Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

And now for the next enthralling episode about the breaking-in of the GX20.
Breaking in, smashing up… they’re only separated by the extent of my patience.
For the story so far read this.

So, to continue…

Well, now I come to think about it there’s not really a lot to add. I’ve confirmed, and indeed re-confirmed, that the Samsung GX20’s RAW files are rendered quite nicely with the supplied software (Samsung RAW Converter 2.0). But with my second testing of this I took it a stage further and developed a JPEG from the RAW file (full size, 100% quality) then inspected the resulting image not in my normal “quick and dirty” image browser (XNView - which actually doesn’t do any favours to pictures whatsoever) or even in Lightroom, but with Samsung’s own Samsung Master (their JPEG-editing app).

Yep. It’ll do for me. I have still to do some extensive testing under a variety of more rigorous lighting conditions of course, but I don’t really anticipate any major problems at all now.
Checking for a second opinion with the oracle whom I’d consulted previously, he suspected (though was by no means certain) there is still a hint of a magenta boost, but nothing especially significant.

By now feeling a bit more positive and adventurous, thought I’d try something else (being careful not to get too carried away of course).

As the Samsung RAW Converter has virtually sorted out the colour problem with the GX20, what about the GX10 I wondered?
Possibly having mentioned it once or twice here on the blog, but definitely having referred to it a few times on my Flickr photostream, shots from the GX10 have nearly always seemed to exhibit a somewhat blueish tone. Although I’ve been aware of it, and have occasionally sought to minimise it, the imbalance has never really bothered me as it tends (in my opinion anyway) to give the pics a rather “clean” attractive quality. But its niggled away in the back of my mind that its not quite as accurate a rendition as I’d like.

Thus, call up a few RAWs from the GX10 in the converter and, whaddya know? The blue’s gone! Sorted!

But this is where I start getting a bit silly.

So if the Samsung converter works pretty well with the Samsung files (no… I don’t, repeat don’t, want to hear anyone mutter “Well, that’s obvious isn’t it, you plonker!” Remember, I’m a self-confessed idiot) then how would the Canon converter (Digital Photo Professional) work with files from the 400D?
Would it, for example, eliminate that irritating yellowish tint that seems to bedevil a lot of the shots from the camera?
Clearly I was riding the crest of a wave here for the answer, in short, is yes it does!

(Oh… and somewhere along the way I had to make sure that all the relevant apps were reading the right colour profile for my machine. Not the default one but the one generated by my colour calibration thingy.)

However, all of these really great, really positive developments have created something of a dilemma for me. Moreover, a dilemma that I find curiously depressing. Not suicidally depressing admittedly (not yet, anyway), but a sort of “oh bugger” type depressing.

At the very heart of my methodology in dealing with pics (from camera right through processing to uploading to the web, and indeed archiving etc) is the rather delightful Adobe Lightroom.
All the fault of my mate of course. He’d sung its praises as a super general-purpose workhorse for dealing with RAW files.

Er… wait a mo’ though. This was the same “mate” that finally persuaded me to try working in RAW instead of JPEG in the first place. Dammit! That should have been warning enough for me. I dunno, some people just never learn.

Anyway, Adobe Lightroom. It is a super app. The first problem I had with it (and the one that delayed my embracing it fully for a good coupla months) was the interface. Its a bit complex. Not to put too fine a point on it, I couldn’t get my head around it at all. Nothing was where I expected it to be (in fact, I’m still discovering features I never knew it had!), and what I could see in terms of controls and suchlike often didn’t do what I thought they would, but something else entirely. Disconcerting, to say the least!

Naturally I rarely read any help files or manuals. That’s far too much like hard work for me. If the hands-on approach don’t crack it then it ain’t worth bothering with… that’s my philosophy.

I vividly remember my first try-out of it (and this was even before I’d started properly working in RAW (tried it thanks to mate’s badgering, too intimidating, gave up), so was simply doing an edit of a JPEG). Having made the desired changes to the pic, the next obvious step was to do a “Save as”… cos obviously I didn’t want to overwrite the original.
So I looked for the “Save as” button, or link, or something. And looked. And looked.

Weird. There isn’t one. Yet my mate had clearly said (frequently, in a boringly repetitive way) that one of Lightroom’s strong points was its non-destructive editing feature. So it has to offer some sort of a “Save as” option, surely? Perhaps, thinks I, I need to close the program and it’ll pop up a little dialog asking me if I want to save the work, and if so, what as.

So I close the program. No, it doesn’t. And bang goes a fair bit of work. Sod it! That took me back to my very early days in computing when 20Mb (yes, that’s megabytes!) was considered a huge hard drive, and I… no… that’s a story for another day.
(That’s not strictly true actually. The “bang goes a fair bit of work” statement, that is. For I subsequently discovered that Lightroom edits “persist” until one selects the “reset” option for the relevant image/s.)

