Last summer I had my first real vacation in years and I decided with my wife and son to go to Hawaii. After the initial excitement of the decision, I began to worry. Maui is no less than 10,500 miles away from where I live so we’d had to make two stops and travel for 22 hours – definitely the kind of stuff you only do once in your life.

Considering that the whole vacation was going to cost a fortune anyway, I thought I should make the best of it by taking lots of photos. When I started to pack all my camera gear (2 bodies, 8 lenses, vertical grip, spare batteries, 2 flashes, tripod and more), I realized that a. –  I’d need a very big bag for all of it, b. –  the last thing I want to do is to carry that damn thing with me along with the other luggage and c. – there’s a high chance for the equipment to get damaged in transit.

And then, thinking of Mr. Fogg who went around the world in 80 days with no luggage, just loads of cash, it hit me – when I go in a vacation, I don’t take my car with me – I rent one while I’m there. So why should I get all my expensive gear with me when I could find what I need there?

One minute later I had my answer: Maui Camera Rental is a photo rental company located in Maui (they have another office in Honolulu too). Browsing their inventory, I realized that not only I could find there all my beloved lenses, I could even try lenses I simply could not afford to buy. For example, a Canon EF 70-200 F2.8 L IS II USM that retails for $2,500 can be rented for just $100 for a whole week. So rather than dragging a whole bunch of lenses half the globe, it simply made more sense to take just my main camera body and the cards and rent everything else, depending on my needs.

Also, while I was preparing my gear, I realized I’d need some sort of underwater housing (Hawaii sans scuba diving? No way!) but to be honest I didn’t even know what to look for. Fortunately they have not only underwater housings for cameras and various lenses, but housings for flashes too! (I didn’t even know they exist).

Overall I was amazed by their offering. I could have made a whole photo session or a wedding with their equipment, as they have everything from Profoto lights and stands to CF cards and even Macs, including software.

So if you’re travelling to Hawaii, I think it’s worth checking them out. And even if you’re not and are going somewhere else, it’s still worth checking with the local businesses and see if you can save  time & money by renting the equipment.

Setting it up

1. Open Edit –> Preferences –> Guides, Grid and Slices
2. Edit Gridline every… 100 percent
3. Subdivisions… 3
4. Click OK

That’s it!

Now to show or hide the grid, just press CTRL+’ or select View –> Show –> Grid

Image with visible grid

What is this Rule of Thirds anyway?

Just in case you never heard of this “rule”, let me give you some points:

Beginners in photography tend to frame everything dead in the center. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There are many rules that can be used to achieve a more pleasing composition and this is one of them.

The Rule of Thirds states that you can achieve better composition balance if you place the interesting features of your photos along horizontal and/or vertical lines that divide your picture in thirds, or at the intersection points.

To illustrate my point, have a look at the pictures below:

Horizon and tower aligned to the lines

Eye at the intersection

As with any photography “rule”, you shouldn’t get obsessed with it. Not everything has to be framed according to it. Understand it, learn it, try it – then break it!

Updated on January 4, 2010 with the final release of Bibble 5.

The lineup

For this test I selected:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta;
• Bibble 5 Pro;
• Capture One 5 Pro;
• DXO Optics Pro 6.

Notable absents would be Apple Aperture and Silky Pix.

I did not select Aperture for this review because it’s older (apart from updates and patches it’s still a 2008 product) and it’s also the only Mac-only product (all the programs in this test are available for both PC and Mac; Bibble is also available for Linux). In the case of Silky Pix, I started testing it, but I felt it’s not in the same league as the others, so a direct comparison would not be fair.

Also, in the case of Lightroom 3, it is still beta software; I decided that it’s stable enough to be used in production, so it wouldn’t be unfair to it. It’s good to keep in mind however that it may add features and/or improve image quality before it is released.

Originally, this article presented the beta version of Bibble 5, once it was released I retested and included new results from it.

Test images

For this test I found myself in the difficult position of not having enough test images. I made a habit years ago to convert all my pics to DNG. Unfortunately, DXO and Bibble don’t support DNG, so for this test I had to find some RAWs. If you think that would be easy, well, I actually had to run a program to recover some pics from my cards.

Second of all, I initially had some nice architectural pictures from Milan and Paris that were taken with a compact camera (a perfect test for noise reduction, chromatic aberrations and so on). Again, some programs (DXO and Capture One) did not support it.

Third, I wanted flawed images. I believe that test images should not be perfect – how would I be able to check chromatic aberrations if the image was taken with a razor-sharp, $2000 lens? Or how could I evaluate highlight recovery for a perfectly-exposed scene? Or noise at low ISO? or… you get the picture.

So if you look at the images in the test and wonder why they’re not so good – it’s because I selected them to be like that.

Interface

All four programs have remarkably similar interfaces: dark/gray color schemes, tabs and sliders.

All interfaces look similar, but there are differences in organization and workflow

I absolutely love Capture One‘s interface. It’s polished, simple and logical. It’s very easy to find the tools and the tabs are arranged in the proper order – from capture to details.

Lightroom comes very close, but for it the keyword would be ‘customization’. You can easily customize the interface to fit your own workflow, turn panels off, even customize the “nameplate” to your company name – a nice touch for when you’re working with a client.

Bibble is more of a mixed bag. They changed the UI completely from version 4 and copied many concepts from their competitors, but it’s still a bit confusing as buttons are all over the place.

DXO suffers from the same problems as Bibble – a rather confusing interface, with options arranged not very intuitively; for example, why is White Balance (a basic setting) placed after DXO Lighting (an advanced feature)? Still, in terms of speed and stability, it’s a huge improvement over DXO5.

