop parlance], and they come with a second adjustable line, the feathering area, which can be adjusted after the fact. Much more intuitive than anything PS offers. Several colour, cloning, noise/sharpening tools are provided; they work as a stack giving you lots of flexibility to get it 'juuuust right'.

It takes roughly 15 minutes and one image to get to know and understand LightZone - after that you concentrate on what you want in the image not how to achieve it. After years of intensive work with Photoshop you may still learn the odd technicality of PS tools, with LZ you don't have to [there isn't much to learn], you just learn more about what is in a photo and how to take advantage of it and LZ's way.

After getting to grips with the clone tool - non-destructive! - I'd say you need Photoshop only for very specific jobs involving compositing.

Dierk

Interesting that you are also enthusiastic about LZ. As I know you value your metadata, can I point you to this
blog posting and especially to the comments? Your review should be interesting.

John

You are right, there are a few flaws, the biggest of which is definitely the metadata stripping. Since LZ is not a batch processor - and I have to admit that for corrections I found only RAW Shooter's batch capabilities adequate -, I simply work around this by importing the exported TIFF/JPEG into MediaPro, make a metadata template from the original and apply to the new picture. It shouldn't be like this.

There's one comment about the clone tool, which I i would have sunscribed to when I fist tested it. Now I have seen the light, it works just like all the other regions, you can and should change the source point after defining the mask; you can change the outer and inner region, whic you should. combine that with the blending modes and opacity slider and the clone tool is brilliant. the results are even better than the healing brush in Photoshop under ideal conditions. I used it to clone out one or two spots in the vulture and in the gorilla images over in the Wildlife Portrait thread.

PS: Since I know that both of us are ardent supporters of MediaPro, let me add a comment about cooperation between programs. In principle I wuld not need a file browser, which is why I also installed the RT version of LZ. I select a photo in MP and open it with the Helper Application LightZone RT. Unfortunately MP uses the lowest common denominator API, the command line, meaning that it sends the 8.3 file name to other applications, and many apps cannot explode them into the long names [I guess MP does not use any of Windows XP's capabilities and information when sending file names].

Obviously this spells trouble, particularly with saving results in LZ - it wouldn't work. A similar problem exists between MP and ArchiveCreator because Windows command line API can only hold something like 8000 characters [?]. Thus you cannot select all photos for burning to DVD in one go.

You can get round that 8.3 issue with scripting - adapt John Bean's script for NX. I've not tried it with LightZone, but adapted it for LightRoom without any issues.

LZ's such a clever program and I only really considered buying the full version - I liked the browser's display of the versions. But I couldn't script iView to launch a chosen image in browser view, and the program stripped metadata (why make work for myself?) and doesn't take any advantage of DNG - I tried hard to encourage them to save editing instructions as XMP and update the preview. But if I were on the corporate acquisition trail, I'd snap it up (and, before Bill Gates pounced, would have bolted it onto iView).

John

'aven't I written over at iView that MS should get hold of Archive Creator and LightZone to incorporate it into MP, particularly since they were too late for RAW Shooter?

This is just to spread the word, good things cannot be written to often.

Funny you should mention Archive Creator. I was under the impression that once I figured out how to get iView all set up, that it would track anything I archived, either on CD/DVD or hard drives. Or are you using Archive Creator just to put together client disks? I played with an early version of it, and used it to burn a few CDs, but shelved it at some point, figuring that I needed something more like MP to track my archives. I did use it though, to burn a CD once for a PC-illiterate relative, but I've even stopped bothering with that. It seems that most folks can deal with a bunch of JPEGs dumped on a CD these days, what with XPs ability to do impromptu slide shows, etc.

MediaPro uses the OS capabilities to burn backups - on XP that limits you to CDs. iView more than once made clear (right they are) that they have no intention to develop their own disc burning app, which is why I think ArchiveCreator would be a nice addition (with some changes obviously). AC has so many good points, I cannot imaging Vista being a contender.

Lightzone for Linux I stumbled across a reference to this the other day, and dug it out last night. Seems to be freely distributed, with the permission of LightCrafts.

So far, I'm really liking the region selections and zone mapper. I do take issue with the statements about only needing 15 minutes and 1 image to learn everything there is, though. I spent an hour or so last night and am pretty sure I don't have it all.

One thing I noticed was that the RAW conversions (images from a 20D) have much more noise than conversions of the same file from BibblePro. I was working with images shot at ISO 1600, and then underexposed by one stop to get the shutter speed high enough for hand holding. Bibble, even before Noise Ninja, had noise levels low enough I would have been willing to try a test print. I never managed to knock the noise down that low with LightZone.

Erik DeBill said:

[...] only needing 15 minutes and 1 image to learn everything there is [...]

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Didn't say or write so. Actually 1 1/2 hour should be enough to find everything - unless I've overlooked something [and today proves I do overlook very simple things in software].

Dierk Haasis said:

Didn't say or write so. Actually 1 1/2 hour should be enough to find everything - unless I've overlooked something [and today proves I do overlook very simple things in software].

Click to expand...

