Walking the Plank: Raw Photo Processor wins "Best of Breed"
I am pleased to announce that the second Red Dog Journal—Best of Breed Award goes to Raw Photo Processor (RPP) and Andrey Tverdokhleb for “most innovative RAW converter.” When I began my work with “the Beast” (my Nikon D3x) in January of this year, a fellow photographer, Nick Vasilopoulos, suggested that I consider RPP for my RAW converter. I am grateful that he did so, as I, like many of you, had never heard of RPP. I think most photographers assume that RAW conversion is a rather straightforward function of their favorite program and never question the impact of how RAW converters can affect image quality. My assumptions about RAW conversion and converters were similarly naïve. Having recently evaluated most of the major RAW converters currently on the market, I clearly have a different opinion now. I have seen a devastating impact in image structure created by some of the RAW converters I have evaluated, and lackluster performance among many others. ******* I am not the only one who has felt that most, if not all, commercially available RAW converters lack fidelity. In 2006, photographers Iliah Borg and Andrey Tverdokhleb became so frustrated in their own work with various commercial RAW converters, that Iliah convinced Andrey (who had the computer skills to do so) to modify DCRAW (an open-source RAW converter) to meet their needs. What emerged was RPP, and it soon became apparent from their experiment that there was far more information content in a digital camera’s RAW file structure than was appearing from the output of the commercial RAW converter products. Sadly, this seems to remain true today. What sets RPP apart from the herd is that RPP was written by just one person’s genius—Andrey Tverdokhleb. Above all else, RPP has the coherence in design and programming that comes from one person’s thought process, rather then a schizophrenic team approach to programming. While RPP is not perfect, it is well thought out and deeply considered in all its functionality. This is a program written out of passion, not as a job. RPP is not for the photographer who wants to throw a thousand frames into it, with all of them popping up on the screen preprocessed and looking like picture post cards. If you’re the type of photographer who is going to shoot thousands of frames, then “Dumpster dive” to find a winner in the stack; this is not the RAW converter for you. But if you like to carefully photograph your images, and plan on maximizing the image quality in all regards in postproduction, RPP will astound you. Why? Well first and foremost, its internal image-processing structure is 32-bit floating point and is based on LAB image format. RPP’s precision in processing can easily be felt in terms of image quality, and sorely lacking in even the most expensive rival RAW converter products. Then there are the innovative output formats that are not options on other RAW converters. RPP supports 16-bit LAB or 32-bit RGB direct output! Since the internal operations in RPP are in LAB color space, it would be handy if the industry supported 32-bit fixed or floating point LAB format, but it does not. RPP can generate data that is more precise than can be used with other products. So at this point, I personally like using the 32-bit output option in RPP, though it is not in LAB. I use a Sony Artisan CRT monitor for my work, and it is calibrated at 85 nits, D65, Gamma 1.8 and with a contrast ratio of 300 to 1. This is a far cry from Adobe RGB at Gamma 2.2, 160 nits (but sharing a similar contrast ratio and color balance). By opening up my 32-bit RPP image files in PhotoShop, I can convert the image into my color space, and then convert the image down to 16-bits, resulting in much greater fidelity, especially in the lower zones. Perhaps in the future, the industry will be able to support 32-bit LAB color space, and RPP can be used at its optimum fidelity. RPP is an experimental converter of sorts. Andrey would be the first to tell you that it was never meant to be a commercially-viable product, but simply an experiment born out of his passion and that of his friend. You’re going to have to invest time and energy to play with RPP and find out what works best for your images. Documentation on how RPP works and how to use it is “light.” The only way to really master it is to get in there and use the program until you understand its intent. RPP is not for everyone, but it clearly rewards the careful worker. Of special note should be experimentation with the “compression” function. I have a few images that were shot as high dynamic range tests in which the interior of a building was deeply in shadow, while the exposure was made for the correct values of the exterior view through the building’s window and doorframe. While the exterior landscape looks properly exposed, the interior is so darn deep in shadows that it’s hard to imagine that there is any possible image down there. But in experimenting with the RPP’s compression function, the interior can be brought up to the point where it is clearly a usable image, while still maintaining the exterior exposure! In comparison, some of the most expensive and well-known RAW converters simply could not handle the test at all. I think most photographers would be staggered at how much dynamic range is coming out of their cameras and how poorly most RAW converters are in making that dynamic range usable. RPP can be downloaded for free trial. But please purchase a license if you like the program and you become a long-term user. The license fee is on a sliding fee schedule, depending on your income, need, and use. My personal suggestion is that $35 or even $50 is a kind consideration for such a quality program, while Andrey asks for a much more modest level of support on his site. I have seen RAW converters costing eight or ten times the price, with greatly inferior