+ Camera Raw Feature Requests +

[Ian Lyons]

UPDATE:

We're interested in what changes you would like see in our products. Do you have an idea for a feature that would help your workflow? Is there a small change that could be made to make your life a little easier? Let us know!  Share an Idea, Ask a Question or Report a Problem and get feedback from the Product Development Team and other passionate users on the Photoshop Family product Feedback Site on Photoshop.com.

In future it would helpful if you could use this thread as a means to add

"Features" that you would like to see in future releases of Adobe Camera Raw.

Please do NOT create additional new Topics and try not to duplicate requests by other users. Also, be thorough in your description of the feature and why you think Adobe should consider it.

Oh, and if you find it necessary to comment on someone's feature request/suggestion, try not to get into a shouting match. The penalty for doing so is...

b If you're asking that a particular camera is supported in a future release or just taking the opportunity to carp that yours isn't then please do so in another thread!

IanLyons

Forum Host

[_Carol_Steele_]

Oh my Gawd - so it is - in large bold type too.

Me thinks I need a new pair of eyes, never mind glasses!!!

[_Andrew_Pietrzyk_]

Carol,

Your eyes are fine! Peripheral vision can play weird games with our brains.

I'm in the same boat using three camera bodies. When I saw your post my first reaction was: "exactly". Then. wait a minute, somehow I seem to know which camera I'm dealing with, I swear I've seen this displayed somewhere there.

But I had to go back and double check what was subconsciously in my field of view.

Missing the obvious is not that uncommon. where did I put my eyeglasses? I can't see them. ;)

[Ian Lyons]

Currently we have Camera vendor/make/model + image name and then (in brackets) the ISO, Shutter Speed, as shot Aperture, Lens with as shot focal length. Given that all of these are useful in determining which (if any) personalised settings for Noise CA correction, Vignetting and Calibration should be chosen then "I" think we're well covered.

[_Andrew_Pietrzyk_]

Before the Train leaves the station GRID (on/off) in ACR would be nice.

[_Shangara_Singh_]

I would like to save more than one custom settings for the Crop tool. Also,
once in the Custom pop-up dialog, to swap Width and Height.

An option to clear Straighten tool settings by clicking on its icon, not the
Crop tool icon.

Sticky tools or an option to select the default tool (my pref is for the
White Balance tool).

Precise cursors, instead of the current Normal.

A button or a shortcut to zero a slider. For example, Shift-clicking slider
sets value to zero.

[Julian Vrieslander]

I would like to see the selected item in the toolbar become a "sticky" setting, which does not change when a new file is opened.

[Joe Colson]

One of the reasons I still prefer Nikon Capture to ACR is ACR calibration. I've used Bruce Fraser's book and the Fors script and neither produces as accurate a representation as Capture. I would like to see a calibration script or feature built into ACR that is a collaborative effort of Fraser, Fors and Knoll, that guides the user through calibration and the use of the Calibration tab.

[_gunder_]

ACR for dummies

I like to do shooting in RAW because it gives me maximum flexibility after the shot is done. BUT I am not able to get the same picture as if I use JPG and let the camera do the processing. The colors are washed out, the sharpening is not as good etc. After what I have read I am not the only one...

The solution: In addition to the ACR automatic settings, there should be another one making the picture look exactly like the JPG from the camera the picture comes from. I have a Canon 350D , I would like to have the Canon option and make my changes from that.

Add on 1: I would add the user interface from the camera regarding processing of the picture. On my 350D I have the different parameter sets controlling Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation and Color tone. I would like to control these from inside ACR and get the exact same results as with the DIGIC II processor on the camera.

Add on 2: I would like a new button: P&S style (Point & Shoot style) which makes heavier use of sharpening and colouring so I with SLRs easy can get the same picture look (but with better quality) as I am used to from my P&S camera.

I believe that if this was implemented in ACR 4 a lot more people would start using RAW; now it is to much hassle if you are not really into it. I am trying to learn using RAW myself now, and so far my pictures have not become better, but I like the extra control and I like the concept of archiving everything that was captured by the sensor.

Thanks in advance!

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Gunder,
>In addition to the ACR automatic settings, there should be another one making the picture look exactly like the JPG from the camera the picture comes from.

You can play with the controls and then save the settings just the way you like them. To emulate Canon's in camera raw-to-JPEG conversion, just play with the sliders to generate an over-sharpened, over-contrasty, over-saturated image, and compress the low end of the curve in order to hide the noise in that range. That's what Canon does with its JPEGs. You can save them with whatever name appeals to you, including "Default".

One of the "curves" I have saved I just named "Let_it_be", because it essentially leaves everything flat. If I don't like ACR's interpretation of a RAW file, I just apply that "Let_it_be" settings and go from there.

Alternatively, if you like the Canon JPEG look, you could just shoot JPEGs and save a chunk of money in CF cards and storage space. :)

It is not ACR's goal to emulate either your in-camera JPEGs nor the conversions performed by your camera maker's software.