Import and export

Lightroom has probably the widest camera support – it can read all camera formats under then sun and it also supports DNG (obviously, they invented it). Lightroom also goes beyond the typical RAW processor, as it aims to be a full DAM (Digital Asset Manager). In two years, it still hasn’t convinced me to use it exclusively, but it’s simple enough to import photos in its database and process them. It can also handle variations, has an unlimited history, snapshots and more. New in version 3 is the export system – you can publish from it directly to a service like Flikr. For me, it would be incredible to output directly to iStock, so I can only hope a plugin will come.

Bibble also has a wide camera support, but they don’t support DNG (despite numerous customers requesting it, I might add). Import and export are very easy and I like how printing is also treated like an output option and how easy it’s to define your own presets.

Capture One has a very straightforward way for import and export, focusing on simplicity. I might add that tethered shooting is perfectly integrated in the interface, a bonus for studio photographers. Capture One is more picky about direct camera support, but it does support DNG, so you can always convert to DNG first and then import.

DXO is the most cumbersome in this regard. First you must drag-and-drop files from the file system to a project, edit them and then drag and drop files from the project to the output queue. It just feels tedious for me, without enabling any advanced behaviour. DXO is also very picky about camera support and adds lenses into equation as it provides automatic correction for known camera-lens combinations. It also doesn’t import DNG (why oh why); it can output linear DNG, a feature I never used.

Unique features

As mentioned above, Lightroom is not only a RAW converter but a complete DAM, which comes in handy when you have tens of thousands of images (I have about 16,000 DNGs since 2003). You can easily filter by multiple criteria – tip: it really helps to use keywords for all images. The unlimited history, snapshots, virtual copies help you play creatively with photos, trying different looks. On the other hand, it’s the only program in this test that does not posses any sort of lens distortion correction, which is very disappointing (I still have hopes for the final version). Since version 2, LR also has some localized corrections (color, sharpness, exposure) via a brush or a gradient.

DXO is the unchallenged master in optical corrections. If you have a supported camera and lens, the precise corrections are great, and even if the lens is not recognized, you can still apply most of the corrections – sharpness falloff, light falloff, distortion corrections, even fish-eye corrections. The most impressive feature would be the keystoning, which lets you easily correct perspective distortions – a must-have for architectural shots (not everyone has a tilt-shift lens). It also has a built-in color rendering for emulating different film looks and more.

Capture One has the best support for tethered shooting  and a very useful focus checker – it will overlay the areas that are in focus, a great way to quickly asses a collection of images without zooming in, making it almost perfect for studio work.

Bibble has an incredibly powerful feature: layers. You can make a selection on the image and make any and all settings apply only to it. You can have an image with two or more different WB settings if you want. Areas can be defined using some tools or brushes and you can easily set/change the feathering. The system goes way beyond what Lightroom can offer. Bibble also has some interesting features licensed from other companies –  Noise Ninja for image reduction and a lens distortion database from PT Lens.

Processing Quality

This is where the fun begins.

Color rendition – portraits

With each program, I did not rely on defaults, but tried to achieve the best look. Looking at the image below, you can still see that each one has a different philosophy:

I think B5 nails it best with Lr3 second; though many will prefer C1's more natural look or even DXO's vividness

White balance was set for the black+white dress. I did not enable any “creative” color settings or film emulations.

Capture One really likes to stay neutral and true to the ‘real’ colors. Besides the WB tool, it also has a ‘skin color tool’ for achieving a pleasant skin color.

Lightroom throws more contrast; at least for my camera it has the tendency for more reddish skin, which I dislike. I know I can make my own color profiles (and I have), but how many users will?

Even with the Portrait contrast setting, Bibble generated a more contrasty image, while DXO created a very punchy result – very contasty, more yellowish skin and lipstick.

DXO6 makes gets too much contrast and C1 too little.

Four programs – four interpretations of the same scene with WB set for the eye white. What’s not to love?

Capture One again favors a very bland/neutral look, while DXO goes “a little” overboard with contrast. I think I like Bibble best.

Color rendition – landscapes

I really like the way Lr3 renders colors; DXO is over the top

For this image I also used a little Fill Light to open the shadows in the flowers and fruits. WB was adjusted for the white wall. Both Lightroom and DXO produce beautiful colors – Lightroom with a great blue sky (not very realistic since it was overcast, but beautiful nevertheless); DXO has a bit unnatural grass, but I’ve seen the color in magazines and ads a thousand times. Lightroom also gets the purples right but gets the orange walls a bit wrong. But this is just nitpicking.

Capture One misses it – the grass seems dirty/muddy and the Fill Light doesn’t work nearly as well. Bibble fares better but the colors are off and the contrast and shadow/highlight details are not that great.

Dynamic Range

You could get a taste of how well Fill Light & Highlight recovery work from the previous test, but now lets try something extreme:

DXO6 obtains the best results, followed by Lr3

DXO is really amazing with this image. Beautiful colors and look how detailed the dark, shadowed part of the building looks. Lightroom comes in close.

Initially, Bibble generated a rather poor image in the Preview release 3, but in the final version I managed to get better results.

As for Capture One, it just can’t.

Detail extraction

Let’s see now how much detail vs. noise can our four contestants extract from an image (100% crop):

Excellent detail in Capture One and Lr3

DXO produces a clean but not very detailed image, with some speckles here and there. Capture One removed too much chroma and has a quite speckled look (but note how natural the skin looks). Bibble 5 puts Noise Ninja to good use, leaving a pleasing image in terms of noise and details. Lightroom 3 renders the best image in terms of details, even though it’s slightly noisier.

