A brief and abortive foray into other raw processors

[Bill Clark]

I use Photoshop.
An old version, CS-4, I think.
Works just fine for me.
My Canon DSLR’s RAW files work just fine for me and with CS-4.
Can you believe it my first Canon is a 20D and it still works!
I have a few accessories, Quantum’s flashes & Pocket Wizards, reflectors to mention a couple of them. Studio in my home.
I have an iMac that still does the job.
All these devices worked together.
And an analog darkroom. I really enjoy it now!
I always worked to get what I wanted when making each photograph.
I didn’t think, “well I’ll correct the file in Photoshop.” I didn’t have the desire nor did I want to spend the time.
I paid attention to what’s happening in front of the cameras lens.
I was very busy and not interested in the latest and the greatest up tick software or camera.
As I raised my prices more people were attracted to my work. Interesting, isn’t it?
The bank where I had my business checking liked my philosophy of business.
Now that I’m retired I can make comments like this one.
I had a nice client list. Some movers and shakers of businesses with HQ here in Minneapolis and St. Paul MN.
Monte was my mentor. He was a minimalist equipment wise. A great person always willing to help. His clients loved him. I wanted to run my business like he did.
Have to sign off for now. Have about a dozen b & w rolls of film to develop. Grandchildren.

 

[Archiver]

I use Photoshop.
An old version, CS-4, I think.
Works just fine for me.
My Canon DSLR’s RAW files work just fine for me.
I have an iMac that still does the job.
All these worked together.
I always worked to get what I wanted when making each photograph.
I paid attention to what’s happening in front of the cameras lens.
I was very busy and not interested in the latest and the greatest up tick software or camera.
The bank where I had my business checking liked my philosophy of business.
Now that I’m retired I can make comments like this one.

Happy 3000th post, Bill!

This is a perfect illustration of what I've been saying, If your software works and continues to work, producing what you want, then there is no point spending XXX dollars every release cycle unless necessary. Buy it once if you can afford it, then see.

I still use Microsoft Office 2007 (Word and Excel) because nothing that has come after is of further use to me.

 

[Bill Clark]

Thank You.

Hope I provide positive thoughts and ideas to help Rangefinder members.

 

[Leon C]

If you buy software, it works well or it doesn't. I've used LR4 for over 12 years, moving from Windows 7 to 10, with no issue other than having to convert later camera files to DNG. If LR4 ever stops working on future Windows versions, I'll have to seriously look at switching. Aside from that, the changes in OS environments from 2010 to 2024 have not affected my ability to use LR4 at all. Lucky, I guess.

I remember when LR was free, oh the good old days 😉

I've just reinstalled LR 5.7.1 on one of the iMacs (2011) and as it'll be used for older Nikon DSLRs it fits perfectly, if it works, don't fix it.

 

[boojum]

I remember when LR was free, oh the good old days 😉

I've just reinstalled LR 5.7.1 on one of the iMacs (2011) and as it'll be used for older Nikon DSLRs it fits perfectly, if it works, don't fix it.

I always got it free. I had a friend with a good job at Adobe and he had a bunch of the boxes under his desk. It was months before he found out how much the boxes retailed for. He was shocked. Nice guy, a really nice guy. Then in retirement I lost track of Michael and had to buy it. Yecch. That stopped.

 

[Godfrey]

@Archiver As i said, Adobe isnt perfect. Ive never used Premier Pro.. i thought this thread was about LR.

You have used an old version of LR for a ling time by bypassing its operations using a converter to preprocess your files into a compatible form. Bravo! Oh yeah: it's Adobe that produces and maintains the tool that allows you to do that. Pretty slick, eh? You get it without contributing a dime to its ongoing development. Very smart of you!

Do what you find works for you and that your notions of fairness and morality allow you to live with.

G

 

[wlewisiii]

I always find it interesting when someone mentions fairness or morality in the context of a large corporation that indulges in neither. Especially when the company in question is stealing, daily, from artists to train it's AI to take away their jobs.

 

[boojum]

I always find it interesting when someone mentions fairness or morality in the context of a large corporation that indulges in neither. Especially when the company in question is stealing, daily, from artists to train it's AI to take away their jobs.

What we have here is a difficult moral and philosophical question. Businesses exist to make money. And that's the rub. How much and how? Yes, yes, yes. Offhand I can only think of one company run on a moral and ethical basis, the old Cadbury's. It was founded and run by a family of Quakers. As a general rule Quakers adhere to strict moral and ethical principles. The company has been sold and is no longer moral and ethical I have read. So it has been demonstrated in at least one case that it is possible to make a profit and still be ethical, and build a big business, too.

I believe that business school stresses that you must "feed the bulldog" that is you must make money. Make no money and you close the doors, ethical or unethical. If you are private you have a freer hand, if you are public you have the shareholders. And the board.

Yes, yes, yes, being a retired moron seems better day by day. None of those problems or worries. I just need to try and learn how to take a good picture, ethical or otherwise. ;o)

 

[Sonnar Brian]

This Thread is "A Brief and Abortive Foray into Other Raw Processors".

