RAW processing is always balance between speed and quality. Raw processing software (Lightroom, etc):
- interpolates CFA (bayer) data in a complex way
- applies sharpening (unsharp mask)
Both steps requires lot of CPU power (e.g. 1:1 preview generation for 36Mpix file is about 4sec on my Intel i7-4770K/32Gb/SSD desktop).
In FRV we use fastest possible CFA (bayer) data interpolation, so IQ is not as good as in 'full-scale' raw processors, but we do it about 20x faster (36Mpix image from Sony A7R takes less than 0.2sec to process and display).
In future releases we definitely will add screen sharpening and, possibly, 'high quality' interpolation.
If your camera embeds full-size JPEG preview in your RAWs (or you shot RAW+JPEG) you may use this JPEG representation to inspect image fine details.
And, yes, you're right: FRV was created as 'first pass' tool, to be the very first step of workflow (FRV 1.0 even do not have Filmstrip and Folders panels, because these panels are not needed for one-by-one inspection). Now we're migrating to 'general puprose' RAW viewer, but it will take some time to satisfy all requests from our users.
RAW processing is always
RAW processing is always balance between speed and quality. Raw processing software (Lightroom, etc):
- interpolates CFA (bayer) data in a complex way
- applies sharpening (unsharp mask)
Both steps requires lot of CPU power (e.g. 1:1 preview generation for 36Mpix file is about 4sec on my Intel i7-4770K/32Gb/SSD desktop).
In FRV we use fastest possible CFA (bayer) data interpolation, so IQ is not as good as in 'full-scale' raw processors, but we do it about 20x faster (36Mpix image from Sony A7R takes less than 0.2sec to process and display).
In future releases we definitely will add screen sharpening and, possibly, 'high quality' interpolation.
If your camera embeds full-size JPEG preview in your RAWs (or you shot RAW+JPEG) you may use this JPEG representation to inspect image fine details.
And, yes, you're right: FRV was created as 'first pass' tool, to be the very first step of workflow (FRV 1.0 even do not have Filmstrip and Folders panels, because these panels are not needed for one-by-one inspection). Now we're migrating to 'general puprose' RAW viewer, but it will take some time to satisfy all requests from our users.
--
Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team