Noise reduction

I don’t shoot usually at high ISO, but I have for this test- a boring detail of my keyboard.

It's B5's turn to show what it can do

The image above was shot at ISO6400.

Thanks to Noise Ninja, Bibble gets the crown. Lightroom 3 has the luminance noise reduction disabled in the beta, so the final version may look different. Although very noisy, it’s not that bad – I prefer Lr3 over C1. DXO cleans the luminance nicely but leaves some coarse chroma noise. With Capture One I tried 2 different approaches but the results are still very poor. The one shown above has luminance noise reduction very low, chroma to max; also reduced sharpening to zero.

Optical corrections

Unfortunately I did not have any RAW picture to really have a need to correct the chromatic abberations or barrel/pincushion. As I mentioned in the beginning, almost all of my pictures are DNG.

Having said that, based on my past experience I can safely say that DXO is unmatched in optical corrections – especially with a supported lens, whereas Lightroom comes in last since it has no distortion correction.

Here’s something from a previous test in 2007:

DXO Keystoning in action

I was able to test for purple fringing:

DXO really saves this image

Bibble has the least effective fringing correction (I couldn’t actually see it making any difference, although the Fringing option was set to Standard). Lightroom is also largely ineffective in this area (Purple fringing was set to All Edges). Capture One corrects the purple fringing but leaves a glow. DXO corrects both the color and the luminance in the affected area, leaving a sharp image.

It’s also worth mentioning the noise – Lightroom image is noisy but detailed (look at the black lace), while Capture One’s looks clean but speckled.

Speed

Speed comparisons are not very fair, as we’re comparing apples and oranges – some programs offer more advanced corrections so it wouldn’t be fair to say that they are slow when they also offer superior quality. Also, speed is dependent on many factors and will vary greatly from image to image.

As a general statement, Bibble is the fastest, followed by Lightroom and Capture One and unsurprisingly DXO comes at the end.

Pricing

Quality is not the only factor in making a decision. Let’s see how competitive are the prices:

• Adobe Lightroom 2: $300 USD (I can only assume version 3 will be priced the same)
• Bibble 5 Pro: $200 USD
• Capture One 5 Pro: $400 USD ($130 for the standard version)
• DXO Optics Pro 6 – Elite Edition : $200 USD ($109 for Standard edition)

Some notes:

• Capture One 5 standard does not offer optical correction and tethered shooting.
• DXO differentiates Stardard and Elite based on the supported camera bodies. High-end (full frame) digital SLRs require the Elite edition.

Updates

I intend to update this article when the final versions of Lightroom 3 and Bibble 5 are released and to also add more tests – so please come back.

I will also gladly correct any factual errors that may have slipped in this review (I worked for a week on it).

Updated on January 4, 2010 with the final release of Bibble 5. I changed some three of the Bibble results and used the new sales price.

Conclusions

It should come to no surprise that there’s no “perfect” program – each one has its strengths and weaknesses and your decision on which one is better for you should be based on the type of photography you do.

Having said that, I have a hard time recommending Capture One. I really wanted to like it and I know it has its fans, but I just can’t justify its price tag vs the output quality or the workflow. The interface is nice and clean, but it has nothing worth 4 times the price of DXO or the quality and workflow offered by Lightroom. It may work well for studio photographers because of its tethered shooting features and focus checker but even then it might be worth testing it along with Lightroom.

In terms of features and quality over price, DXO 6 is an absolute steal. If your camera and lenses are supported, $110 is nothing, even if you also use a different RAW converter. If you shoot landscapes or architectural elements, HDR, ultra-wide and so on DXO is a must. DXO 5 used to be a nightmare, with frequent crashes and a very slow interface, but DXO 6 is nothing like that – it offers a solid experience and in many cases it produces beautiful results.

Bibble 5 has great potential – it’s very fast and its adjustement layers feature is truly powerful. It supports more camera models than DXO and Noise Ninja does wonders for high-ISO images (obviously, you can always purchase Noise Ninja or Neat Image separately).

Lightroom is a very good all-round program. Its image management and workflow features are very useful for professional photographers. On the other hand, it’s relatively more expensive and lacks more advanced optical corrections. Adobe has included optical corrections settings in the latest DNG standard I hopefully support will be added in Lightroom 3.

So which one is best for you?

If you’re an amateur with a compact camera that supports RAW and want to get creative, go with Bibble. It will correct noise problems and optical distortions and will let you get creative.

Landscape and architectural photographers will benefit from DXO advanced corrections.

Portrait and studio photographers who work closely with their clients and shoot thousands of photos will be best suited by Lightroom.

Capture One has its fans too. It has some very professional features but its scope is limited. I would recommend it for professional studio photographers who worry more about correct colors than high ISO performance.

The following tips are geared toward pro or semi-pro photographers shooting commercial stuff, but most of them apply for cases when the model is also the client or even when it’s just for fun.

Everything starts with trust

Although we later became friends, this was strictly photojournalism - there's no connection between the subject and the camera

I can’t emphasize this enough. In other areas you may get away with a co-worker you don’t get along with, but if you don’t trust the model or they don’t trust you – it will show on pictures.

If possible, spend some time before the photo session to get to know who you’ll be working with. If it’s a location shoot, drive or walk together to the location. Break the ice. Explain your vision/plan for the session. Tell a little about yourself, why and how you got into photography, ask them why they model.

During the session, show how pics are coming along. This will further help in establishing trust (the model will see that you know what you’re doing) and will build confidence.

Be professional

Treat your model like a co-worker – you must work together to achieve the goals, so remember that your model is a human being, not like a prop. Don’t yell, don’t make inappropriate jokes, don’t be sloppy, don’t be annoying, don’t be loud, don’t be late.