Some people may have thought the thread was about Lightroom. I read it to be about Lightroom Alternatives. I started using "other Raw Processors" , meaning Fortran, before Adobe was founded. For the last two years, I've been using ART. The current pricing strategy of Adobe drove me in that direction, that is their call. My strategy has been to learn how to use a new piece of software and share my experience and tips here.

being retired. That lasted not long. The offer I could not refuse: "we'll hire your daughter too".

 

[Archiver]

@Archiver As i said, Adobe isnt perfect. Ive never used Premier Pro.. i thought this thread was about LR.

No. The thread is about my search for an alternative to LR because I would like to process raw files effectively without resorting to Adobe DNG Converter, and avoid paying an ongoing subscription fee to a company that removed my choice to buy a standalone version and would rather I pay in perpetuity for its products.

You have used an old version of LR for a ling time by bypassing its operations using a converter to preprocess your files into a compatible form. Bravo! Oh yeah: it's Adobe that produces and maintains the tool that allows you to do that. Pretty slick, eh? You get it without contributing a dime to its ongoing development. Very smart of you!

Thank you! I'm flattered by your compliment! 😉

Do what you find works for you and that your notions of fairness and morality allow you to live with.

I'm sure Adobe's decision makers live with their fairness and morality just fine, as do I.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

What I discovered about ART and Raw Therapee: they can be used with the Profiles that come with Adobe Camera Raw. The Camera Raw product is free. This basically turns ART and Raw Therapee into a "GUI Based, What You See is What You Get" Camera Raw Processor. I can thank the prodding of this Thread for pushing me a level deeper into how Camera Raw, ART, and Raw Therapee work. There is a learning curve for any new software, and lot of it is undocumented of how it actually implements the processing string. Once that is better understood, a lot of options open up. Being able to use all of the Camera Profiles with a new release of Camera Raw with existing software "makes it future proof", to quote an old phrase. Having Source Code Available extends that.

I've been known to Hack software into working exactly like I want it to. That extends to disassembling the Compilers I use and fixing the problems they caused by not compiling my code correctly. SO- the effort here, not even close.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I always find it interesting when someone mentions fairness or morality in the context of a large corporation that indulges in neither. Especially when the company in question is stealing, daily, from artists to train it's AI to take away their jobs.

All of a sudden I have the urge to create images and make them available on Creative Cloud. It is called AI Poisoning.
I wonder what Fractal Based images to mimic Escher would do to it.

 

[Godfrey]

I always find it interesting when someone mentions fairness or morality in the context of a large corporation that indulges in neither. Especially when the company in question is stealing, daily, from artists to train it's AI to take away their jobs.

You have a much darker view of the world than I do. I worked for and with companies like Adobe and Apple for most of my career. The people in those companies, most of them anyway, are not thinking constantly "how do we squeeze the life out of our customers to make another buck?" If you believe that they are, then realize that I am one of them, and you insult my integrity in doing so.

Business is personal. There are creeps in business, as there are in every other part of life, but they are a minority.

This Thread is "A Brief and Abortive Foray into Other Raw Processors".

Some people may have thought the thread was about Lightroom. I read it to be about Lightroom Alternatives. I started using "other Raw Processors" , meaning Fortran, before Adobe was founded. For the last two years, I've been using ART. The current pricing strategy of Adobe drove me in that direction, that is their call. My strategy has been to learn how to use a new piece of software and share my experience and tips here.
...

Note that I did offer a frugal alternative that I know works very well in my first post in this thread.

No. The thread is about my search for an alternative to LR because I would like to process raw files effectively without resorting to Adobe DNG Converter, and avoid paying an ongoing subscription fee to a company that removed my choice to buy a standalone version and would rather I pay in perpetuity for its products.
...

Pick any one of the brands out there and you have a good alternative, if that is your only agenda. I was similarly annoyed with Adobe about the subscription model when it was announced and tested 12 or 15 different alternatives. All of them made excellent renderings from my original captures, on par with what I got out of LR. But I did a cost and use analysis and decided that Lightroom Classic did the best job at the best price, and was the easiest to learn and use.

I worked in the software industry for 28 years. I was a coder, a software designer, a test engineer, a strategist, and a technical writer at various points in my career. Like Sonnar Brian, I was used to modifying existing software to do what I needed or wrote my own from scratch. I made a good living from it, and like some others on this thread, received lots of software gratis from the companies I worked with, gifts to me for my work for them. When I retired, I bought my own official and registered copies of all the software that I use because I believe that the people who worked hard to deliver it deserve to make a living for their work for me in producing it, and I was no longer contributor to that effort. That's what I consider fair play and moral: give others who are working hard on your behalf their due.

