FastRawViewer Developers' Blog

FastRawViewer 1.4.7: Technology Preview

Submitted by LibRaw on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 17:16
FastRawViewer. Technology Preview

When we released FastRawViewer 1.0 (3.5 years ago), there was still a relatively large amount of very old (chipset) graphic processors, as well as relatively slow hard drives in use, so our idea was to ensure good user experience on slow/weaker hardware with the RAW sizes that were prevalent then (12-16Mp). Nowadays, everything's a bit more grown up. At the same time, the number of megapixels has gone up as well and 40-50 megapixels has become the norm.

So, now, responding to the call of time, we've improved things significantly while also maintaining compatibility with the older hardware.

In this new version of FastRawViewer, we've added a new, much faster, mode for processing RAW data (white balance, exposure/lightness, contrast, and demosaicking for standard Bayer pattern) on graphic processors, or GPUs.

FastRawViewer 1.4.6 Release

Submitted by LibRaw on Sun, 04/01/2018 - 11:08

FastRawViewer 1.4.6

New Cameras Support

  • Fujifilm X-A5, X-A20, X-H1
  • Olympus E-PL9
  • Panasonic GX9, GF10/90, DC-ZS200/TZ200, GH5s, G9 in high-res mode.
  • Preliminary support:
  • Canon 2000D, 4000D
  • Sony A7 III

New Features and Improvements

New Old Approach to Dynamic Range

Submitted by LibRaw on Sun, 03/25/2018 - 16:32

In today's world, "dynamic range" (DR) has become, in the minds of (many) photographers one of the main characteristics of a digital camera.

Unfortunately, the public data on DR is limited to "DD - ISO sensitivity" graphs and tables. With this, the nature of noise (for example, random noise, banding) isn't accounted for, however the noise character is important for visual quality.

In reality, any practicing photographer knows that the degradation of the image in the shadows (or because of low exposure) happens gradually. With the lowering of exposure, small details disappear, the contrast between bigger details diminishes, color fidelity becomes worse. Depending on the quality demanded of the image (which will depend on presentation size, viewing distance, other viewing conditions such as screen resolution, etc.,), the practical dynamic range for the specific camera will be different, even for the same ISO setting.

Michal Bednarek (Niserin)

SonyPixelShift2DNG, Beta 0.9

Submitted by LibRaw on Tue, 03/13/2018 - 12:11

New in Beta 0.9

  • Better metadata handling
  • Better font-size autoselection on 1st run
  • 0.9.1: Added DNG ActiveArea tag to set mandatory cropping area
  • 0.9.2: Better handling of file/folder names set in non-default system locale/language

Monochrome2DNG, Beta 0.8: File Converter for «Monochrome-Converted» Cameras

Submitted by LibRaw on Thu, 03/01/2018 - 14:31

Almost all digital cameras that are released today are color cameras. Nevertheless, there is demand for BW (Black and White) cameras because of reduced artifacts and higher resolution of resulting images. And many photographers want BW cameras with the same lens mount as their main (color) camera, so that they can use the lenses they already own.

Converting a color camera to BW is done by removing the CFA (Color Filter array). However, during such conversion, the firmware of the camera doesn’t change, and the camera doesn’t know that it’s become monochrome, which leads to several problems, which Monochrome2DNG - a file converter for «monochrome-converted» cameras - is going to address.

Monochrome2DNG Beta 0.8

DPRSplit Beta 0.8: File Splitter for Canon 5D Mark IV / Dual Pixel Raw files

Submitted by LibRaw on Fri, 02/09/2018 - 12:58

Canon 5D Mark IV's sensor has a somewhat unusual pixel arrangement: each pixel is composed of two subpixels. If Dual Pixel RAW mode is enabled in the camera, the resulting CR2 file contains two images, or two frames: one composite, made from reading both subpixels, summed; and the other is made out of one set of subpixels.

In essence, in Dual Pixel Raw mode, the camera records into one file some equivalent of two shots, bracketed by (approximately) 1 EV.

The DPRSplit application is intended to extract this additional frame out of the CR2 taken in Dual Pixel RAW mode, and save it as a DNG. Resulting DNG files can then be opened and processed in (practically) any raw converter featuring DNG support.

DPRSplit Beta 0.8.2

Lightroom, XMP, Windows, and Removable Storage

Submitted by LibRaw on Sat, 02/03/2018 - 16:01

As Adobe Lightroom Windows users know, this application has been oppressive for users of removable media (disk drives, flash cards), imposing some limitations that puts image culling applications that produce XMP files (including FastRawViewer) in a bit of a bind. It's impossible to cull/rate/label files right on a flash card - they first need to be copied onto a local disk, XMPed, and then imported into Lightroom from there.

Aside from problems with flash cards, the same happens with removable USB disk drives. If Lightroom detects the disk as being removable, it wil neither read nor write XMP files from or to that location.

Since we're a bit overwhelmed with the questions regarding this problem, and the answer "that's just Lightroom" is both overly repetitive and not very satisfactory, we suggest the following lifehack.

SonyPixelShift2DNG (Beta 0.8): Convert Sony A7R-III Pixel Shift Mode Shots to DNG

Submitted by LibRaw on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 14:09

In order to streamline the workflow with the raw shots taken in the new Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode offered by the new Sony A7R-III camera, and provide a way to use popular RAW converters (Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, Capture One, and some others) for processing these shots, we’ve developed the SonyPixelShift2DNG application, which converts Sony A7R-III shots taken in Pixel Shift mode to DNG.

The resulting DNG files can later be processed in familiar applications like Adobe Lightroom / Camera Raw, CaptureOne, Iridient Developer, Luminar, and others.

SonyPixelShift2DNG Beta 0.8

One Way to Get Spot-On Exposure for Your Shots

Submitted by Iliah on Thu, 12/28/2017 - 20:05

Practically every day, one can see threads on photographic forums where members discuss the various different modes of automatic exposure, trying to find the right one. As a rule, these discussions result in the same question – what compensation to automatic metering ought one set to get consistently good exposure? It turns out that no autoexposure mode universally guarantees good out-of-box results.

We are going to demonstrate that one of the ways of getting good exposure is metering while using the in-camera spotmeter on the lightest part of the scene that needs to maintain full detail (white clouds, snow, etc.) and applying the appropriate compensation to the exposure recommended by the spotmeter.

The shot taken with spotmeter exposure and +3 EV in-camera correction, opened and adjusted in FastRawViewer

FastRawViewer 1.4.5 Release

Submitted by lexa on Fri, 12/08/2017 - 02:49
FastRawViewer 1.4.5

Bugs fixed

  • Thumbnails would not refresh on thumbnail size change.
  • (Windows only) Show file in Explorer and Menu - Help - Auxillary settings scripts was broken in FastRawViewer 1.4.4.
  • Correct handling of striped bitmap thumbnails.
  • Resent copy/move destination lists in menus were damaged after switching 'Single keys act for multiple files' setting.

New features / settings

  • New setting: Preferences - Grid/Filmstrip - Ignore folder paths on selection load (default is off)
  • With this option checked, Menu - Select - Load/Append selection from file will ignore the folder part of the file paths stored in the file that is loaded, so selection load/append will become folder-independent.
  • Preferences - File handling - Reset filtering on selection load
  • With this option on, folder file filtering is turned off while loading/appending file selection. Without that, only visible (not filtered out) files to be selected based on loaded file.
  • Adobe Camera Raw 10.1 compatibility: camera data added.

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