Especially if you’re a man and your model a lady: don’t drool over her, don’t comment on her body, don’t ask her for a date. Things like “Yeah baby, show me what you got” will make you look like a third-rate sleazy low-budget porn flick director wannabe.

Handle with care

When you know your model, you can shoot based on her personality for a powerful effect

Keep your hands to yourself and only give verbal instructions. Don’t touch the model to fix anything (a curl in the hair, the position of hand or anything else) unless you get explicit permission. If you think it’s over the top, keep in mind that your model is your co-worker, not your lover, perhaps not even your friend.

Some photographers feel offended if the model comes in with a relative or significant other. This is usually a sign of missing trust and can be annoying especially if their companion keeps making comments on how they’d “improve” the shots. The trick is to “win” them over – ask them to help you with the lights for example; unless they’re really cranky, they’ll gladly do something useful instead of sitting in a corner.

When it comes to underage models or glamor/nude shots, my advice is to actually demand your model to be accompanied by a family member. Think of it as insurance and make sure they sign in the model release stating that they have no complains. You never want your reputation to be questioned – or worse.

Be flexible

As the photographer, you are in a position of power. Unless there’s a very important shoot with its own art director, you will be calling the shots: camera position, lighting, model’s body posture and expression.

Don’t abuse your power. Don’t yell, explain. Don’t demand, guide.

Think about it. Chances are your model likes to be in front of the camera as much as you like to be behind it. Even if they have no experience, they like it and usually they love to experiment. If your model says “let’s try this”, don’t frown. Megabytes are cheap; say “OK, let’s do this; but then we do my way too” (unless you’re photographing H.M. Queen Elizabeth II – she doesn’t like being asked to remove her crown)

Play around, experiment. Try to keep it fun.

Build empathy

You can't fake a smile like that

This is hard. The best photos are always about emotions. You can’t build emotions if there’s no connection between you and the model. Some celebrity photographers use tricks, intentionally pissing off the person in front of the camera to get an unusual look. Me? I prefer a warm, heartfelt smile.

This the advantage of working with the same model over the years – you get to really know each other to the point words are no longer needed.

Know when to stop

If the session takes more than one hour, include breaks in the schedule. Ten minute breaks go a long way in ensuring everyone (including you) stays sharp.

Fill in the paperwork

Don’t gloss over the legal aspects. It’s easy to say “just sign here, don’t worry about it” but the proper approach is to make sure that everyone (you, the client and the model) understand what they are getting into before the session. Who will own the copyright? Is this a work-for-hire? Will there be royalties? Does the model understand what’s involved in a Model Release?

Inexperienced people tend to either sign away without reading and comprehending or they tend to freak out and become suspicious.

Conclusion

I am not a professional photographer and this is not legal advice. Most of the above is just common sense that unfortunately is ignored in many cases.

Happy pictures!

In case you are curious what I’m dealing with in this article, have a look:

HDR of Orthodox Cathedral, Sibiu, Romania

The cathedral is located here.

If you find it interesting, read on.

Introduction

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the therm, HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging. As I’ve discussed before, a regular photo can’t capture the full range of lights and shadows that the human eye can see. Photographers have long learned to avoid high-contrast situations or to use them to create artistic effects. It all changed when Paul Devebec presented at SIGGRAPH 1997 a method for combining several images with different exposures into one single image with a much higher range of luminosity. To put things in perspective, a camera sensor can cope with contrast ranges on the order of 4000:1, while a scene of a room with an outside view in full sun (something our eyes see every day) has a dynamic range of 100,000:1.

Initially HDR was used in 3D graphics as environment maps to create realistic scenes. Because a HDR image contains 32bits per channel (in floating point, e.g. can take almost infinite values), it cannot be displayed directly on the screen or printed on paper, so a second operation is needed, called Tone Mapping. Tone Mapping consists in “compressing” the high dynamic range back into something we can see on screen. This is something easier said than done; a simple conversion results in a lifeless, murky image so there’s a whole research field in creating algorithms that present images that are realistic and pleasing for the eye.

Shooting the scene

Equipment used:

• Sony α700 DSLR;
• Sigma 10-20mm lens;
• tripod (Canon, in case you’re interested).

First, a straight JPEG of the cathedral interior is hopelessly bad. The stained glasses are blown out while many areas are pure black. Colors are muted and overall it’s not an incredibly attractive picture. Shooting with Dynamic Range Optimizer marginally improves the shadow detail, but not by much.

JPEG image lacks the needed dynamic range

So, I put the camera on a tripod and shot eight pictures, from under- to over-exposed, one f-stop apart each. I started with just enough light to see the windows and ended with an exposure long enough to see clearly in shadows. Here they are:

8 images with different exposures make the final HDR

Picturenaut

Picturenaut is a nice little FREE tool from a guy named Christian Bloch. The interface is pretty barren, but it has to be the fastest HDR tool I’ve tried. Did I mention it’s free? (some tools can cost $700)

Selecting images for HDR

Tone Mapping dialog

First step is selecting all images that will make the final exposure. Picturenaut has the option to automatically align the images, which is extremely important since even with the camera on tripod the image can be slightly different from shot to shot.

Aside from being very accurate, Picturenaut is really, really fast. It generates the HDR in no time. The HDR image displayed on screen usually looks rather flat, but that’s expected. You can save it as a 32bit TIFF if you want.

Second step is the “fun” part – tone mapping. Picturenaut offers two algorithms (Adaptive Logarithmic and Photoreceptor physiology). Which one is better depends on the actual scene.

