+ Camera Raw Feature Requests +

barry ..
> I sometimes detect a "closing of ranks" when someone requests something a bit out of the ordinary.

only sometimes? :-)

that's an honest observation, but imho fair sport. a "little bit" of peer pressure helps people strengthen their ideas before formulating their thesis. outside of an insulated think-tank, brain storming session, or design process -- if one isn't comfortable enough to defend their proposition it rapidly falls back down to the bottom of the pickle barrel. we live in a world of competing priorities and only the most resilient of ideas put forth stand the scrutiny of time.

eye believe it twas back in sociology 101, where one of my profs use to drill her own observations into us:

1. "new ideas" which conflict with the norm are at first ridiculed.
2. if adopted by a critical mass of peers-- "they" become skeptically acknowledged.
3. finally, "they" become so commonplace that the same people which had at first ridiculed them now claim they were obvious to begin with.

it reminds me of the JPEG vs. RAW debates that went around the web. it was less than a couple of years back-- yet today no one would think to argue that JPEGs provide the same quality of output as RAW files.

I sometimes detect a "closing of ranks" when someone requests something a bit out of the ordinary. It is as though the aim is to discourage the request instead of examining it to see if it has merit.

I suspect that if we look at the features in the current Photoshop, we would find that some of them were discouraged initially, and only much later were they properly examined and became mainstream.

In April 2002, in the newsgroup comp.graphics.apps.photoshop, there was a thread "Photoshop 7 has been released upon the planet!"

I said there that the lack of better 16-bit handling, including adjustment layers in 16-bit mode, probably meant that I wouldn't take PS 7. The response was overwhelmingly to try to convince me that the idea had no merit, no one wanted it, it was pointless without 16-bit output devices, etc.

Chris Cox said (24 April 2002): "our marketing department didn't think it was that big an issue (and so far, most of the users who have given us details on why they think they need the additional support have discovered that they didn't really need it)" and "So far, the highest end professionals haven't given us a good reason other than "making 16 bit workflow more consistent"", and "If 16 bit/channel OUTPUT devices existed - that would be a good reason".

I think it was simply an idea whose time had not yet come. When its time came, it became a "must have", and even Paint Shop Pro X has 16-bit support as far as I know.

Behind some of these feature requests is next year's "must have" struggling to get out. Perhaps badly expressed, perhaps expressed as a design rather than a requirement. I stopped tracking Photoshop releases in 2002, and unsubscribed to that newsgroup, because I felt that Adobe and those users were going in a different direction from where I wanted to go. It was only when I bought a digital camera that I decided that it was worth having another look at Photoshop, and upgraded to CS because it had what I wanted.

I'll try to be constructive and point out what I perceived as a stomping, but it's probably best if we say our piece and move on to other topics so I'll probably go quiet on this topic after this and the excellent moderator we have here will probably clean some of the chatter up at some point.

First, Ramon's posting to Gunder said that he could set ACR itself to produce:

> over-sharpened, over-contrasty, over-saturated image, and compress the low end of the curve in order to hide the noise in that range

if he wanted to. That seemed like a slam and I took as an implication that he must be an idiot for wanting that in the first place. I decided to jump to his defense since I thought there was a real point to his request that wasn't getting listened to and/or understood.

Then the following line in a response to my initial message:

> But ACR can already emulate the over contrasty, over saturated, black levels stomped to the ground look that the in-camera JPEG processing gives you.
>
>But it's your choice if you want to do that much damage to your picture.

is the one that really felt like a stomping. I read it as, "if you're as dumb as you sound like you are by asking for this, go ahead and ruin your pictures".

I didn't see any attempt to understand why the poster thought the request might be useful and, in fact, both postings were just trying to convince us we were dumb for even asking.

Here's how I would have liked to have seen a response to Gunder's posting.

---------------

First of all Gunder, welcome to the forum and I'm glad you are trying out Adobe Camera RAW.

In the current state of things in ACR, you will probably have to do significant tweaking in ACR if you want to generate the same kind of pictures that Canon does with their JPEGs and you may need to learn quite a bit about ACR before you can really do that as well. Some of that tweaking, you could set as the default in ACR and some of it will have to be tweaked on each individual photo or at least on groups of photos. To date, the focus of development in ACR has been more about giving you control over these settings and making for an efficient workflow in setting them than it has been about automatically producing in-camera-like JPEGs.

