ACR and Breezebrowser

[Bruce_Leibowitz]

Recently I started experimenting with RAW instead of my usual jpeg from my D30...and I was using Breeze to convert. Then i tried photoshop CS with the Adobe Camera Raw and I really don't like it. The converted RAW's look drab and blah (the best i could describe it! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) compared to breezebrowser, which looks sharp (even with sharpening turned OFF) and bright. I tried all different settings and can't get ACR to look as good as the breezebrowser converted tiff. Is it just me or has anyone else had this experience?

What other RAW converters are out there that I can try. Really the reason I wanted to try others is that breezebrowser has a very small preview which makes it hard for me to select a spot with the eyedropper for custom w/b...while photoshop can do a 100% preview with the eyedropper. And the photoshop has a slider for w/b settings, you can select any color temperature but with breezebrowser its daylight, cloudy, custom, etc and not in between.

[Jonathan_Wienke]

You need to calibrate ACR with a Color Checker.

[Ron_Donson]

Here's an article that provides some additional information on what Jonathan recommended.

[Allen_Pacheco]

I'm afraid calibration won't help much with your problem. That just affects the color tones and Camera Raw is very good with the D30.

Camera Raw has a very low contrast conversion. I think it's very useful as the raw converter can deliver great shadow detail which you can then control via the controls. You can't bring those lower tones up once they're gone.

If you desire the "Canon" look, which BreezeBrowser delivers since it uses Canon's software, you'll need to bump the Shadows and Brightness sliders up a bit. Play around a bit and you'll find a little goes a long way. Try Shadow values of +3 through +7 and then increase Brightness acordingly to retain overall exposure.

RAW conversion options:

* Canon offers two: EFU and DPP (both free with the Camera). Additionally, Canon makes the s/w used in EFU available to 3rd party s/w developers, as an SDK.

* BreezeBrowser ($45 new): Uses the Canon SDK, thus, results will be exactly the same as using EFU (but with an improved interface). BB also has a number of other utilities that a growing faithful following make excellent comment about, including noise reduction, the building of Web gallery pages, and the batch conversion of file names. Support for RAW conversion of Mark II images is currently in Beta mode.

* Phase One's Capture One ($500 new): Wrote their own s/w to decode the Canon RAW files - not dependent on Canon s/w. Many positive comments from users on this forum.

* Adobe's Photoshop CS ($500 new): Another example of a company writing their own s/w to decode the Canon RAW files - not dependent on Canon s/w. Additionally, Adobe places an emphasis on seamlessly incorporating RAW conversion as part of the whole workflow using nothing but Photoshop (not surprisingly). Many positive comments also from users on this forum.

I think that's it - five RAW conversion s/w options to choose from, producing four different kinds of output, each with different workflow designs. Lots to choose from, except you can't mix the kind of output you want with the kind of workflow design desired (at least not yet). Each of the four companies offers what they believe to be 'the best' workflow design.

With respect to BB not having a big enough preview screen to do custom WBing: Actually, it's not obvious, but, it does, and two ways. You can double-click on the preview image to get the single image, and WB from it. Or, if you need even a bigger image, you can select the 'actual' view option, which matches up a screen pixel to an image pixel - then left mouse click the 'actual' image to WB.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Bill

[Lee_Ray]

I've been using BreezeBrowser for many years when converting my Canon RAW files. I have been very happy with the software but not the time it takes to convert each image.

I tried ACR after getting PhotoShop CS and love the features...but my 1Ds files have a problem. All the specular highlights are HOT PINK. I downloaded ACR v2.3 last night with hopes that would cure my problem...but no luck. The good news: ACR v2.3 runs MUCH faster than the previous versions.

Here is a link showing my problem. As you can see, the small JPG preview looks fine. BreezeBrowser, with default settings, converts the file without any problems. ACR, also in default settings, produces strange hot pink specular highlights. Perhaps this has something to do with 'calibrating' ACR. My complaint with that theory is that there is no need to calibrate BreezeBrowser...why should I have to do it in ACR?

Has anyone else had this problem using a Canon 1Ds and ACR?

Thanks,

-Lee