Very pleased to have found you guys, I'm a Fuji user in Lancashire (just got an XPro 2, 4th Fuji I have owned, starting with X100). Anyway, decent sites, that aren't total sell outs, are hard to find. Basically you've got The Angry Photographer, hardly surprisingly his reviews are not sponsored, but you have to sit through his endless bragging, and repetition, to get two good ideas, or an opinion on new stuff. All the the others, are better presenters, and some are very open about who sponsors them. Like Taco, or Ted Viera. I used to watch them, before they became "Fuji" photographers, and I was a Canon guy. Now. I'm a Fuji guy, and so are they. Very reassuring to hear about how fantastic my new camera is, but that's why I bought it! Anyway, thanks, and I hope your succesful. I'm pretty crap in Lr, so I really enjoyed Ben's comparison with ON1, I learnt some stuff I didn't know about Lr. I have a copy of Lr 5.4. Which won't update (I think it must be dodgy, got it from a friend), so that can't cope with the new sensor's RAF files. So, I've just got the Iridient Developer Beta, for PC, and I bought Affinity, because it was £20. Haven't really looked at Affinity properly, it comes with video tutorials etc, which I need to watch, Also, I've only used Iridient, to convert to DNG, and then into Lightroom. Since then my viewfinder rubber eyepiece went missing, this plus lost PC sync, means the WR is compromised. So, my camera is going back to Fuji UK. (this is quite a common problem, I believe) Fuji America, are just sending people new eyepieces, but UK guy explained that they were not fitting it properly, resulting in further returns, so they will replace the whole viewfinder. So, that's good, but I've no new RAF files to work on, at the moment. Anyway, I'm going to watch this vid now, so thanks, and good luck :-)
+john williams glad to hear you are loving your Fuji, although with some teething problems to begin with. Hope everything works out well with the repair
Comparisons should be based on extreme situations, and evaluation based on measuring tools within he program. Sharpness is , by far , not the most important thing in developing , but the quality of the colours and pixels deformations in whites/shadows changes!!
Tbh if you have to look to see the difference @ 3:1 it really means you will never the difference when printing at all! I've compared 50inch (A0 basically) prints from both with very expensive Canson Baryta museum grade paper and you just can't see it (i did a blind test with the printers and they couldn't see it either) but we agreed it was slightly sharper on screen at @1:1. Lightroom is soft by nature with all brands of camera and it's well documented not just fujifilm, largely alot of the problems have been addressed especially the worming issue at normal sharpening levels with the newer cameras. Alot of the same problems are still there within ID (just too a lesser extent) and ID even introduces other problems in my experience . Stick a canon/nikon file in ID and you'll see the same story but again the differences are tiny I would say the biggest difference is colour reproduction it much more faithfull in ID But my biggest problem is workflow you have to use for ID is just way to big of a compromise to use on daily basis, not to mention the speed! ID is very slow to render files. Your also making it harder to grade within Lightroom when working tiff files. £84 for it ? no just not worth it! Bryan @ ID seem to have recognised this and is developing ID X transformer and its looking much MORE promising basically a raw DNG converter allowing you to use all the profiles that are available within lightroom (and VSCO presets for those that like that) without gimping yourself to tiff files. But at the moment only on PC but is mean't to be making its way to MAC with the year. Its a work flow i wold be much happier with But why oh why fuji just couldn't do this god know's if they really wanted too the roll this over night with all the boffins they have under the roof. If you want sharp results but want to be able to grade like lightroom (and in some case better) get capture one pro 10 Just make sure you pull the luminosity noise slider down all the way! it's on by default and its way to much! the same goes for the detail slider. you only need that at 30 in most cases. The noise paptern is much better than ID and lightroom much finer! Just my 2 cents from somebody that been around the block with this and just ended up using LR in the end. Just carry on the way you are! LR basically gives you the same quality as the jpegs and i'm very happy with that.
