Iridient Developer is the best RAW processor for Fuji X sensor

[milandro]

ok, thanks, didn’t know that

[Ario]

I am not impressed at all with this so called test. Iridient does not have automatic lens corrections, something Lightroom and CaptureOne both have.

 

With Iridient omitting the lens correction functionality you can in many cases never compete on image quality, leaving in all kinds of chromatic, geometric, and vignetting distortions. For instance the 16-55 f/2.8 is heavily relying on these lens corrections.

 

From looking at the so called test results I also get the idea that the tests have been carried out with the default sharpness settings, not optimized per app. These test results do not say anything about the final end result one could achieve with the individual app.

 

In the past I have evaluated many different RAW converters and with Fuji RAF’s I’ll get the best results with CaptureOne, SilkyPix in second place.

The above is not true:

Iridient does have automatic lens correction and gives you also the possibility to choose the source : metadata (default) or LCP if available.

Edited April 1, 2016 by Ario

[Formbox]

I did not deliver any proof for the good Aperture 3.6 rendering of X-trans. Aperture 3.6 is running under the newest OS X El capitan.

 

Here are the crops - best I could do with the converters - but maybe Iridient experts could have done better - it is AMAZE set and 3-pass detail.

 

Sorry for the mediocre view. It is shot on an X-Pro1 with the 56mm 1.2 @ 2.0

 

First up Apple Aperture 3.6...I like how the difficult stone texture is rendered....

 

 

 

 

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[Formbox]

Next Lightroom 6.5

 

Stone texture like a paint brush... sharpening set to amount 20, radius 0.6, detail 100

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[Formbox]

The very good RAW Therapee, 3-pass rendering 5 times false color reduction...

 

Good stone detail

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[Formbox]

Next up Iridient

 

Good detail, AMAZE sharpening and basically more micro contrast by default I think.

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Edited April 6, 2016 by Formbox

[Formbox]

And the new Silkypix 7, demosaic set to 100 and the new "natural sharpening" if I recall the settings correct.

 

Not bad, between Lightroom and Iridient I think.

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Edited April 6, 2016 by Formbox

[Formbox]

So regarding the most natural look of fine details like the stone and sand I really like:

 

1. Aperture with it´s grainy rendering
2. RAW Therapee and Iridient pretty much indistiguable
3. Silky Pix 7 (just remember to set the "demosaic" to 100)
4. Lightroom 6.5 comes in last, even though the green foilage rendering is much improved, the fine texture of the stones look pretty unnatural. Same with sharpening through the NIk Presharpener Pro with Lightroom - it is the demosaicing proccess, which needs further tweeking I guess.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Formbox

[milandro]

How did you mange to keep Aperture? A friend of mine lost it with the upgrade to El capitan and that’s one of the reasons why I am not upgrading.

 

Is there a way to upgrade and leave aperture running?

 

I am very happy to use Aperture in combination with the NIK suite.

[Formbox]

I upgraded to El capitan without Aperture being installed. Did not use it much after switching to LR.

 

When I decided to check it out again with X-trans I opened the App store and reinstalled it with no problems.

[milandro]

Cheers I will tell my friend

[jlees]

Hi Everybody,

Concerning the passage from Aperture 3.5 under Mavericks to Aperture 3.6 under Yosemite and El Capitan, I can confirm that this is possible but it requires that Aperture 3.5 be trashed (and Trash emptied) before installing Yosemite or El Capitan. You can then download the 3.6 version from the App Store, because the license is still valid, and install it.

It would be advisable to back up libraries and the application in case you want to go back.

However there is no indication if Aperture will last after El Capitan.

 

This was explained to me by Apple help, but I haven't done it, mainly because Mavericks is very stable on my aging iMac (2009) and I don't see what I would gain by an upgrade as I have gone over to Capture One 8, which suits my needs and do not use Aperture very often

 

Also, I feel that we spend too much time (and cash) on upgrades. In film days this was not an issue :-)

 

Hope this is useful.

 

Have a nice afternoon

Jeremy

[jonathan7007]

Time to test CaptureOne v9... I bought a paperback book about this software just released by publisher RockyNook (author: Sacscha Erni). I had hoped to be using the software with XPro2 files but I sent that camera back to wait out the glitch-fixes and few of these companies work on the XPro-2 files yet. However, threads like this make me eager to do some side-by-side comparisons of my own with my XE2 and X100T images. I will trial v9, but fully expect I'll buy it. Yes, I know it's not the reasonably good digital asset manager Lightroom represents, but I'll figure out a workflow that makes sense. I have 140,000 files in LR already, so I'll have to use both.

 

I am on Windows.

 

An Irish photographer and blogger, Thomas Fitzgerald, writes a lot about X-Trans post-processing in CaptureOne and shares a lot of good info. Here's one post I bookmarked (and there are follow-ups):

http://blog.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com/blog/2015/2/a-look-at-using-capture-one-pro-for-x-trans-files

 

I have PhotoNinja and will look at their results, too.

[milandro]

Thanks Jeremy @jlees for explaining this Aperture problem.

 

 

 

I am already running the last version of the program and I find that using it in combination with the NIK ( now free) and some pixelmator gives me all I need.

 

Bickering on whether this program or the other are the best for doing what we do is not my favorite occupation. 

 

I realize that being a commercial activity ( although some software is free of charge ) we are continuously bombarded with New! ”, “ Improved! ”, “ Updated!” products and that this is even more true of software as it is of hardware.