The tone mapping is also very fast, almost real-time.

Photoshop

Image selection for HDR

Tone Mapping in Ps

You access the HDR option from File –> Automate –> Merge to HDR (rather unintuitive, but that’s me). The process is very slow, “Aligning layers based on content” message seems to take forever.

For Tone Mapping (achieved via Image –> Mode –> 8 bits/channel), Photoshop offers four options: “Exposure and Gamma“, “Highlight Compression“, “Equalize Histogram” and “Local Adaptation“. Again, depending on the scene, one mode may be more useful that the other, but I find Local Adaptation to be good, with Highlight Compression and Equalize Histogram essentially useless.

Image Quality: Photoshop vs. Picturenaut

With both programs, after tone mapping, I spent some time tweaking the image, playing with Curves to increase the contrast and Saturation to bring out the true colors I saw in the cathedral.

Here’s the side-by-side end result:

HDR result - Photoshop vs. Picturenaut

Apart from some color differences, the two images are remarkably similar. I did manage to preserve highlight detail better in Photoshop and its local contrast made everything “pop” more, but overall they are on par, so if you can’t afford Photoshop or some “pro” tool, Picturenaut will deliver good results (but you still need to tweak it, it’s not a “push the button and you’re done” kind of operation).

What is this raw thing, anyway?

Camera sensor

Diagram of a Bayer sensor array

RAW in itself is just a term denoting an unprocessed image. It’s not a file format; all camera manufacturers (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc.) have their own file formats to store this unprocessed information.

You see, all digital cameras work in the same way: there’s a sensor that is made of 6 (or 8 or 24) million elements laid out in rows and columns that can capture light. Each element produces a pixel in the final image. That’s where the “megapixels” term comes from. Now, these tiny elements don’t capture color, only brightness (there’s an exception, the Foveon sensor). To capture color, a trick is used, in the form of a so-called Bayer filter array placed in front of the sensor. The Bayer filter makes so that each recorded pixel can be either red, green or blue.

So, when saving a RAW kind of file, the camera simply takes all values read from each element on the senor, adds some info (date, time, camera settings and so on) and just writes that on the card, with no further processing.

How does the camera process the image?

When you’re saving files as JPEG, the camera has to go through several steps to get an usable image

1. take raw sensor data;
2. for each color channel (red, green, blue), pixels are interpolated to fill the gaps;
3. color balance and gamma correction are applied;
4. noise reduction, contrast, saturation and sharpening are applied;
5. image is encoded as JPEG and written to card.

How the RAW information is processed

Is RAW needed?

OK, you can’t see a RAW directly and the camera does the processing in less than a second, so why should we bother with RAW?

The answer is that under perfect shooting conditions, RAW wouldn’t be needed – that means perfect white balance, perfect exposure, perfect camera effect settings. In real life however, you don’t always get to control all variables. Color may be off (do you always calibrate the white balance?), you may have got blow-out (white) areas with no detail, and so on. You could try to tweak the jpeg in Photoshop, but if the shadow or highlight details are simply not there, you’ll never recover it.

What are the advantages for saving in RAW format?

Short answer: it allows you to correct your mistakes and be more creative.

Sounds good? Read on for the long answer.

Like I said in the beginning, the RAW file contains unprocessed data. It also contain more nuanced information per-pixel too. JPEG files store can represent 256 levels of brightness (8 bits/channel). RAW on the other hand allocates 12 (sometimes 14) bits for each pixel, resulting in at least 4096 levels of brightness! This helps you bring out details from the shadows or from blown-out areas.

Also, because when the image is saved, white balance is not applied yet, it can be easily set to whatever you want. If you ever took a photo with the wrong WB setting and then tried to fix it in Photohop, you know how hard it is. When editing the RAW, this is simple and accurate.

This is not all. In-camera conversion is done by the camera’s small processor, that also needs to do the processing in a fraction of a second, so all algorithms are optimized for speed. Modern RAW processing software allow for much sophisticated tools, resulting in more detail, better sharpness and less noise. Some of them even offer automatic optics compensation for chromatic aberrations, purple fringing and lens distortion.

How about some pics?

There are many articles on the web discussing the pros and cons of usig RAW, but very few of them actually post some examples. Why? Well, it’s most likely because artists hate for people too see their unfinished work. Still, seeing is believing, so let me show you some examples:

The RAW image (right) allowed for the image appearance to be improved compared to the JPEG (left)

I took this picture at Sacré-Cœur, Paris. The sun was very low in the sky, beginning twilight. The white travertine stone it’s made of was shining against the blue sky. Still, as you can see from the photo on the left, the camera could not capture all this. To avoid the sky and clouds from being blown out I had to reduce the exposure, resulting in a dark building, while the white balance, set on Auto, made a reddish cast on the whole picture. The image on the right was obtained in about a minute by processing the RAW. I set the white balance to make the stone white, increased the exposure a bit to bring out th details and added some highlight recovery to still have details in the clouds.

The RAW image

The differences in the image above, while not striking, are clearly visible; the eye at the bottom contains more detail and has less artifacts. Sure, the level of detail may not be important if you only print 6″x4″ (15x10cm) but if you’re doing big prints, all small details become important.

What’s the catch?

RAW is not the holy grail of photography. It can’t turn any snapshot into a work of art. On top of that, it has some clear downsides:

• bigger file size. RAW files are uncompressed or compressed using a lossless (think ZIP) compression. This is good because nothing is lost when the file is saved, but bad because instead of a 1-2Mb JPEG, you get a 8-10 MB RAW file. So if you plan on shooting RAW, you’ll need bigger cards.
• because of the bigger file size, it takes more time to save the files. Normal dSLR cameras have a buffer large enough to store about 5 RAWs, so if you’re shooting continuously, you’ll have to pause when the buffer is full. This is particularly annoying for sport and fast action.
• downloading and processing takes time. If time is of the essence, RAWs are not the way to go. This is why photojournalists don’t usually use RAW.