+gaza4543 couldn't agree more with most of what you said. We were impressed with the sharpness in ID, and tried to say it is a workflow mess for what wouldn't been seen by the naked eye unless your printing got a billboard. We like LR, it's a workflow and speed thing to save plenty of time for us. The new tool ID is developing surely sounds better, we shall await the Mac version of that 👍🏻
The question of whether or not iridescent software is using AI technology to enhance the photos vs the Fuji original photo is fairly important it may appear sharper here but there's going to be times where that technology steps over the bounds and how do you undo it because you're using the program? To be better than the source file means that there is competition or software in the background that's making the estimations about how things should be perceived.
I am using their beta Iridient X-Transformer which converts the RAW files into .dng so that you can then import into LR and although it's in the second stage of beta it looks promising with sharpness and color. I think that's going to be my workflow - Iridient X-Transformer to LR and for effects use On1 10.
I was looking at this the other day... Looks like X-Transformer is just a converter that you need to predefine settings without preview of the effect. How does this work for you? For me, I would like to see the result that the effect has on the image.
Hello!!! thanks for the video, very interesting your video, but I wanted to know in conclusion which program prefer between these two? SilkyPix or Iridient Developer
We found Iridient to produce sharper images, once we had continued to play further with it. We found SilkyPix to basically do what Lightroom could do with its own sharpening. We have chosen not to use either with our workflow of wedding images; we think these type of sharpen tools sit better with commercial images, or large print, where you can spend a lot of time on images that will be ultimately seen on a larger scale. Just our thoughts I must add. :)
So, you wouldn't bother to do any basic editing such as highlights, shadows etc before making said TIFF file? That TIFF is baked and harder to recover exposure issues with vs the RAW file. Or were you guys just looking at the demosaicing for the heck of it?
lol, that seems snarky.. But now I can't tell. I mean, I'm just a bit confused as to why you guys didn't also do a bit more with the tools inside of Iridient, instead of just using ID as a demosaicing tool. After all, once the TIFF is produced, all flexibility is gone.
+Doug B. We just wanted to compare the un-edited files to Lightroom. I appreciate there is a lot more that can be done in ID. We have only just downloaded the demo version and will no doubt test it further. Edited files in ID are beautiful but the lack of masking tools, spot removal etc puts me off?
Yep. Totally get that. It also put me off about ID as well. Also, the workflow going between ID and LR was really janky when I tried it. Wasn't a fan of that at all. I'm using Capture One Pro 10 now, and so don't miss LR except for things like the circular gradient tool, which is useful on the odd occasion. I wish that Adobe or the guys at Capture One would hire the guy who makes Iridient!
A solution for sharper RAF out of LR without losing the LR tools is to edit in LR then sharpen with a decent plug in. NIK sharpener plug in is very good and is free last time I checked. See my edit videos to see that in action.
Sorry guys but your comparison is far from ideal. Pushing SHARPNESS to the max without adjusting Radius, Detail or Masking in each RAW processor to match settings is hardly scientific. Also why work with such a poor image that lacks contrast and the detail is so TINY? I have worked with Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, Iridient and SilkyPix, and do agree that Iridient IS an excellent RAW processor although it is lacking in other areas (i.e., RAW masking controls in Bridge and Lightroom, and lacks extensive Chromatic Aberration controls). But you hardly make a persuasive argument for why it is best for Fuji RAF files. And you guys definitely need a much better microphone. Sound quality is like you are at the bottom of a barrel. Sorry if I offended you. Good luck with your videos.