 

Part of this due to the fact that one needs updating as technology grows. You buy a new camera with improved performance and you need a new software to extract all there is to extract from it.

 

I am seriously thinking to take a break from all of this and step out the rat race.

 

The camera, lenses and software that I use are contemporary or in the case of the adapted one older. They were made to work together at more or less the same time. The results of camera and software please me.

 

 

 

 

Unless I have to, for some reason that I cannot foresee now, I will stick to this combination for a while.

 

 

 

At the time of analog photography there were long discussions on how to process film and print. I got tired of those too.

 

Most of us were depending on a good lab to process and print color positive or negative and on ourselves to develop and print B&W. I was a very good printer but I cannot say that I enjoyed printing as much as enjoyed taking pictures.

 

Especially because I was into large format and archival printing, I spent long, long hours in a darkroom that I’d rather devoted to something else. But printing was a necessity and frankly speaking I wouldn’t trust my work in the hands of many and I couldn’t afford the services of those whom I would have trusted, so, “ do it yourself !!!!” was an imperative and contained many exclamation marks !

 

 

I really like the idea that one can use the jpegs straight off the camera. Unfortunately this is not always the case.

 

The results are good but there are instances when things are not as they could have been. But I am hopeful. If there is one area where improvements can be made this is it.

 

For the time being, I am sticking to my guns.

[Formbox]

I think my artisticaly disappointing crop shows one thing:

 

All converters are better than the jpg and pretty close to each other and e.p. viewed on a tablet, there is hardly a difference, leave alone web usage.

[milandro]

the majority of pixel peepers never ever print anything they produce ( as everyone else) otherwise printing would be a much more profitable commercial activity that it is.

[Formbox]

So here is Photo Ninja:

 

 

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[Formbox]

And Capture One 9

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[tomteb]

Thanks for comparing!!!

[Stephenesque]

Hi Everybody,

Concerning the passage from Aperture 3.5 under Mavericks to Aperture 3.6 under Yosemite and El Capitan, I can confirm that this is possible but it requires that Aperture 3.5 be trashed (and Trash emptied) before installing Yosemite or El Capitan. You can then download the 3.6 version from the App Store, because the license is still valid, and install it.

It would be advisable to back up libraries and the application in case you want to go back.

However there is no indication if Aperture will last after El Capitan.

 

This was explained to me by Apple help, but I haven't done it, mainly because Mavericks is very stable on my aging iMac (2009) and I don't see what I would gain by an upgrade as I have gone over to Capture One 8, which suits my needs and do not use Aperture very often

 

Also, I feel that we spend too much time (and cash) on upgrades. In film days this was not an issue :-)

 

Hope this is useful.

 

Have a nice afternoon

Jeremy

 

I have only just joined this forum, so forgive me for joining this discussion so late.

 

I was not aware that one had to trash Aperture in order to keep it, so I simply upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite, then, 12 months later, to El Capitan without doing anything with Aperture beforehand on either occasion. 

I still have Aperture 3.6 up and running.

[Mike G]

Milandro, I know this a tad late, but I have upgraded to El Capitan and Aperture is still there and functional so obviously El C did not remove it!

 

One of the worst decisions Apple have post the Steve Jobs era was to ditch Aperture!

Edited August 4, 2016 by Mike G

[milandro]

good to hear, it has disappeared from a friend o mine’s computer and it has prevented me, among other reasons, to upgrade, I will still wait but it is nice to know I can.

[Max_Elmar]

Still using Aperture for volunteer photo work for my son's swim team. Still works surprisingly well, esp. with the NEFs from my D7000. Since the raw support is  built into the OS I see no reason one couldn't continue to use it until it is no longer supported by the OS. For Fuji - still loving RAF conversions from Iridient best of all, so...

[Sator-Photography]

I just tried comparing Iridient vs Silkypix Pro 7. 

 

In terms of sharpness I see no difference between Iridient and Silkypix, but Silkypix renders colour much better. Iridient makes the colours much more grey than either the in camera JPEG file or Silkypix. The other problem with LR is that over the last few months the film simulations have become almost unusable due to the unwelcome emergence of strange colour artifacts. As soon as I tried out Silkypix Pro I instantly regained the full use of the Fuji film simulations.

 

The colour rendering is the main reason I am now principally using Silkypix Studio Developer Pro 7. 

[adzman808]

I just tried comparing Iridient vs Silkypix Pro 7. 

 

In terms of sharpness I see no difference between Iridient and Silkypix, but Silkypix renders colour much better. Iridient makes the colours much more grey than either the in camera JPEG file or Silkypix. The other problem with LR is that over the last few months the film simulations have become almost unusable due to the unwelcome emergence of strange colour artifacts. As soon as I tried out Silkypix Pro I instantly regained the full use of the Fuji film simulations.

 

The colour rendering is the main reason I am now principally using Silkypix Studio Developer Pro 7. 

 

FWIW, I've become quite the SP7 Pro fan...

 

There's a bit of a learning curve, and I can see why people don't like it...

 

For colour work I think it's great, not only does it have reasonable approximations of the Fuji film sims, but the inbuilt colour profiles can be useful too

 

Overall though... I think it's actually starting to harmonise between the various products!

 

It wasn't so long ago that many were complaining about ALL the raw converters...

 

Now we may have our personal favourites... But people are happily using LR/SP7/ID/PN/C1* for rafs and getting results that they're happy with

 

I think that's great personally

 

*maybe not so much happiness from X-Pro2 owners (no compressed raw support or ability to read raf meta data RE lens corrections, unless this has changed very recently)