Corel Aftershot?

[unpopular]

HHaving switched to Linux I don't have a lot of good options, especially not for x-trans. I was wondering if anyone has any opinions about Aftershot? Bibble has always appealed to me, so I am wondering if anyone has any experience?

-sk-

 

[john.margetts]

I have After shot and used to like it a great deal. It is very good for Raw conversions and used to tie in with Photoshop Elements for any further edits.

Alas! They have updated it and the update version does not tie in with Elements and the export command does not seem to work. That means I have no way of saving the Raw conversion which makes it a bit of a waste of time

Note: I am on an iMac, not Linux.

Sent from my A1-840 using Tapatalk

 

[Derrel]

Bibble has always appealed to me, so I am wondering if anyone has any experience?
-sk-

RE: Bibble. I had three versions of Bibble, some time ago. It was at one time, one of the leaders in .NEF conversion for Nikon's earlier cams. In a week's worth of daily testing, using mulktiple random-file Canon and Nikon conversions of about 50 to 70-file mis-match of 5D/20D/S2 Pro/Nikon D2x images from the 2006 and 2007 era, Bibble, Canon DPP, Nikon Capture, and Adobe Camera Raw, on occasion, not every time, Bibble could crank out astoundingly gorgeous JPEGs, automatically doing the imnage analysis and the JPEG conversion. It was a weird experiment, taking the mixed folders and batch-processing images, then combining them into one big slide show at Day's End, then seeing how the differing raw converters handled the data. Did this for a week. Interesting. Taught me that NO one converter is always "best".

 

[unpopular]

Well, I do not use Photoshop (elements or otherwise) and pretty much have always used a TIF-based pipeline even when I had.

Just curious though, @john.margetts what exactly are you missing without the PSE integration?

 

[john.margetts]

Well, I do not use Photoshop (elements or otherwise) and pretty much have always used a TIF-based pipeline even when I had.

Just curious though, @john.margetts what exactly are you missing without the PSE integration?

The original version of Aftershot I had had an icon which would automatically send the converted Raw image to any editing program. I had it set to Elements as that is what I have. That icon is still set to Elements but clicking on it has no effect.

There is no real need to connect the two programs automatically, if only Aftershot was still able to export the file to dusk. The reason I want to use Elements is for cloning and perspective adjustment in the main.

 

[john.margetts]

HHaving switched to Linux I don't have a lot of good options, especially not for x-trans. I was wondering if anyone has any opinions about Aftershot? Bibble has always appealed to me, so I am wondering if anyone has any experience?

-sk-

When I used Linux (Ubuntu for about 8 years) I used UFRaw for my Raw converter and GIMP for further editing. Those two work extremely well together.

 

[Ysarex]

Aftershot sucks demosaicing X-Trans.

If you're on Linux you have two good options for X-Trans: Raw Therapee and DarkTable.

Joe

Disclaimer: my version of Aftershot is 1 version old. There's a possibility they made an improvement recent version, but I doubt it.

 

[Derrel]

MacBibble was one of the better .RAF developer apps for the Fuji S1 and S2 Pro, which had a weird way of taking the smaller-level, real sensor capture (3MP for the S1, 6MP for the S2), doubling it, working on it, and then saving the export JPEG or .TIF as either the "real" 3M or 6MP size; OR, taking the file and saving it DOUBLED, as a 6M or a 12MP sized image.

Not quite the same thing as X-trans, yet, more overhead, bigger files, more data, and more need to de-mosaic with good strategies. At the time,. ACR was very sub-standard. For a long time, Fuji's very own proprietary raw converter was the very, very best, but painfully slow.

As Ysarex mentions, RawTherapee was at one time, a pretty popular converter among Fujistas. I left Fuji before X-trans hit, but then picked up the Fuji S5 Pro, with its secondary highlight pixel options on the Expanded DR capture options. One of the weird things in my Fuji S1 and S2 experience was seeing the transition from "basic" RAW development, to the integration of "digitial fill light", clarity sliders, and highlight recovery to the raw decoding process: I spent the first five years without those concepts.

There's more than one way to approach image editing and RAW conversion, and different ideas on what needs to be done where, and when, within the so-called "pipeline". Hoep you can find a good solution for your current cam,S.

 

[john.margetts]

Aftershot sucks demosaicing X-Trans.

If you're on Linux you have two good options for X-Trans: Raw Therapee and DarkTable.

Joe

Disclaimer: my version of Aftershot is 1 version old. There's a possibility they made an improvement recent version, but I doubt it.

Rawtherapee uses dcraw as it's demosaicing engine. There are several other raw converters that use dcraw including the UFRaw I recommended earlier. Personally, I could not get on with Rawtherspee's user interface and find UFRaw much easier to use.

 

[unpopular]

Well. I downloaded the demo and though 'meh, good enough' and bought it without first going through the 30 day trial.

But honestly now I am not sure. Looking closer I am getting some weird high frequency noise indicative of demosaic issues not present from in-camera jpeg. It's not nearly as bad as earlier versions had been, but it is certainly there.

It is *very* fast and extremely responsive. I have a pretty substantial workstation, and I do feel that it's utilizing resources.

 

[Ysarex]

Well. I downloaded the demo and though 'meh, good enough' and bought it without first going through the 30 day trial.

But honestly now I am not sure. Looking closer I am getting some weird high frequency noise indicative of demosaic issues not present from in-camera jpeg. It's not nearly as bad as earlier versions had been, but it is certainly there.

It is *very* fast and extremely responsive. I have a pretty substantial workstation, and I do feel that it's utilizing resources.

Yep, demosasicing trouble -- weird high-frequency artifacts and color artifacts -- that's what I was getting. At least it's not too expensive.

Another option I failed to mention earlier is LightZone (very funky UI but it does a good job with X-Trans).

Joe

P.S. I do really like my Fuji camera but sometimes I have 2nd thoughts about the wisdom of X-Trans. Maybe a cool idea that's more trouble than it's worth.

 

[unpopular]

Ok. Yeah. I should have just downloaded darktable. Provides a lot of really meaty parameters and I definitely like that there are a few algorithms to choose from.

getting some cyan artifacts, but at least it's (mostly) monochromatic.

 

[unpopular]

Oh, and I definitely know what you mean about X-Trans. When it works it's absolutely amazing. When it doesn't work ... yeah.

Wish Silky wasn't so expensive (and mac/windows only)

 

[Ysarex]

Ok. Yeah. I should have just downloaded darktable. Provides a lot of really meaty parameters and I definitely like that there are a few algorithms to choose from.

DarkTable has a bit of a learning curve -- another cumbersome UI to deal with but it can get the job done.

Joe

 

[unpopular]

I had LightZone when it was a commercial product. It was pretty neat. Last I heard though it didn't like X-Trans.

REALLY Liking Darktable. Definitely appreciate that you can turn off white balance completely, and run it through a totally linear CMS. Very cool.