Richard Rivera hey, certainly not offended, constructive criticism is always welcome. We have since changed our microphones and haven't looked further at the software. It was more a crude example of what it was and can do. But feedback received and taken on board 👍🏻
The "truth" is that sharpening algorithm on LR is just bad. It is bad for both, bayer sensors and x-trans sensors, but on bayer ones it just does not rise up the wormy pattern visible, it just rises the noise after demosaicing visible, which is actually the same thing, but has different and less eye catching shape due to different sensor type. I have done excessive testing on this with following cameras RAWs: XPro-1, X-T2, GFX, D750, D850. Interestingly, LR seems to have more presharpening for Fujis, which results that all three of those can barely handle adding the sharpening slider on default settings, where as with Nikon's one can push it 10-20 points further before problems. Using Nik collection's Sharpener Pro 3 (recommended) will always provide far better results for each of those cameras, or doing it by hand on PS. I can get quite close on LR by playing around with sharpening settings, clarity, and contrast - but obvious downside is that playing with clarity and contrast will affect your colors etc. Previously both LR and PS export sharpening added annoying "pencil like sketch" to high resolution files (+16mpix) that were exported on significantly lower resolution, but recently they have removed that - thank god. Looks to me that Iridient just adds better sharpening when exporting the TIFF, which is wise to do, as some of the sensor information is lost in the export. Colors etc. are mostly just due to the camera profiles - adobe standard targets to quite mute starting point. But as I said, you can most likely get the same result as with Irident on LR using the Nik collection Sharpener Pro 3 (which is still free I guess, nowadays from Dxomark).
Very pleased to have found you guys, I'm a Fuji user in Lancashire (just got an XPro 2, 4th Fuji I have owned, starting with X100).
Anyway, decent sites, that aren't total sell outs, are hard to find. Basically you've got The Angry Photographer, hardly surprisingly his reviews are not sponsored, but you have to sit through his endless bragging, and repetition, to get two good ideas, or an opinion on new stuff. All the the others, are better presenters, and some are very open about who sponsors them.
Like Taco, or Ted Viera. I used to watch them, before they became "Fuji" photographers, and I was a Canon guy. Now. I'm a Fuji guy, and so are they. Very reassuring to hear about how fantastic my new camera is, but that's why I bought it!
Anyway, thanks, and I hope your succesful. I'm pretty crap in Lr, so I really enjoyed Ben's comparison with ON1, I learnt some stuff I didn't know about Lr. I have a copy of Lr 5.4. Which won't update (I think it must be dodgy, got it from a friend), so that can't cope with the new sensor's RAF files.
So, I've just got the Iridient Developer Beta, for PC, and I bought Affinity, because it was £20. Haven't really looked at Affinity properly, it comes with video tutorials etc, which I need to watch, Also, I've only used Iridient, to convert to DNG, and then into Lightroom.
Since then my viewfinder rubber eyepiece went missing, this plus lost PC sync, means the WR is compromised. So, my camera is going back to Fuji UK. (this is quite a common problem, I believe)
Fuji America, are just sending people new eyepieces, but UK guy explained that they were not fitting it properly, resulting in further returns, so they will replace the whole viewfinder.
So, that's good, but I've no new RAF files to work on, at the moment.
Anyway, I'm going to watch this vid now, so thanks, and good luck :-)
+john williams glad to hear you are loving your Fuji, although with some teething problems to begin with. Hope everything works out well with the repair
Comparisons should be based on extreme situations, and evaluation based on measuring tools within he program.
Sharpness is , by far , not the most important thing in developing , but the quality of the colours and pixels deformations in whites/shadows changes!!
Tbh if you have to look to see the difference @ 3:1 it really means you will never the difference when printing at all! I've compared 50inch (A0 basically) prints from both with very expensive Canson Baryta museum grade paper and you just can't see it (i did a blind test with the printers and they couldn't see it either) but we agreed it was slightly sharper on screen at @1:1. Lightroom is soft by nature with all brands of camera and it's well documented not just fujifilm, largely alot of the problems have been addressed especially the worming issue at normal sharpening levels with the newer cameras. Alot of the same problems are still there within ID (just too a lesser extent) and ID even introduces other problems in my experience .
