LightZone questions

I have downloaded the trial of Lightzone and after working with a a few days, I run into a few questions.

I am running this on a 2.13 Core duo Intel machine, with 2GB of ram, (laptop). XP

When you open the program and then browse a folder for images (this is very straight forward) all seems OK. But after you have selected an image to convert it really seems to slow down. For example after I have selected an image from the browser, moved to the edit screen and made my edits, when I go to file==convert, then the program take IMO way too long to process the conversion as long as 2 to 3 minutes and this is only on one file. When the conversion is done and you then select the browser tab, Lightzone saves the file (not sure what this is doing, as I already sat through a long conversion process) but the saving takes just as long. I have also noted that if I name the file on the conversion screen, after the file is convert and I look it up, my naming is not there only the base raw file name with the lzn added. These are all 1ds MKII raw files.

I normally use Capture One and it performs fine on this machine no dragging or slow conversions.

I checked the memory slider in Lightzone and gave it 1GB of total ram, but it made no diff. Also in my experience conversion are more processor intensive than memory and I verified this in task manager when running a lightzone conversion.

Not trying to be negative, just can't imagine any program running as slow as this and also have such a redundant step (conversion) and then saving again to move back to the browser.

Thanks
Paul Caldwell

I use LZ v3.0 as my "finishing" editor for DNG files that have been corrected optically with DXO. Files are all Canon 5D 24-105. My PC has 1 gig of ram with 50% dedicated to LZ (yes, underpowered for this software combo, but I can batch process and walk away while things churn). While I believe LZ is very good for exposure/tonality control, it is not the fastest editor around. Conversion to TIFF in LZ takes me ~ 2 minutes per 5D file with a normal tool stack, longer for larger tool stacks. I would have to imagine 1Ds raw files to take longer due to larger size.

"Save to lzn" file creates a small preview jpg with tool stack attached. If you edit up a saved lzn.jpg file, it will always go back to the raw file for image changes - kind of like like a sidecar file. Saving to a lzn.jpg takes ~15 seconds - not bad considering.

As I don't make a living from photography (I just spend money on it), I can get by and just accept it as the "time price" for using LZ - I am hooked on it and DXO, no going back now. Computer will be upgraded at some point - I will have to plot that move out carefully.

Rudy Zych

Hello,

Not an expert by any stretch, but I have Lightzone as well and have read about it on a number of forums and other photog sites and it seems the speed issues (if you perceive there being one) might be partly to do with it being writtenin Java and not what some programmers consider a high level language.

At least that is what I have ready.............

I like the product though I find it is slower in some respects then Lightroom, Photoshop and other type editors.

Not sure I understand why Lightcrafts decided on Java for this?

Just my two cents..............

thanks

Hi Derek,

it seems the speed issues (if you perceive there being one) might be partly to do with it being writtenin Java and not what some programmers consider a high level language.

Click to expand...

The slowness is not a result of Java being a low-level language (it's not), but because it's interpreted.

It's advantage is that it has simpler data constructs than C and C++, performs automatic garbage collection and memory allocation and is platform independent. However, these advantages are also it's disadvantages, since once tokenised (translated to Java Virtual Machine code) it needs another program, an interpreter, to run it.

C and C++ are compiled into pure machine code which is platform dependent. If you want to run it on another platform you have to re-compile.

I would also assume that because programs written in Java run on both Mac and Intel machines that they don't offer SSE support and so floating point operations will be slower. The Mac has it's own implementation of SIMD registers.

Regards,

Stuart