Do I need any special software?

Lightroom 2

Cameras come with some proprietary software for processing RAWs, but they are usually quite limited. There are a number of software capable of processing RAW images, some more powerful than others (I made a review of the biggest of them, here).

For now, my favorite in terms on features, workflow  and user-friendliness is Adobe’s Lightroom 2; other popular software include ACDSee Pro, Bibble, DXO and SilkyPix.

Conclusion?

In a nutshell, RAW is not for everyone, but if you are a creative type and like to get the most out of you camera, I think you should try it.

Exposure and lighting affect the mood of the photo

To aid those who want to be in control of their cameras, to go beyond point-and-shoot, I decided to write a series of tutorials on the basics of photography. If you don’t know what the exposure or aperture are, this little tutorial is for you, so read on. I’ve done my best to avoid overcomplicated technical details and give lots of analogies and examples instead.

What is exposure

The single most important thing to learn about when making a photo is exposure. You’ll never go beyond point-and-shoot without understanding how this works. Any gorgeous scene can and will be ruined by bad exposure — and you can turn a mundane setting into a startling photo by mastering the same exposure.

Tricky lighting required careful control of the exposure

In this photo, lighting the model while keeping the details in the sky was tricky, because the setting sun was behind the model.

How do we capture the light in the scene in a photo? Whether we talk about film or digital, the principle is the same: we’re letting a piece of light-sensitive material to gather light from the scene.

How much light do we need to capture? Here’s the tricky part. Each scene has a certain amount of illumination that can be measured objectively using a light meter. The typical unit of measure for luminance is called “lux” but most light meters are set up to display results in photographic terms (more on that later). Most likely however, you won’t have a light meter, so you can’t rely on them. All photo cameras have internal light meters, except they can’t measure the actual light levels from the light source(s), but the light that enters the camera, which is the reflected light by the scene objects. Why is this important? It’s because the camera has to “guess”. The camera tries to find a good average of the light intensities – here’s how it works:

what you see - what the camera meter sees - averaged gray

The camera takes readings of light intensities across different areas of the image. The number of segment and pattern varies from model to model. The readings are averaged based on different algorithms (“evaluative”, “3D matrix”, “center-weight”, etc.) and the exposure is adjusted to obtain a medium gray.

This method works most of the time – but sometimes it misses. Do you have your camera nearby? Take a picture of a white sheet of paper. — just the white paper, without anything on it. Download the picture and look at it on the screen. I’m willing to bet it came out gray-ish. Take another shot of a black T-shirt. Have a look at it, it’ll be gray or dark gray. Why?

Dark backgrounds will fool the camera meter

White or dark backgrounds can fool the camera meter. The camera tries to average everything to gray. If a scene has bright areas and dark areas, the camera can determine a proper average and from that, it can determine the exposure. But, if you’re shooting tricky scenes, it’ll fail (even a sunset or a portrait against a white wall can be considered tricky, so don’t think you won’t encounter such cases).

Hopefully, by now you understand what exposure is and why it’s important to get it right. Next, it’s how do we get it.

The right exposure – juggling with shutter, aperture and ISO values

Obtaining the correct exposure is like filling a bucket of water. Too little water and you don’t have enough to use it; too much water and it spills, making a mess.

Too little - Just right - too much

To fill the bucket with water you turn the tap. The longer you keep it open, the more water pours. You can also increase or decrease the rate of flow. So in effect you can get the same result either by keeping the tap open for longer and reducing the flow, or with a larger rate of flow for a shorter time. This is exactly how exposure works, except we use light instead of water.

The amount of time you let water, err, light “pour in” the camera is called “exposure time” or “shutter speed” and it can vary anywhere from 1/10000 of a second to minutes or hours. The amount of flow has its equivalent in “aperture size”, which basically measures how big the opening that lets the light shine on sensor or film is.

These two values – shutter speed and aperture are intertwined. To get the correct exposure, both have to be set correctly – that is, if you increase the exposure time then you need to decrease the aperture.

You may ask yourself now – why should we deal with two variables instead of one? Why not keep the aperture wide open and change just the shutter speed? It’s because unlike the bucket of water analogy, you’ll get different results depending on how you set these variables. Cellphone cameras or cameras set on Auto will try to work out a compromise, some sort of average between these two. Modes like “Portrait” or “Sport” are simple presets, favoring one or the other variable.

Shutter speed

The shutter looks like a curtain and acts like the tap in our example.When you press the shutter release button, it is opened briefly, allowing light to expose the film or sensor for the specified amount of time and then it’s closed again.

Fast action

The shutter speed value is specified in seconds, for example “2s”, or “1/30s”. High shutter speeds (low exposure times) are needed to capture fast action. Capturing a bullet as it passes through a glass requires extremely short exposure times, like 1/10000s, which are usually obtainable only in controlled environments. Fast sports or dancing need exposures like 1/125s – 1/250s. At the other end, night scenes may require exposures of several seconds, even minutes, which lead to interesting effects.

Aperture

The aperture is iris-shaped, with metal blades that allow it to grow or shrink. The larger it is, the more light enters the camera. Just as the pupils get narrower in bright light and wider when it’s dark, a photographer will adjust the aperture size to gather the needed light.