Stick a canon/nikon file in ID and you'll see the same story but again the differences are tiny
I would say the biggest difference is colour reproduction it much more faithfull in ID
But my biggest problem is workflow you have to use for ID is just way to big of a compromise to use on daily basis, not to mention the speed! ID is very slow to render files. Your also making it harder to grade within Lightroom when working tiff files. £84 for it ? no just not worth it!
Bryan @ ID seem to have recognised this and is developing ID X transformer and its looking much MORE promising basically a raw DNG converter allowing you to use all the profiles that are available within lightroom (and VSCO presets for those that like that) without gimping yourself to tiff files. But at the moment only on PC but is mean't to be making its way to MAC with the year.
Its a work flow i wold be much happier with But why oh why fuji just couldn't do this god know's if they really wanted too the roll this over night with all the boffins they have under the roof.
If you want sharp results but want to be able to grade like lightroom (and in some case better) get capture one pro 10 Just make sure you pull the luminosity noise slider down all the way! it's on by default and its way to much! the same goes for the detail slider. you only need that at 30 in most cases. The noise paptern is much better than ID and lightroom much finer!
Just my 2 cents from somebody that been around the block with this and just ended up using LR in the end. Just carry on the way you are! LR basically gives you the same quality as the jpegs and i'm very happy with that.
+gaza4543 couldn't agree more with most of what you said. We were impressed with the sharpness in ID, and tried to say it is a workflow mess for what wouldn't been seen by the naked eye unless your printing got a billboard. We like LR, it's a workflow and speed thing to save plenty of time for us. The new tool ID is developing surely sounds better, we shall await the Mac version of that 👍🏻
Yup. Enjoyed that. Need to watch it again, because, It's 3am and I'm half, asleep. cheers
The question of whether or not iridescent software is using AI technology to enhance the photos vs the Fuji original photo is fairly important it may appear sharper here but there's going to be times where that technology steps over the bounds and how do you undo it because you're using the program?
To be better than the source file means that there is competition or software in the background that's making the estimations about how things should be perceived.
I am using their beta Iridient X-Transformer which converts the RAW files into .dng so that you can then import into LR and although it's in the second stage of beta it looks promising with sharpness and color. I think that's going to be my workflow - Iridient X-Transformer to LR and for effects use On1 10.
+Randy Pollock we looked at this, but couldn't find a Mac download, it appeared the developer was the only option for Macs?
The Photography Team Currently it is only available for Windows
+Randy Pollock That's a shame
I was looking at this the other day... Looks like X-Transformer is just a converter that you need to predefine settings without preview of the effect. How does this work for you? For me, I would like to see the result that the effect has on the image.
George Pantazis it's working well for me, the settings I set are ones that I use as a general starting point and I like how they handle the sharping.
I thought silky pix was Panasonic??? It's been with me since I got it on disk when I bought my lz1 back in 2009...
Hello!!! thanks for the video, very interesting your video, but I wanted to know in conclusion which program prefer between these two?
SilkyPix or Iridient Developer
We found Iridient to produce sharper images, once we had continued to play further with it. We found SilkyPix to basically do what Lightroom could do with its own sharpening. We have chosen not to use either with our workflow of wedding images; we think these type of sharpen tools sit better with commercial images, or large print, where you can spend a lot of time on images that will be ultimately seen on a larger scale. Just our thoughts I must add. :)
Thanks for your video !!!
So, you wouldn't bother to do any basic editing such as highlights, shadows etc before making said TIFF file? That TIFF is baked and harder to recover exposure issues with vs the RAW file. Or were you guys just looking at the demosaicing for the heck of it?
+Doug B. Yup just for the heck of it 😉
lol, that seems snarky.. But now I can't tell. I mean, I'm just a bit confused as to why you guys didn't also do a bit more with the tools inside of Iridient, instead of just using ID as a demosaicing tool. After all, once the TIFF is produced, all flexibility is gone.
