FastRawViewer Developers' Blog

Lightroom, XMP, Windows, and Removable Storage

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.

Read more about Lightroom, XMP, Windows, and Removable Storage

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

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.

One Way to Get Spot-On Exposure for Your Shots

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

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.

Read more about FastRawViewer 1.4.5 Release

Can you Evaluate Exposure Using the In-camera Histogram?

They say that "a histogram is a graphical representation of the pixels exposed in your image" or "when judging exposure, the primary areas of the histogram to be concerned with are the right and left edges".

We are going to demonstrate the following:

In-camera histograms don't really allow one to analyze the shadows and highlights zones of an image.
An in-camera histogram changes significantly with changes in the camera settings such as contrast, picture style, brightness, etc.

So, no. By no means can the in-camera histogram be used by a RAW shooter to evaluate exposure.

Do Not Let White Balance Throw You Off-Balance

White balance: does it or does it not affect RAW image data at all? Certainly it affects JPEG, but how and why?

We are going to demonstrate that setting the white balance in a camera has no effect on "normal" RAW data.

To do so, we took four shots under the same, fairly constant, light, varying only the white balance (WB) settings in the camera (and the number of roasted coffee beans on the skillet handle). You will see the "as shot" color differs dramatically between the shots, yet the RAW histograms of these shots are, for all practical purposes, will stay the same.

You can repeat this simple experiment yourself, and also check that changing the white balance setting does not affect the in-camera exposure metering readings.

White balance as per channel response ("exposure") correction

Read more about Do Not Let White Balance Throw You Off-Balance

FastRawViewer 1.4.4 Release

Camera support

Canon EOS M100, G1 X Mark III
Fujifilm X-E3
Leica CL
Nikon D850
Olympus E-M10 mk III
Panasonic G9
PhaseOne IQ3 100Mp Trichromatic
Sony RX10-IV, RX0, A7R III

New features / settings

Combining the 'Single File' and 'Batch' keys
New XMP Labels options added
New Zoom options added
Batch IPTC/XMP Title/Description editing
Skipping several files using a single keystroke
Menu - File rearranged and Reference dialog reworked

Read more about FastRawViewer 1.4.4 Release

How to Trash a Good Shot in One Step...

Not sure how? It really is very simple - just rely on the JPEG histogram. The one on the back of your camera will do, or one derived from a JPEG by some viewer, or (sometimes) even by a RAW converter.

Many strongly colored objects - yellow, red, blue, pink, orange, purple, etc. are suffering from culling based on JPEG histograms.

FastRawViewer is the only culling tool that displays the true RAW histogram, which allows you to determine if the shot was exposed correctly.

So, if you don't want to trade your (technically) best shots for worse ones, start using RAW histograms for culling!