R-D1 files - help?

[Phantomas]

With a new R-D1 I'm still full of questions. Hopefully someone can give their thoughts on this one.

With only a couple of days of use I've shot everything in RAW. I've initially installed just PS plugin and as I was viewing the files in PS and Bridge couldn't help noticing that the original files had very muddy colors and magenta(?) color cast. Then I installed Epson Photolier and when viewing photos there they look a lot better and true to life.
Now I'm aware of the disparity between various image viewing/editing programs, but such straight-out-of-camera difference in image rendering leaves me confused. I've always used Photoshop only and was hoping to continue doing so, but now I'm facing a dilemma with R-D1 RAW files.
One thing I've noticed is that original color temperature of the photo is different in PS and Photolier, but adjusting this to equal level gives even more different images.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? For comparison I just fired a few shots out of the window, which I'm posting below. All shot with Industar-61 lens. No corrections were done whatsoever, just opened and saved as JPEG. I use Mac.


Photolier:

(mind you, in Photolier window this photo looks a lot sharper, too much almost.)


Photoshop:

Same scene shot as JPEG with film setting Standard:

Any thoughts? Possibly a crappy plug-in for PS?

Oh, and another "mysterious" thing - as I downloaded and was starting to view RAW files in Bridge upon first click the image looked nice and crispy for a couple of seconds then suddenly refreshed and was back to it's muddy ol' self 😕

 

[phototektour]

Me too,

take a look here "Need Help for PhotoRaw and R-D1"

The advise was not to use Epson PhotoRaw converter. I didn´t tried it out yet with "more professional software", but I´m very interested, if you are getting some better ideas.
R

 

[Phantomas]

OK, I just figured something out. It looks like my Epson plug-in for PS wasn't installed right. Thus all the images were being opened as Adobe's Camera Raw... After some searching I've downloaded and installed an updated plug-in and now PS opens all the files properly 🙂 Great relief!

However, after deleting and re-copying files from the SD to Mac they appear OK very different in Adobe Bridge. Different from the initial "muddy" versions but also different from how the PS opens them with Epson plug-in...

So, if you don't mind, a couple of more questions:

1. Is there a way to have the files displayed "normally" (preferably with Epson RAW properties) in Bridge? That's where I do all my viewing, would be handy.
2. Where can I find English version of the latest plug-in? I only managed to find Japanese, the rest were dead links.

Thanks!

 

[J. Borger]

Hello Zurab,

My workflow has always been like this:

- shoot raw + jpeg
- delete what i did not like on basis of Jpegs in breezebrowser
- convert raws to tiffs in Epson converter (i realy liked that converter for B&W) I did basic exposure and contrast adjustments here!
- proces the tiffs further in CS3

All R-D1 raws look muddy because there is no contrast, sharpening etc applied to them. You need to work on them.
They often are a big difference to the Jpegs, also depending on your filmsetting (contrast, sharpening etc settings) in the camera which are applied to jpegs (but not to the raws!!).

The problem of Epson plugin not loading properly happened to me also, so i sticked to the Epson Converter until i got Photoshop/ Epson plugin working together as they should.

Hope this helps in any way

Han

 

[Phantomas]

Thanks Han. Yes, the whole issue as described above is due to plug-in non-loading. The muddy colors are actually not OK, they were there because they didn't import properly with Epson settings, but rather with generic camera RAW. Now I figured it out, got the plug-in working(but missing English version) and muddy colors are gone. I might just try to direct the original CD file to the proper directory.
Anyway, this is now a non-issue. I was just confused at first as to why PS and Photolier showed such different results.

 

[phototektour]

...(but missing English version) ...

For example the links are on the website of Rich Cuttler.

In this forum there are also several threads with the links to the english versions.
R

 

[phototektour]

All R-D1 raws look muddy because there is no contrast, sharpening etc applied to them. You need to work on them.
They often are a big difference to the Jpegs, also depending on your filmsetting (contrast, sharpening etc settings) in the camera which are applied to jpegs (but not to the raws!!).

No.
The filmsettings are saved everytimes by the cam to the raws as a kind of individual presets for the raws. The results of these presets are shon at the epson raw converter preview. And you are free for more changing of sharpness, contrast, tone etc. But after converting the fixed raws to jpg, most of the sharpness and brilliance are lost again.

I did it several times and got same results. Epson photo raw converter isn´t as good as it seems to be. Photoshop Elem. & Nokon Capture NX are a lot better.

R