I'd suggest one of the excellent books about ACR like Bruce Fraser's book "Real World Camera RAW with Adobe Photoshop CS2". It's an excellent book and after reading it you will really start to understand how the different ACR controls work, what they do and how they interact with each other. You may even be able to change the defaults in ACR to produce images closer to what you want without so much individual tweaking.

You may also want to experiment with shooting RAW+JPEG in your camera (setting your camera so it produces both if it supports that). That way you could selectively pick a few RAW images to play with while still using the JPEGs for many others. That's one way that some people get started with RAW.

Now, about your original feature request. I agree with you. A bunch more users would be able to use ACR if it was able to start out with a default "new user mode" that produced images similar to the in-camera JPEGs. I would have loved that myself when I first started. Adobe appears to be trying to move in that direction by both supporting white balance as an in-camera setting that works in ACR and by promoting the DNG RAW file format that, if camera makers would support it for a RAW format, would make it more practical for many more in-camera settings to be supported by ACR. Until either that happens or specific manufacturers agree to document more of their formats and algortithms, it will be difficult for Adobe to support many more in-camera settings. It would be useful and I hope it happens someday, but it doesn't look imminent to any of us onlookers because of the implementation complexity.

I hope that you are able to get successfully started with ACR because once you really learn how to take best advantage of the controls that it has, you can produce remarkable images. RAW will probably always require more learning and may always be a little more work, but should give you more of an ability to optimize your images as a reward for that extra work. I, myself, process a few hundred RAW photos a week on average and some weekend events I end up with 600-800 RAW photos. I now find it more efficient to process my photos as RAW than as JPEG because the workflow tools in ACR and the ability to make mass corrections/changes is so much easier in ACR than it is in the CS2 editor itself. But, it took me awhile to get that proficient. I started by hand tweaking each one in Elements, reading books on how to do it better and hanging out in various online forums with folks who were a lot more skilled than I.

Good luck getting started Gunder, and if you have any more questions about ACR, please don't hesitate to ask in the right forum here - that's what the forums are here for.

--John

Nobody's been stepped on, and nothing's been dismissed.

But there have been some explanations about why things aren't likely to happen, or why they're not as desirable as they might think...

> I kind of doubt that's going to happen.

That may be true and it's up to Adobe to decide that. Adobe has chosen to go the route of supporting some in-camera settings (like white balance). I'm merely pointing out (and agreeing with the original poster on this topic) that there would be some utility in transferring some of the other camera settings.

And, clearly Adobe is trying to turn the shoe onto the other foot by trying to get camera manufacturers to adopt DNG which would make supporting in-camera settings easier, less costly and probably more reliable.

The reason I stepped into this thread was because I was tired of seeing people get stepped on for asking for something that would be useful, just because it was hard or not likely to happen or not something that someone else wants. That's not how feature request threads should work. People should attempt to understand what it is that is being requested and why it's being requested and then allow it to be considered for prioritization along with all the other things being requested rather than just dismissing it.

--John

John - that's a bit different. That would require the camera makers to document ALL of their proprietary settings and algorithms, or for ACR to use the camera makers' (slow, buggy) code.

I kind of doubt that's going to happen.

>The functionality is there. All you have to do is learn how to use it.

Where would I find functionality in ACR that would apply in-camera settings for tone curves, saturation, sharpness, etc...?

In case I wasn't clear, I'm talking about the ability to make camera setting changes in the field during a shoot and have those changes be automatically applied as the initial image presentation in ACR before I make further adjustments.

--John

>but I would use it sometimes

Would? Why don't you? The functionality is there. All you have to do is learn how to use it.

My postings are useful - try reading them.

And first you'll need to get your camera manufacturer to document their proprietary tags that contain the tone curves, and the exact math they use to apply those tone curves.

I never suggested ACR should do it by default. And, I have no idea why you like to produce such non-useful postings. I'm surprised Adobe lets you post here on their behalf. It's as if you are just angry at anyone who has a different point of view than you do.

As an example, some of the tone curve settings in my camera (including some of the automatic tone curve settings) can be very useful in some shooting settings (not all, but some). As it is, ACR makes me throw away that camera functionality and set it manually. I'd like ACR to have an option to pick that info up from the camera as a starting point if I so choose. ACR's default settings cannot emulate this camera functionality. I wouldn't use that in-camera functionality always, but I would use it sometimes.

--John