G
—
"All men find what they truly seek. They may not know what that is while they are seeking it, but they will find it nonetheless." — The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

 

[Sonnar Brian]

What we have these days: Software made available for free by enthusiasts that just seem to enjoy working on it. I've noted some basically give the software away and it is their "portfolio" for getting paid consulting jobs. A lot of this software is really good, and should not be so readily dismissed.

Professionally, I get paid to write software for custom designed embedded systems and for some specialized analysis tools. The source code is provided along with a perpetual pass-through license for the development tools. All that has accomplished- "Brian, what are they going to do when you REALLY retire." I suspect that is one driver behind making "freeware" available. It makes a great portfolio, and a "Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way" mentality for work.

Too funny- My Daughter had a couple of web design courses for school, and having Adobe Creative was required. Licenses for two computers. We had to use "Adobe Dreamweaver". I ended up using Wordstar to write a lot of HTML. Second time around- found CoffeeCup, Free for use- but could pay a nominal $20 or so for use. I bought two licenses, they are perpetual. I am using it over Wordstar for generating HTML. I am so 21st century. I also use Fortran for auto-generating HTML tables in my custom disassembler.

 

[jc031699]

Comment withdrawn 😉

 

[Sonnar Brian]

If I recall correctly you can still get the most up to date raw profiles from Adobe to use with your legacy Lightroom system by installing the newest ACR.

I will take another look at that. I did try this with LR4.4, but the Graft did not take. Doing it with ART was direct, intuitive.

Update: Lightroom uses "CameraRaw.dll" file, which is not part of CameraRaw. CameraRaw is a stand-alone program.
The "Graft" I tried years ago was to move a newer "Cameraraw.dll" to LR4.4. That did not work. I did not pursue it. Getting ART was far easier. And now, I have the latest profiles from CameraRaw working with ART. That was my end-goal. 45 years ago while I was a student in college, a PhD Physicist hacked into my account and stole the atomic structure code I was working on. SO- I put an infinite loop to overwrite all of memory into the code and modified bits in the executable code so the $8M supercomputer would think my code was part of the OS. I never ran it. The idiot crashed the computer 7 times before realizing he had been had. But for Lightroom 4.4, done. No worms going through the code and finding all the places to Hex patch it to work with the Z5 or Df. I am so much kinder and gentler in my old age.

 

[boojum]

I will take another look at that. I did try this with LR4.4, but the Graft did not take. Doing it with ART was direct, intuitive.

Update: Lightroom uses "CameraRaw.dll" file, which is not part of CameraRaw. CameraRaw is a stand-alone program.
The "Graft" I tried years ago was to move a newer "Cameraraw.dll" to LR4.4. That did not work. I did not pursue it. Getting ART was far easier. And now, I have the latest profiles from CameraRaw working with ART. That was my end-goal. 45 years ago while I was a student in college, a PhD Physicist hacked into my account and stole the atomic structure code I was working on. SO- I put an infinite loop to overwrite all of memory into the code and modified bits in the executable code so the $8M supercomputer would think my code was part of the OS. I never ran it. The idiot crashed the computer 7 times before realizing he had been had. But for Lightroom 4.4, done. No worms going through the code and finding all the places to Hex patch it to work with the Z5 or Df. I am so much kinder and gentler in my old age.

"If you are going to mess with the bull you have to be prepared to take the horns." That's what they used to say when I wore green clothes with name tags. It is sage advice.

 

[Leon C]

This Thread is "A Brief and Abortive Foray into Other Raw Processors".

Some people may have thought the thread was about Lightroom. I read it to be about Lightroom Alternatives. I started using "other Raw Processors" , meaning Fortran, before Adobe was founded. For the last two years, I've been using ART. The current pricing strategy of Adobe drove me in that direction, that is their call. My strategy has been to learn how to use a new piece of software and share my experience and tips here.

being retired. That lasted not long. The offer I could not refuse: "we'll hire your daughter too".

I've found the thread an interesting read, although I'm limited by the hardware and OS I prefer to use (2 iMacs - 2009/2011 ~ Mac Pro 2009 ~ High Sierra 10.13 on all 3) Lightroom works and fits with my needs and works flawlessly with my older Nikon DSLRs and as it was free to me, why not use it, I also use Capture One and Nikons own SW on occasion but will definately take on board your interesting use of free software when I set up the Windows laptop as it'll enable me to try ART etc as they don't run on my current OS, so appreciate your knowledge and input.

 

[chuckroast]

This Thread is "A Brief and Abortive Foray into Other Raw Processors".

Some people may have thought the thread was about Lightroom. I read it to be about Lightroom Alternatives. I started using "other Raw Processors" , meaning Fortran, before Adobe was founded. For the last two years, I've been using ART. The current pricing strategy of Adobe drove me in that direction, that is their call. My strategy has been to learn how to use a new piece of software and share my experience and tips here.

being retired. That lasted not long. The offer I could not refuse: "we'll hire your daughter too".

FORTRAN? Don't forget to punch the Continue column as appropriate 😉

 

[bullterrier]

XnView MP is REALLY good for viewing tiffs,