DIGITAL CAMERA RAW CONVERTER COMPARISONS
with Canon 1Ds Mk II, Canon 400D XTi, Canon 50D and Nikon D300 images
Adobe's ACR
(Photoshop & Lightroom), Bibble Pro, BreezeBrowser Pro, Capture One Pro,
Canon's Digital
Photo Pro, SilverFast HDR Studio and Silkypix Developer Studio
SilverFast HDR Studio 6.6
overview
GUI: I have quite a bit of experience with SilverFast as a scanning application. SilverFast has been a dominant aftermarket scanning application for years, particularly for high end scanning devices. LaserSoft Imaging, the German company that developed SilverFast has recently entered the camera RAW market. They are using the same GUI and imaging engine that helped SilverFast dominate the aftermarket high end scanner software market. The image browser or thumbnail view GUI is called VLT for 'Virtual Light Table'. HDR will thumbnail RAW, JPEG and TIFF (8 or 16 bit TIFF). The top half of the VLT GUI shows thumbnails of image folder contents and the bottom half can be used to sort, rename, make collections of images called 'albums' and send batches of images to Job Manager for batch processing. On the left side of VLT there are three tabbed tools. Navigator is contains the folder tree, Albums contains your list of albums and Presets which are preset and customizable views for VLT. The second part of the GUI is the actual image editor. The editor has most of the editing tools in tabbed format in a floating tool set. The preview image opens in a floating window too. There is an icon based selection of tools and parameters running down the left side of the main preview window. HDR does not have a 'before and after' editing view. HDR has no database search capabilities or ratings feature. However, you can sort your thumbnail images by name, size, date or type as well as by 'album' with the same criterion. HDR comes with a lot of useful documentation, including Quick Time film clip mini-tutorials and a PDF help file. Editing Tools: The editor GUI has a superlative set of image editing tools. The basic RAW adjustments of exposure compensation, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation and noise control are available in a tabbed set of slider or numeric input tools. The following are also available as floating (one at a time) tool sets: Levels, curves, global color correction, selective color correction and 'expert dialog' (primarily a press proofing tool). HDR have a very cool densitometer. This 'always available' floating tool shows RGB numbers both input (input = before editing input) and output (output = after editing tool use). If you have a good mouse and steady hand you can read at single pixel level because the tool uses single pixel level sampling and there is a window showing the area the cursor is over at pixel level. HDR does not have ' highlight recovery' or a shadow recovery 'smart tools'. You cannot copy paste sets of image adjustments from one image to another. You can save image adjustments as presets for each individual camera model only. Color management: SilverFast HDR has an excellent implementation of ICC color management. HDR uses your operating system's default monitor profile to display your images. Camera profiles are imbedded and not accessible. You can work in any color space that has a corresponding profile in your computer's color management folder. Output: SilverFast HDR can save output as TIFF in 8 or 16 bit, JPEG, JPEG 2000, PDF and EPSF (.eps). You can give individual file names to single image conversions. SilverFast HDR can batch process a group of images. SilverFast has no provision for a web (HTML) contact sheets or slideshow. Printing: SilverFast HDR has an excellent ICC color managed printing application called PrinTao. PrinTao has excellent page layout tools. PrinTao has preset page templates and you can add your own templates. You can have multiple image sizes on one sheet. The large print preview is active so you can drag handles for print sizing. Comments: Many of the tools and options in HDR were originally designed to support preparing images for printing from offset press. If you are in that business, SilverFast HDR will be a very intuitive tool and will certainly expedite getting your camera images ready for press. SilverFast HDR is also very appropriate for a professional photographer or home digital darkroom enthusiast. The image adjustment tool set provides excellent control over every aspect of tuning up your images before converting them to a portable image format. The HDR RAW conversion engine with default settings makes very low key images (low contrast tone curve and maybe a 1/2 stop underexposed). There's an argument to be made that this is very appropriate because the chance of highlight blowout with this sort of low contrast initial curve is negligible. However, I'd rather see a slightly broader range of contrast in the default image. I don't think there is any way you can load a bunch of images and get usable output out of all of them with default conversions. You'll have to adjust the contrast curve on most images. SilverFast has a long history of making tiered levels of their different software products. Here is a list and basic descriptions as provided by Boris Bischof of LaserSoft Imaging, USA: "SE and Ai Versions are the scanner drivers. HDR runs flawlessly on my PC platform. Visit the SilverFast HDR home page here or see a list of supported cameras here. SilverFast's camera supporting programs are updated frequently to include new camera models. |
|
|
SilverFast HDR VLT GUI - HDR = High Dynamic Range
VLT = Virtual Light Table - GUI =Graphical User Interface |
|
 |
|
|
SilverFast HDR Image Editor |
|
|
|
|
|
Curves |
Histogram & Levels |
 |
 |
| Global Color Correction | Selective Color Correction |
 |
 |
|
SilverFast PrintTao GUI |
|
 |
|
To print this web page correctly you will need to set your printer's page setup properties to 'landscape' paper orientation LINKS: |
|
WEB SITE LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING INFORMATION
|
|