performance. So if you want to see RPP have a meaningful future for your work and that of other photographers, you need to support Andrey in keeping him going on the project. For a license fee, RPP will provide you via email with a code that will allow you to turn on multi-processor capability, which greatly speeds up the math. It astonishes me that no company has purchased the rights to RPP and set Andrey up with his own programming team to take this product to the next level. With even a modest amount of continued work, RPP would become the dominant RAW converter in the market, and a very valuable tool for photography. As it is, it’s a great RAW converter, but there is only so much one person can accomplish! Andrey writes and develops the program, supports the product via email, markets it, and keeps it all moving forward without rest. And I thought my days were busy. . . . I hope RPP will continue to be well supported by the rather “cult-like” following it is gaining among photographers who really, really want the most image quality out of their RAW images. One word of warning about RPP or any RAW converter and the difficulties of chromatic aberration (CA): As I have discussed previously in this column, chromatic aberration seems to be the Achilles’ Heal of digital photography. CA is flat out “resolution-robbing,” and it cannot be corrected by the use of software. There are RAW converters that do address chromatic aberration issues in the image structure before conversion—RPP is not one of them. If there is significant chromatic aberration in your images, RPP is not going to be able to optimally do the RAW conversion—nor can any other RAW converter. Those programs that address the CA issue before conversion can greatly reduce what you see as color fringing, but will do so at the price of true resolution. This is why the Zeiss ZF 2/50 Makro lens previously won “Best of Breed” in this column because of its near apochromatic performance, delivering essentially no chromatic aberration. I would repeat my suggestion again from last month about renting a Zeiss ZF 2/50 Makro, then converting your RAW files using RPP; and see for yourself how outstanding the combination works when CA-free. It is really important in photography to set up the conditions for success. If you are banging away on a DSLR, using lenses that have significant CA, and hoping for high resolution, you will not get there. I can state from my experience with the Nikon D3x that there is far more resolution available from the camera than most photographers will get out of it. This is because the lenses most photographers are using for their work have significant chromatic aberration issues—and also, they are using RAW converters that do not provide fidelity in the conversion process. My wife and I live in a more rural setting outside of Santa Fe. We have a volunteer fire department, but it is staffed with a chief and deputy. Together with the volunteers, they have kept all of us safe in our area for the past forty years—quite an effort on their part. At the recently held fortieth anniversary party for the fire station, I ended up having a discussion with the Chief about the buffalo (bison) that graze in the wilderness in our area. The Chief commented that every once in a while, the buffalo break through the fence line and end up wandering around on our county road. He remarked, "You can't really herd them. They just kind of go where they want to." I thought his comment was rather poetic and quite meaningful in a greater context. His remark really fits photographers and photography as much as buffalo. It is hard to get most photographers to go anywhere except where they want to go. While I can say that chromatic aberration will have a devastating effect on the microstructure of your image, how many photographers are listening and making adjustments to what lenses they are using? While I can say that a RAW converter can have a huge impact on getting the most out of your CA-free RAW image, how many photographers are going to push past Adobe Camera RAW or a number of the other name-brand RAW converters and find out for themselves? You get out of photography what you put into it. Degradation of image resolution is easy to have occur, and hard to actively prevent. Most photographers never really understand how far down-slope their images have fallen, instead blaming it on the camera and not having a high enough pixel count. But if you can’t shoot a 24 MP Nikon D3x clean, a 50 MP digital back is not going to help one bit! More pixels do not help; they just make matters worse if you’re not shooting clean to begin with. Trying out RPP and the Zeiss AF 2/50 Makro lens can give photographers a starting point to discover their own path toward high-resolution image-making. Rent the lens, download RPP—try the experiments for yourself. I think if you see what has excited me about this combination of products, your photography will change forever. After seeing outstanding resolution and image quality in your own images, you will demand that level of photographic performance for your continued work.
I leave you with a final image (above) from my recent work with the Zeiss ZF 2/50 Makro, the Nikon D3X, converted with RPP, and followed with a long day of postproduction in PhotoShop. The image is called “A-side” and was shot in northern New Mexico. If you want to see the “B-side,” it is on my website under “Portfolio 21” in the “Gallery” section. After seeing both sides of the same building, you may share my wonderment in how remarkable it is that you can get two completely different impressions from one scene—hence the “A and B-side” (a retro-name dating back to the days of vinyl records and 45s). Congratulations to Andrey Tverdokhleb for his remarkable creation of Raw Photo Processor and in winning the Red Dog Journal—“Best of Breed” award. --------------- |
© Red Dog Journal, 2009 |