>On my 350D I have the different parameter sets controlling Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation

All those settings you adjust in your camera are irrelevant when you shoot RAW. They only apply to TIFFs and JPEGs.

>Add-on 2

No comment. The answer is implicit in the above.

[_jfriend00_]

> It is not ACR's goal to emulate either your in-camera JPEGs nor the conversions performed by your camera maker's software.

I shoot RAW because I like the extra control it affords me and the streamlined workflow in ACR. But, that does not mean that having the ability to emulate in-camera settings (curves, saturation, white balance, etc...) when I want it would not be a useful addition to my workflow.

I'm tired of people saying that ACR shouldn't do this. It should. It shouldn't be required for someone to use it, but it should be an option because it would help many people be more productive (such as gunder who requested this). As proof that this is not a black and white issue, people definitely find it useful that ACR attempts to support the in-camera white balance and, in fact, when that gets broken like it was with the Nikon D2X due to white balance encryption, people realize that it hurts their workflow not to have that option. I'd like similar options for in-camera curves, sharpness, contrast, saturation and other relevant settings that go into producing an in-camera JPEG. I'm not looking for an exact replica of the in-camera JPEG. That would be an impossible task since only the camera maker knows how the settings are really applied, but that doens't mean that trying to apply the other settings wouldn't be useful. In my opinion, it would.

It may be hard for Adobe. It may be a lot of work. Adobe may choose not to do it for whatever reason they have, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid feature request. It would be useful to many and thus it is a valid feature request. For all those who don't want it, that's fine. You can campaign that Adobe spend it's time on other things. For those that think this would be useful and helpful, we can campaign for Adobe to spend some time on it. But, I'm a bit tired of reading that it's not a valid feature request. It is.

--John

[Chris Cox]

ACR shouldn't do it by default.

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.

[_jfriend00_]

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

[Chris Cox]

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.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

>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.

[_jfriend00_]

>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

[Chris Cox]

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.

[_jfriend00_]

> 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

[Chris Cox]

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...

[_jfriend00_]

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

[_Barry_Clive_Pearson_]

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.

[_nunatak_]

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.

[_nunatak_]

jfriend00 ...
>Here's how I would have liked to have seen a response to Gunder's posting.

hmmm ... by way of having access to some of the kernal folk--the nuclei at Adobe--it's my impression people default to believing these are "customer service" oriented forums rather than "user to user" forums.

eye actually prefer the "organic feel" of these discussions where people need to make their case by merit, rather than be encouraged by way of some welcome wagon. don't get me wrong, i also understand why your view may vary.

except for when Ian comes around with his big club-- these forums are pretty much self moderating and don't need a lot of rules. this "freespeak" rubs a lot of people the wrong way--but it also breeds some of the most creative discusions between peer groups. you will not find another ecosystem near as rich in "color management information" from as diverse an array of users--ANYWHERE. aside from photographers (novices and pros) there are graphic designers, software developers, creative directors, color theorists, production managers and print people --we're all here under one umbrella.

it's simply amazing! sometimes it's simply amusing!

we are too different to be alike. it's my feeling if we started structuring a facade which these moody, grumpy, innovative, short tempered and brilliantly creative people needed to conform to-- we'd lose a lot of the diverse talent in this ecosystem at the benefit of some very minor encouragement.

to paraphrase joni: "we'd pave paradise and put up a parking lot". :-)

[_Barry_Clive_Pearson_]

nunatak, you say: "but imho fair sport. a "little bit" of peer pressure helps people strengthen their ideas before formulating their thesis".

("Sport"? Chuckle!)

I think there are two danger signs to look out for:

1. Is a critic trying to close down the discussion before it has even been opened up? Any significant idea is likely to need more than just one post to make it understandable. Sometimes it needs a joint effort to refine a thesis before it can be scrutinised properly.

2. More important, is the critic criticising the original statement, or a paraphrase of it? I am very familiar with people taking statements that I have carefully prepared, transforming them into something different, then attacking the latter. I tend nowadays to assume that if someone has to paraphrase a proposal in order to attack it, it is because the original proposal is hard to criticise.

(A refinement of that "sociology 101": at stage 3 the original critics claim the idea as their own! This is typical of politicians).

[Ian Lyons]

This thread is provided for Feature Requests. I would also remind participants of the content of the header message.

Quote:

b "Oh, and if you find it necessary to comment on someone's feature request/suggestion, try not to get into a shouting match. The penalty for doing so is... "

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

As Chris correctly points out, what jfriend00 is asking for is really a request aimed at camera manufacturers to provide their own proprietary algorithms and write the camera settings to the memory card, sort of in a sidecar file, so that those settings can be applied during the raw conversion.

One would assume that such a workflow is implied in the camera manufacturer's raw conversion software.

As such, I see no reason for a user who desires those results either not to shoot JPEGs in the first place or not to use the camera manufacturer's raw conversion software.

Whether jfriend00 wants to characterize the desire to have images that are over-sharpened, over-contrasty, over-saturated and compressed in the low end of the curve in order to hide the noise in that range or not as idiocy is entirely up to jfriend00 to decide. I made no such inference.