+Doug B. We just wanted to compare the un-edited files to Lightroom. I appreciate there is a lot more that can be done in ID. We have only just downloaded the demo version and will no doubt test it further. Edited files in ID are beautiful but the lack of masking tools, spot removal etc puts me off?
Yep. Totally get that. It also put me off about ID as well. Also, the workflow going between ID and LR was really janky when I tried it. Wasn't a fan of that at all.
I'm using Capture One Pro 10 now, and so don't miss LR except for things like the circular gradient tool, which is useful on the odd occasion. I wish that Adobe or the guys at Capture One would hire the guy who makes Iridient!
Love your video's!
A solution for sharper RAF out of LR without losing the LR tools is to edit in LR then sharpen with a decent plug in. NIK sharpener plug in is very good and is free last time I checked. See my edit videos to see that in action.
Martin Gillman that may be the case but editing in LR still results in the worms.
Gordon, you are more than welcome to view any of my images, up close, and you will see no worms sir.
No worms here ... www.thevividland.com
All shot on Fuji
Martin, just checked out your page and all I can say is ..WOW. Those images are fabulous.
Devolution hey many thanks !
Thanks folks. Why not the "Developer" and not "X-transformer"?
I wanted to see more of the silky pix :(
why wouldn't you just use sharpening in LR to get the same result?
If you watched the video.. LR Sharpening is not that great..
Sorry guys but your comparison is far from ideal. Pushing SHARPNESS to the max without adjusting Radius, Detail or Masking in each RAW processor to match settings is hardly scientific. Also why work with such a poor image that lacks contrast and the detail is so TINY? I have worked with Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, Iridient and SilkyPix, and do agree that Iridient IS an excellent RAW processor although it is lacking in other areas (i.e., RAW masking controls in Bridge and Lightroom, and lacks extensive Chromatic Aberration controls). But you hardly make a persuasive argument for why it is best for Fuji RAF files. And you guys definitely need a much better microphone. Sound quality is like you are at the bottom of a barrel. Sorry if I offended you. Good luck with your videos.
Richard Rivera hey, certainly not offended, constructive criticism is always welcome. We have since changed our microphones and haven't looked further at the software. It was more a crude example of what it was and can do. But feedback received and taken on board 👍🏻
The "truth" is that sharpening algorithm on LR is just bad. It is bad for both, bayer sensors and x-trans sensors, but on bayer ones it just does not rise up the wormy pattern visible, it just rises the noise after demosaicing visible, which is actually the same thing, but has different and less eye catching shape due to different sensor type. I have done excessive testing on this with following cameras RAWs: XPro-1, X-T2, GFX, D750, D850. Interestingly, LR seems to have more presharpening for Fujis, which results that all three of those can barely handle adding the sharpening slider on default settings, where as with Nikon's one can push it 10-20 points further before problems.
Using Nik collection's Sharpener Pro 3 (recommended) will always provide far better results for each of those cameras, or doing it by hand on PS. I can get quite close on LR by playing around with sharpening settings, clarity, and contrast - but obvious downside is that playing with clarity and contrast will affect your colors etc. Previously both LR and PS export sharpening added annoying "pencil like sketch" to high resolution files (+16mpix) that were exported on significantly lower resolution, but recently they have removed that - thank god.
Looks to me that Iridient just adds better sharpening when exporting the TIFF, which is wise to do, as some of the sensor information is lost in the export. Colors etc. are mostly just due to the camera profiles - adobe standard targets to quite mute starting point. But as I said, you can most likely get the same result as with Irident on LR using the Nik collection Sharpener Pro 3 (which is still free I guess, nowadays from Dxomark).
Pardon, "Developer" and not "X-Transformer"?
Maybe it's just the video, but the Iridient is very oversharpened for me...
+Trex Trax It must be the video
barely any difference at all, not convinced of anything via this video
Kinda picking flyshit out of pepper.
+Johno F thanks for watching 😁😁 every little bit of Adsense helps 👍🏼
comparing raw with processed tiff... pfff