Anyway, after the obligatory wailing, gnashing of teeth and beating of breast (cos I didn’t know about the “persistence” feature at the time), some head-scratching. Then open the program again and hunt for the “Save as” control. Don’t find it. Sit back, have a think. Then another hunt. Then close the program in disgust. Leave it for a coupla weeks whilst I have a good old sulk.

But eventually irritation gets the better of me. At computers (damn stupid things); at Lightroom (damn stupid program); at my mate (damn stupid… well, perhaps not); at Life in general. So I fire off a quick (and, now I come to think of it, rather pleading) email to him, suggesting that a little bit of guidance in the highly complex task of saving an edit wouldn’t go amiss.

So he, ever patient (knows me too well, obviously), explains.

That button, that big one, the second of those two big buttons down on the left-hand side, the first clearly marked “Import”, the second clearly marked “Export”. Well, try clicking the Export button.

Oh yes. Of course. Blindingly obvious, isn’t it? Duh.

What made the entire episode even more infuriating is that in my saner moments (rare though they may be) I like to consider myself something of a computer geek. I play with them. I work with them. And when I’ve finished working with them, I play with them again. Have done for years. And years. And years.
But see a big button with “Export” marked on it and interpret that as being a “Save as” option? Not a chance. Think I should just pack in all this computer lark here and now.

Having overcome that first major hurdle I began to take to Lightroom like a duck to water.
Twiddle this, slide that, click something or other else. The features are marvellous (and I still haven’t sussed, and probably even discovered, all of them), plus some real snazzy ones that I’ve been unable to find on any other photo-editing prog.
I like the way it works. I like the subtlety and quality of the changes you can make with it. I even like (once I got used to it) the interface! Then I started working with RAW files and wow! The program really comes into its own. Such that its become my photo-editing program of choice. In fact, the only one I ever use… until now, that is.

Criticisms? Yeah, two (until just recently I only had one of course).
First, its use of system resources. Adobe recommends a minimum 1Gb RAM. And the machine I do my photo work on only has 512Mb! Ok, Lightroom runs, and if working with JPEGs there’s no real problem. But RAW files can be another matter entirely.
When working with those from the Canon it wasn’t too bad (though I had to slow down my workflow just a little bit). The GX10 presented somewhat more of a problem with its larger file sizes, and many was the time the machine would just drag its heels or the program would freeze on me until I learned a coupla tricks to overcome the bottlenecks. But files from the GX20? Well, the only way to return to comfortable working would be to increase the RAM. That’s if I continue to use Lightroom of course.

Now in fairness I can’t really say that’s a criticism of the program per se. After all, resource-hungriness isn’t unique to that app… most notable offender being Microsucks themselves of course.

And the second criticism is this most recent discovery… that Lightroom doesn’t support all RAW files equally!
Adobe themselves say…

“The camera raw functionality in Adobe® Photoshop® software provides fast and easy access within Photoshop to the “raw” image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras. By working with these “digital negatives,” you can achieve the results you want with greater artistic control and flexibility while still maintaining the original “raw” files.”

They go on to say…

“The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in (2.3 or higher) now also supports raw files in the DNG format. Find out more about the benefits of the Digital Negative, a publicly documented raw file format recently announced by Adobe.”

At this point I should perhaps explain that Samsung’s RAW files are in the DNG format.
For anyone unfamiliar with this, here (again) is what Adobe themselves (who came up with the format!) have to say about it…

“Raw file formats are becoming extremely popular in digital photography workflows because they offer creative professionals greater creative control. However, cameras can use many different raw formats — the specifications for which are not publicly available — which means that not every raw file can be read by a variety of software applications. As a result, the use of these proprietary raw files as a long-term archival solution carries risk, and sharing these files across complex workflows is even more challenging.

The solution to this growing problem? The Digital Negative (DNG), a publicly available archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras. By addressing the lack of an open standard for the raw files created by individual camera models, DNG helps ensure that photographers will be able to access their files in the future.”

And finally Adobe, on their own website, specifically list the RAW files produced by both the Samsung GX10 and the GX20 as being supported by Lightroom!

(Quotes from the Adobe Lightroom website apart from the latter which is quoted from www.adobe.com/products/dng/)

I suppose in fairness I have to acknowledge that Lightroom does support the Samsung files, but only in the sense that it will actually read them and translate the data into recognisably an image. But as for rendering it correctly, well, forget it.

Which means I’ve now, finally, come to the source of my “oh bugger” type depression.

For what all this means is that there’s now a high probability that in future I shall have to change my working methodology insofar as using each manufacturer’s proprietary apps for processing pics from both the Samsungs and the Canon.
Doesn’t mean that I shall abandon Lightroom entirely of course. Oh no. I like it far too much for that. It’ll always come in handy as a prog for emergency fixes, or for working with JPEGs, or possibly even (as my mate suggested) working with tiffs (but only when I’ve upgraded the RAM, cos tiff files are bloody huge!).

Well, I think that’s about it for the mo’. And for someone who started off with having “not really a lot to add” I think I’ve probably excelled myself!