The aperture size is measured using a rather unintuitive notation, such as f/2 or f/16. The larger the number, the smaller the aperture. An aperture of f/1.4 is very very wide, while f/32 is extremely narrow.

Changing the aperture has a very clear impact on the pictures, that is called Depth of Field. Depth of Field (or DOF for short) is an interesting topic on its own, that’s outside the purpose of this tutorial. Depending on the camera you have, altering the aperture may or may not be that apparent. Compact cameras have a lot more depth than (d)SLRs, which can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on situation.

Shallow DOF - Deep DOF

Above you can see pictures taken with different aperture values. Note how the image is blurred in front and behind of the subject when the aperture is wide open compared to the picture taken with a small aperture. A “shallow” DOF that has little detail in front and behind the subject is desirable especially for portraits, because a blurred background doesn’t distract from the main subject; on the other hand, landscapes benefit from a deep DOF that ensures that all close and distant features are sharp.

ISO Speed

Going back to our initial tap analogy, if you can alter the quantity of water that is collected in a bucket by altering the time you let the tap open or by increasing/reducing the flow, what happens if you change the density of the poured liquid? If you want a pound of liquid, then the denser it is, the quicker you’d get it because it’d require less volume – a liquid twice the density of water would occupy half the space, so all else being equal (time, flow) you’d get it twice as fast.

It’s the same with ISO speed. For film, ISO specifies the film sensitivity to light. A ISO200 film would be twice as sensitive than a ISO100 film, a ISO400 film is twice as sensitive than ISO200 and so on. The sensitivity ranges usually from ISO50 to ISO3200.

Without a tripod, this scene required high ISO

As with all things in life, by gaining sensitivity, you lose something else. More sensitive films (also called “fast” films) result in grainier pictures, with less vibrant colors (actually all ISO3200 films I know of are black-and-white only). With digital, things are relatively the same. The analog signal is amplified by software, resulting in more visible noise, especially in darker areas. The camera software tries to clean some of the noise with varying degrees of success. Noise levels are dependent on a number of factors, among which the sensor size and resolution are very important; digital SLRs with their bigger sensors behave much better than compact cameras.

Putting all together

To recap, a certain exposure can be achieved using a combination of three factors: ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

ISO, Shutter speed and aperture opening

ISO goes from ISO50 (clean, bright image) to 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 (grainy, noisy) – doubling the sensitivity.

Shutter speed goes from let’s say 1s (slower), 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/15s, 1/30s (faster) and so on, doubling the speed.

Aperture has a stranger progression (than can be explained mathematically), from f/32 (narrow), f/22, f/16, f/11, f/8, f/5.6, f/4, f/2.8, f/2 (wide), each time doubling the amount of light that hits the film or sensor.

Each step in doubling or halving the exposure is called a “stop”, so the difference between 1/30s and 1/60s is one stop. The difference between f/5.6 and f/8? One stop. ISO3200 to ISO800? Gotcha – two stops. So, an exposure taken at ISO400, 1/125s, f/5.6 would be equivalent to one taken at ISO100, 1/30s, f/5.6 or ISO200, 1/15s, f/16. Modern cameras can adjust these values in half- or third- increments, so you will see values like 1/20s or f/9 or even ISO80.

Conclusion

Exposure and all the technical terms used here are really the foundation of photography. You may think you don’t need it – after all the cameras are pretty smart nowadays, right? I beg to differ. You should know your tools, first understand their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses and then use your creativity to push them to the limit.

From RAW to perfection

With the new releases from Adobe, DXO Labs and Phase One, I’ve decided to put to the test some of the top RAW processors. These are:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3;
• DXO Pro Optics Suite 5;
• Capture One 4.

NOTE: This article has been updated to include the newest releases from 2009-2010 and also reviews Capture One. Read the newer article here.

I would have wanted to also test Apple Aperture 1.5, but it wasn’t possible at this time, so, I decided to postpone that test.

These programs represent the high-end segment of the RAW converters, since they are all geared (or at least marketed) as tools for professional photographers. This doesn’t mean that Bibble, Silkypix or ACDSee Pro are not capable, it’s just that they have a different market.

Of course, their features and intended uses do not overlap completely. Lightroom in particular is billed as a DAM (Digital Asset Management) software, whereas DXO has extended features in term of image geometry correction. Still, I’ve tried to judge all three of them fairly and bring the best out of each one, rather than trying to prove a point.

Interface

All three programs have similar interfaces. It would be definitely unfair to say that any of them copied the other. They all employ a dark, monochrome look that is essential in avoiding misjudging colors, and they all use collapsible side-panels.

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Unsurprisingly, Lightroom has the most complex interface. It has five tabs on the right, called Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web as well as panels on the left and right. The nice thing about its interface is that all of them can be hidden, including with an auto-hide option, allowing for a very efficient management of screen estate. Moreover, in the “lights dim” mode, the interface is faded, allowing the user to further concentrate on the photo itself.

DXO has a more workflow-oriented interface, with four main tabs called Select, Prepare, Process and Review. Its focus is on the Prepare tab, dedicated to adjusting the image. On the right side there are a number of panels stacked one on top of the other (similar to Lightroom) that can be also quickly accessed via the icons on the top right, although I still find them a little confusing due to their number and location (e.g. the White Balance is somewhere in the middle).

Capture One takes a different approach. It doesn’t want to be a DAM, but a very fast RAW processor. It has some quick tools at the top and some tabs on the left (Library, Quick, Exposure, Color, Details, Crop, Metadata, Adj. Clipboard, Output and Batch). The first tab lets the user select the files from the drive and then the next tabsset different processing parameters. With the Quick tab and the Copy/Paste settings tools at the top, adjustinting settings is very fast and efficient.