I stand corrected. I mis-interpreted "get to know" as implying significant knowledge. I see now that you must have meant something more along the lines of developing a working understanding of the basic usage paradigm and a few tools. You can definitely get that.

Today I'm going back to some favorite images from the past and seeing what I can do with them using Lightzone. That seems like a reasonable way to compare image editors. Unfortunately, each time I work on an image I learn a little about it. That means the second time through on a different editor will still be easier than the first. Going back to images that are very old means I've forgotten how hard it was to convert them (and presumeably learned a lot about working on images since then).

Yet another RAW converter is about to hit the market....

Arcsoft's Photostudio Darkroom offering:

Non-destructive image processing
Support for RAW, JPEG and TIFF files
Support for Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, and Adobe DNG RAW formats
Lightning-fast thumbnail previews
Exposure adjustment
White balance adjustment
Lens correction
Curves and levels
Crop and straighten
High-Quality image output
Batch export
Support of the most popular color spaces
Support for Windows and Mac (including Mac Intel)

...and I thought the RAW market was shrinking!

Although it looks like its another dcraw based converter.

It also looks as if somebody has taken a good look at RAW Shooter. Not a bad thing if they know how to code [speed] and implemented the features in a way to come up with as good a work-flow. The batching as advertised by them is very promising, working the same way as RS's did: first correct the individual images, then shove them over for processing in one go.

Just downloaded PhotoStudio, initial findings are:

Very similar to RSE, intuitive, clean, uncluttered and fast, but like most recent apps (LRW and Silkypix) you load files into the editor, so no explorer style, click on folder to access them.

Built in lens correction, CA removal and NR (Chromatic and Luminance), limited ICC support but it does seem to have its own proprietary RAW engine and the obligatory sidecar files.

Its reads and edits most image formats (Nikon and Canon RAWs included) and has some color effect presets.

Quality and speed of development is surprisngly good!

For a preliminary and basic release I was impressed. It looks like they are are offering a 20% discount if you try the demo and buy it.

Dare I be a little contraversial (and cycnical) and ask how come a relatively unknown software house (in terms of RAW) can quckly bring such a product to market, while the giant Adobe are still flapping around on LRW betas?

This is exactly the sort of interim product that Adobe should have made available months ago!

John Beardsworth said:

I'm sure Microsoft must be eyeing up various raw converters to add to iView - they could do a lot worse than Lightzone (but I bet they buy Capture One).

John

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John,

Do you really think that MS wants to be in the Digital Back (read "Camera") business? :>)

Michael Tapes said:

Do you really think that MS wants to be in the Digital Back (read "Camera") business? :>)

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I think they want to be in every(one's) business.

- DL

Just in case you missed it, LightZone 1.6 was released last friday:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_26/essay.html#20060908

Herman

I have a long-standing bone to pick with ArcSoft. Most (all?) of their 'demo' software (and I presume their for-pay products, as well) install what I consider a nasty Trojan horse license manager program, which irretriveably (by any normal uninstallation means) overwrites your hard drive boot sector. This is a very dangerous practice, as using what is supposedly the 'unused' area of boot or partition sectors is definitely not supported, and depending on who or what else may have decided to use that area, can result in the least, non-functioning applications, or at the worst, a non-bootable system.

There was a brief warning message during installation (I don't recall whether or not I got an opportunity to abort the install), and being suspicious by nature, I looked up the name of the installed license manager and found a number of entries concerning it in the McAfee Virus database (among other places), decribing its rather unsanitary way of installation.

I appealed to ArcSoft's technical support to get help with uninstalling the boot 'virus', and was met with silence to my emails. They also did not return my phone calls. I finally used a sample boot sector copied from another installed system, and used a hex editor to re-patch the boot sector by hand to get rid of it. As an embedded software developer of some 30 years experience, I was qualified to do this. In other words, don't try this at home!

Only after I fired off a nasty-gram to the ArcSoft folks decribing what I had to go through to get their stuff off of my machine, did I get a call from an apologetic sales guy, who promised to send me a complementary licensed version for my trouble. The complementary copy did eventually show up, and remains on my shelf (uninstalled) as a reminder of why I will never knowingly do business with that company.

ArcSoft apparently makes most of their money by aggressive OEM bundling arrangements with various computer, camera and video camcorder manufacturers. From this, they claim a large installed base. I'd be suspicious of how many folks actually use their stuff, and just leave it installed, exasperated at trying to get their crap off of their machine.

John Beardsworth said:

I'm sure Microsoft must be eyeing up various raw converters to add to iView - they could do a lot worse than Lightzone (but I bet they buy Capture One).

John

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i doubt that microsoft will buy Phase one which is primarily a MF back maker, C1 is simply their software which they happen to sell very well to users of other cameras....it would be like buying sinar to be able to use their capture shop or leaf to buy their V10....

i use LZ more and more...i do most color correction and basic adjustments (incl. sharpen...) in C1 and then work on the tonality in LZ...why photoshop does not have a level/tone/contrast control that does not change color is beyond me...but i guess i never missed it before i discovered LZ...CS2 is for retouching only now (almost)....but LZ still needs batch processing to really take over my workflow...