Epson Photolier Ver 1.10 for Mac OSX

Wow!

Wow!

For those wondering what this is (as I was), I just downloaded it. It is the standalone RAW converter, WITH BATCH CONVERSION !@#

So damn exciting. I can finally get rid of all of the crufty shell scripts I put together and use something a bit more official.

Thanks for finding this!
 
Wow, this is an excellent find! I presume there will be a downloadable at Epson US sooner or later -- but given that they still haven't got the latest version of the Photoshop plug-in (the one needed for compatibility with the latest versions of Photoshop and Elements) who knows how long that will take?

Incidentally, don't be concerned about the fact that the page is Japanese. You won't have any trouble using the software -- the menus and labels are localized properly, so they show up in English on English-language MacOS X systems, and most of the operations are done by iconized buttons anyway.

Quick tutorial for the baffled: the software occupies only one window, and is organized so you work from left to right. The little column at the left shows files you've opened for processing; click the button at the bottom to choose files and/or folders to fill it up.

Select a frame in this column and click the right-pointing arrow to move it to the main viewing area at center. Here you can make the same sorts of adjustments you can do in the regular Epson Raw plug-in. There's also a button at the bottom to turn this viewing area into a 'contact sheet' that shows multiple frames so you can select them.

Once you have the settings you want, click the right-pointing arrow at the RIGHT of the viewing area to move your selected image(s) to the "output" column at the right. Once you click the output button at the bottom (the icon looks like a negative, a pointer, and a bordered print) the software will prompt you for a save location and file-format specs, then process all the selected images in the right column with the settings you specified.

I haven't played with it very much yet (I just saw Andrew's post about 10 minutes ago!) but it certainly looks like a great option for MacOS X users -- especially considering that it's free! If you like the results you get from the single-shot Epson Raw plug-in, you'll probably like these as well.

Note, though, that it doesn't do as much automated processing of images as Photoshop CS2's Camera Raw; some people may prefer that, others may prefer letting Camera Raw do some of the work for them.

Also, while it seems that Photolier makes an attempt to patch "hot pixels," it doesn't seem to do as good a job of it as Adobe Camera Raw or Iridient's Raw Developer; see attached images for comparison. The first image shows an overall view; the second shows an area near the boy's wrist and was processed with Epson Photolier; the third with Adobe Camera Raw; and the fourth with Iridient Developer.

Even with this deficiency, it's great to have this option, and it would have saved a lot of us some effort and money if it had been available for MacOS X all along!

Also, let me add my thanks to Andrew for ferreting it out for us.
 
Thanks to jlw for the quick tutorial. I was browsing http://www.shingai.com/r-d1/file/index.html, a site where R-D1 enthusiast posts their pics before I went to bed, when I saw the posting about this piece of software. I was as excited as the rest of you, but I was just too tired to check it out. Today, I will check it out and see what it can do. 😛
 
brightsky said:
Quick question.....

There are 2 downloads available, but the text on the download page is in Japanese. Which one did you download?
Click to expand...

I downloaded the first one. I tried to translate the Japanese with Google, and it came out to be : "it can download the driver which is similar to description above even from this way. ". So I guess, it is another mirror site for the same program.
 
I have just started using it, to batch convert to jpegs, and my initial impression on my slow machine (G4 533, OS X 2.8), 1.25 gb ram) is that it is much much slower than Raw Developer at doing the same thing. I do prefer the Epson black and white processing to Raw Developer's, so in certain situations I expect i will continue to use.

Meanwhile, look forward to tips from other users.
 
andrewch said:
I downloaded the first one. I tried to translate the Japanese with Google, and it came out to be : "it can download the driver which is similar to description above even from this way. ". So I guess, it is another mirror site for the same program.
Click to expand...

Thanks andrewch. I download both and they looked and acted identical, so I think you're guess about the mirror site is correct.
 
sevres_babylone said:
I have just started using it, to batch convert to jpegs, and my initial impression on my slow machine (G4 533, OS X 2.8), 1.25 gb ram) is that it is much much slower than Raw Developer at doing the same thing. I do prefer the Epson black and white processing to Raw Developer's, so in certain situations I expect i will continue to use.

Meanwhile, look forward to tips from other users.
Click to expand...

I also find it much slower than the Photoraw of Photoshop CS. Especially when you wanted to open a large folder, the program practically hanged. Before I installed Photolier, I tended to use Photoraw more because the Photoraw was set as default, and if I wanted to open an image with the Epson Raw plug-in, I needed to use the File Open dialog. But now, after the installation, Epson Raw automatically became the default ERF file handler. Does anyone one know if it is possible to manually choose which plug-in you want to open the file with? I tried using the file open dialogue and choose Photoraw, but it didn't work.

