P: Improved Fuji X-Trans Support?

Thank you guys for sharing your thoughts!

I've decided to buy a Fuji body in spite of known LR's deficiency and I'm going to buy the Iridient Developer for it. I'm quite happy with PS as an edit/retouche software but if I would know a comparable software to PS, I could also say bye-bye to Adobe...

I bought and use right now Iridient Developer (you may scroll up and see my comparison with LR 5 and 6). Capture One I tried couple of times, but this software demands to deep study and I don't have free time to learn one mor RAW-processing software (because I shoot 25-30 hours a week and need to give the decent result to my clients).
Darktable is free and open-source software. It works great, especially if you chose 5-step demosaic. But it is also demands some time to study it. I know that in net there are blogs where it is explained, how to work with Darktable. I can't give you the link because I speak Russian and I know about one blog which is written in Russian. But I am sure you manage to find. Moreover, Darktable is for Win, Mac and Linux. A friend of mine who is very successful stocker works in Darktable and he says that demosaic is perfect for stock demands.

So, Adobe can't - other manufacturers can. What does it mean? In my opinion, Adobe has got a "star-in-the-forehead" disease and don't give a damn on its clients.

Aleksei, you may well be right, I can't vouch for the veracity of any of it, just passing on what I heard.

Are you getting a perfect demoniac in C1? I tried it a while back and found it much better in terms of colour profiling and other areas, but only mildly better at demosaicing. It's not as strong as LR in other areas, although the new colour correction workflow does look very nice!

Never heard of Darktable, might look it up, although LR handles my current E-M1 files just fine so I have little incentive to move developers right now.

James, all you said sounds strange at least. If I process x-trans RAW in Iridient Developer or Capture One, or in Darktable I will get perfect demosaic. So why they can but Adobe can't?
Moreover I know from a guy from Fujifilm-Russia, that Fuji gave to Adobe all necessary data, but the only thing Adobe did is included film profiles to LR and ACR.

Oddly, having commented here the other day, I ended up inadvertently discussing this yesterday with a pro photographer who uses Fuji system - in fact I was cheating to him about something else but we got onto the subject. I won't mention names, because I didn't ask his approval to post what he said here.

Now, he apparently used to work for Fuji, and said they are notoriously, almost ridiculously, tight lipped about their Intellectual Property. He claimed to have got them and Adobe 'round the same table' a while back, which is why there was a small step up in processing quality.

My point (or rather, his point) is that we may need to be putting pressure on Fuji to be more forthcoming with Adobe about how to de mosaic x-teams files properly, and not only on Fuji themselves. He told me that recently another friend of his (another pro) had a photo which was processed by a top lab here, then, for some reason, by Fuji themselves in Japan. The difference in the final prints was quite substantial, to the extent they asked what on earth Fuji were able to do to the file that they couldn't. Essentially, he said that the Fuji print was 'everything we're all wanting', which I took to mean it didn't have the artefacts we're all concerned with.

I have no reason to suspect the guy is making it up, as I say, we only wandered on to the subject in the middle of another conversation, but it may be worth everyone pressuring Fuji more. If they really are being so protective of their x-trams IP it's damaging the output quality of the files it claims to improve, their users' experience, and even, in cases like myself, losing customers, that really is crazy. That said, I still think Adobe could at least respond to our concerns - how hard would it be, if the above is indeed true, for them to simply say that it's out of their hands, and to approach Fuji for a fix, for example?

+1
In general, the trend is that a lot of non professionals, hobbyists and semi-pro photographers (pros also, but not so many) understood, that DSLR is big and heavy and do not have the "magic" button "masterpiece". And this people switch to mirrorless, and mostly to Fuji. So in one or two years this 7-8% will increase, but Adobe will not get them as customers. Iridient, Capture One will get new customers.

I payed for Iridient $99 and this is not a small amount of money, but I vote for client-oriented developer.

+1 to t.linn and Francine.

Fuji needs to help and/or put pressure on Adobe to fix their raw support if they want to help grow their customer base.

AND...Adobe needs to respond on this thread to this issue, or it will continue to lose support, and give a boost to their competitors.

7-8% market share is not insignificant. And, what should be more troubling for Adobe, it is growing.

Yes, I believe your assessment is exactly correct. And to be clear, I wasn't suggesting unsubscribing from Adobe in my last comment—though that is my advice to anyone who doesn't want to willingly put themselves in a position of having to pay Adobe a monthly fee for the rest of their life to have editing access to their images. My advice is CS6 and a perpetual license of LR until this is no longer a viable option. At that point I am hopeful that some other company will have stepped in to offer some competition. It's not like Adobe is actually advancing the state of the art with their relatively infrequent CC releases. PS is a relatively stationary target.

I agree with you t.linn. I am not willing to give up my X-T1. And I don't think I should have to.

On the other hand, I fail to see what unsubscribing to Adobe will accomplish. If Fuji's market share is less than 7%, I seriously doubt that our defection will make much of a difference. How many of these 7% actually care that much about it. Lots of JPG shooters in the group, I am sure.

It is Fuji that will suffer I believe. Already, a number of my colleagues have decided NOT to purchase an X-T1 because of the problem.

And although I am more than frustrated with Adobe about this, I wonder what, if anything Fuji is doing about it. I am sure they have more clout than any of us.

Why would Adobe lift a fat finger to do anything when people are willing to sell their camera bodies to accommodate Adobe's laziness? I'm not criticizing your decision, James, but your post doesn't do much to further the cause. Then again, there isn't much to suggest Adobe cares about any of its users. Their rental scheme seems to have worked so what motivation do they have to fix anything.