Features

Of all three, Lightroom is certainly the most ambitious. Its image management features allow for thousands of photos to be maintained by the Library and retrieved with ease. Still, the library management is rather slow compared to dedicated programs such as ACDSee. Even with that, Lightroom has plenty of other features to keep one happy. For example, the History tool allows the photographer for unlimited undo since all edits are non-destructive while snapshots and virtual copies lets one experiment with different looks. Web Slideshow and Print Management are nice perks too, although not essential.

DXO has different strengths. Its image management features are minimal, yet it shines in a different area: geometry correction. Having separate profiles for each camera/lens combo, DXO can automatically correct distortion, chromatic aberration, purple fringe and softness. Actually, DXO will automate many things: noise reduction, shadow/highlights and more. Features like keystoning and volume anamorphosis corrections are not only impressive, they are essential especially for architectural or wide-angle shots.

Capture One represents a huge improvement over version 3, but it has a different philosophy. It reminds me a little of RAWShooter – very small, very fast, allowing for quick corrections. It has less options, but they are arranged so that it’s extremely easy to correct and process hundreds of photos. It too has a Variants feature but lacks advanced color correction, a “healing brush” and other features present in its competitors.

Color Rendition

Camera sensors differ from one model to the other; most RAW processing software use their own camera color profiles, so it’s not surprising to get different colors out of the same picture by using different programs, even when leaving the white balance, contrast and saturation to “as shot”.

In my tests I’ve tried to get the best colors out of each picture, rather than relying on defaults. Below are some photos processed with each of the programs:

Nature

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

In all nature shots, I noticed Lightroom’s tendency to produce yellowish greens. Here, without a doubt, DXO produces the best image without even trying (it was on default settings), whereas I couldn’t get the same look in the other two even after many tweaks. Capture One fared the worst with unnatural colors (see the blueish shadows on the roof).

Illustrations

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

This is a more extreme case. In order to get a nice blue sky, I’ve used the Vibrancy control to enhance the colors. Capture One doesn’t have the vibrancy feature, so I had to rely on plain old saturation, with disastrous results. Lightroom and DXO produced virtually identical photos, with DXO having a slight edge.

Portraits

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Here DXO misses by automatically applying too much of its “lighting effects”, which is a Shadow/Highlight recovery control (it can be turned off but I left it on for this photo to illustrate how sometimes too much automatic control can degrade a picture). Capture One creates a more natural-looking image, but overall Lightroom renders the most pleasing photo. Also notable is that Capture One is the only one missing a healing brush, which was used on the girl’s face in the other two images. The absence of this tool is not really a big deal, but it would have been nice.

Sharpness, noise and dynamic range

Now lets look at the level of detail provided. Note: to avoid any compression artifacts, details are presented in PNG format.

Detail and artifacts

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Capture One doesn’t have any chromatic aberration control, which is responsible for the vertical blue line. I was very surprised and disappointed by DXO performance; even though it boasts a new processing engine designed specifically to avoid these kind of situations, it still produces some rather ugly color artifacts while at the same time looking not sharp enough. The only way I could remove them was by increasing the color noise reduction, which in turn would have negatively affected other areas of the picture. Lightroom provides a sharp, clean and detailed image, clearly the best.

Light and shadows

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Now here DXO gets to show its power. Its lighting control is more advanced than the Fill Light present in Lightroom and Capture One, while the perspective correction (keystoning) capabilities allow for a superior photo. The shot was made at ISO800, 1/10s handheld, f5.6. Looking at the details, Lightroom and Capture One manage to create very clean images, although Capture One leaves some specks. The DXO version features more noise (to be expected in the shadow considering the extra processing) but also more detail. Annoyingly, DXO loses detail in the stained glass, which is peculiar since the brighter area of the photo shouldn’t have been affected.

Sharpness

Going back to the portrait above, lets see a 100% crop:

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

I have “played” considerably in each program, trying to achieve the best possible results, but Lightroom manages the best balance between sharpness, cleanliness and noise.

Speed

Processing speed is dependent on many factors, including the processor, available memory, image size and amount of processing applied to it, making perfectly objective tests rather difficult. The numbers presented here are meant just for comparison.

Still, the fastest program is, without a doubt, Capture One, which is also impressive because it seems to be written entirely in C# (DXO is also based on .NET). On my laptop, the processing speed on capture One was 10 seconds/picture. In the second place, I had Lightroom, with 32 seconds per picture. I’ve tried to make things fair for DXO by removing all advanced processing such as lighting effect, geometry correction, even chromatic aberration and vignetting. Still, DXO came in last, with an atrocious 94 seconds spent for each picture, or almost 2 minutes per picture will all options activated.

Conclusion

In terms of output quality, the differences aren’t that huge and in some cases are more related to personal preference; all three tools are very capable of high quality output.

Of the three, Adobe Lightroom is the most consistent. It has a nice set of tools and features, solid results and few weaknesses. It’s integrated features allow the photographer to do all their work, from start to finish, in one program, in many cases with no need for Photoshop or other tools.

DXO is a mixed bag. It produces great colors, especially for nature and its geometry correction tools are a real life saver. On the other hand, it’s very slow, rather very unstable and just not great in terms of processing details. [Edit: I've thought initially that there must be something wrong with my computer but then I've found out on forums that many people complain about DXO 5 stability issues; for me, it crashes 80% of the time, when doing simple things like zooming in or applying sharpness.]

Capture One seems like a very nice “quick” tool. Even though it’s a beta, it’s fast in all areas (UI, workflow and processing), polished and stable. The pricing is also very attractive – just $130 compared to about $300 for the competition.