I used to shoot with B&W setting in the camera. If I wanted colour, all I had to do was to set the saturation slider back to zero in the Photoraw. But with the Epson plug-in, after switching the film setting from As Shot to Color, the colour can sometimes come out really weird, especially the greens. They almost had a flourescent glow. I could tuned them with the tint slider, but it was a bit of a pain. Anoybody has similar experience? Would one getting better colour accuracy if the image was shot with Colour setting in the camera in the first place? Thanks.
 
I think you can choose the default plug-in by holding down the Option key as you open the file. I've got three versions of Photoshop floating around, though (7 and CS2 at home, CS at work) so I may be getting confused!

With raw images, it shouldn't matter whether you had the camera set to b&w or color mode. But remember that even b&w images inherit the white-balance setting that was in effect on the camera; if you had it set to something inappropriate, you can see off-color results when you turn color back on in the image. To fix while converting from raw, choose the closest light source under the White Balance pop-up, or use the eyedropper to select a neutral gray area in the image.
 
jlw said:
I think you can choose the default plug-in by holding down the Option key as you open the file. I've got three versions of Photoshop floating around, though (7 and CS2 at home, CS at work) so I may be getting confused!

With raw images, it shouldn't matter whether you had the camera set to b&w or color mode. But remember that even b&w images inherit the white-balance setting that was in effect on the camera; if you had it set to something inappropriate, you can see off-color results when you turn color back on in the image. To fix while converting from raw, choose the closest light source under the White Balance pop-up, or use the eyedropper to select a neutral gray area in the image.
Click to expand...

Thanks jlw. But even with the Option key pressed when the file was open in the file browser, the file was opened with Epson Raw. I found out that I could open it in Camera Raw with the File Open dialogue. Don't know why it didn't work when I tried it last time
😕

But it will be cool to be able to change the default at will.
 
andrewch said:
Thanks jlw. But even with the Option key pressed when the file was open in the file browser, the file was opened with Epson Raw. I found out that I could open it in Camera Raw with the File Open dialogue. Don't know why it didn't work when I tried it last time.
Click to expand...

I think I know why -- I noticed the same thing when I was testing a solution for you.

It seems that Adobe REALLY wants you to use their raw converter. If you choose Epson Raw in the Format pop-up, then go up to the list of files and click a file, the Format choice goes back to Adobe Camera Raw!

To get the Epson choice to "stick," you have to select your file FIRST, and THEN choose Epson Raw from the Format pop-up.

This was in CS2, but I'll bet CS works similarly. Adobe is stubborn that way...
 
Andrew,

Thank you SO much for finding this. I've been moving myself from Windows to a Powerbook G4, and am loving life right now, after I transferred Capture One, Adobe CS-2 and now the original RAW converter (with batch modes) -- it's like I never left the PC, only it got better!

I'm very glad Epson created this. I do think the Adobe CS-2 RAW converter is faster, a bit, but I love the black and whites this program produces.

Ken
 
jlw said:
I think I know why -- I noticed the same thing when I was testing a solution for you.

It seems that Adobe REALLY wants you to use their raw converter. If you choose Epson Raw in the Format pop-up, then go up to the list of files and click a file, the Format choice goes back to Adobe Camera Raw!

To get the Epson choice to "stick," you have to select your file FIRST, and THEN choose Epson Raw from the Format pop-up.

This was in CS2, but I'll bet CS works similarly. Adobe is stubborn that way...
Click to expand...

The Photolier apparently got around this. Now the Epson Raw become the default plug-in for ERF files, and I have to got to the FIle Open dialogue to choose the Camera Raw plug-in
🙄
 
krimple said:
Andrew,

Thank you SO much for finding this. I've been moving myself from Windows to a Powerbook G4, and am loving life right now, after I transferred Capture One, Adobe CS-2 and now the original RAW converter (with batch modes) -- it's like I never left the PC, only it got better!

I'm very glad Epson created this. I do think the Adobe CS-2 RAW converter is faster, a bit, but I love the black and whites this program produces.

Ken
Click to expand...

Welcome to the world of Mac computing. I bit the bullet and moved to the Mac platform about a year ago and I never looked back. The Mac OS is simply so much better than Windows.
 
ulrik said:
does your help menu work? Mine opens safari but can't find the file
Click to expand...

Mine doesn't work either, but I wasn't too worried. My guess is that the help files are a separate install, and aren't included in the downloadable.

Epson will need a separate translation of the help files for each language they intend to support, so don't be surprised if this takes a while. A help file in Japanese wouldn't have been much help for me, so I wasn't disturbed that it doesn't open!

While you're waiting for the help file, if you have any problems, why not post them here? I'm sure together we can suss it out. It seems to work much like the single-file Epson Raw plug-in, with the addition of the input and output columns, so using it is fairly straightforward other than puzzling out what the little button icons all mean.
 
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