SILKYPIX 3 for jpegs..

Hi all,

for those of you that have seen us chatting about SILKYPIX 3 for RAW files, I've just been playing with it on jpegs, and white balance adjustments, exposure etc, work well with it. I assume it works completely differently, as you get the metadata for all that in the RAW file, so I assume it alters the jpegs using different means.. Matt???????

You get a free trial, and a free version (although, I don't know what differences in functionality there are compared to the full version) so you can check it out..

http://www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/download/

Hope that helps..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Liam
I have played with both main difference being that the full version allows for batch conversion and batch sharpening.

Couldn't see any major changes otherwise.

I think it's about time some of the others caught up. It wasn't so long ago that Matt was singing the praises of Capture one, and I bought it. Now it seems, SilkyPix is 'flavour of the month'. I wonder what it'll be next, Adobe Lightroom perhaps.

Personally, I'm happy to wait for the update to Capture One and use RAW DNG in the meantime with Adobe Camera RAW.

Are we really expected to keep switching RAW converters avery time a new one appears? SilkyPix has an obvious advantage at getting a RAW converter software product to market before the competition due to their contribution to the bundled Pentax software.

I can appreciate that A N Other software package may contain improvements over other packages but hey, we show undying loyalty to the Pentax brand, why not software suppliers?

I agree with you Peter. I have no intention of forcing a switch every month. Yes, I've tried pretty well all of them, and bought the main players (RSP - Lightroom will be a free upgrade, Photoshop CS2, C1, SPDS3).

However, as you know, I've been using C1 for a looong time. I still have my licenses installed, and am still looking forward to C1v4 being released (whenever). I had been using Magne Neilsen's excellent colour profiles with C1 - I'd been using the Nikon D100 profile (which uses the same CCD, but has slightly different colour response due to the difference in electronics and processing).

The image quality is excellent out of C1.... and in fact I was very, very nearly going to buy the Pro version (at £300) because it was (a) faster, (b) had more features than the LE version. Then I gave Silkypix a serious look as version 3 came out (I didn't take to v2).

SP-DS3 gave me the features I was missing in C1Pro (rotate and upsizing being two main ones). In addition it gave me better control over colour rendition, and at least the same image quality (and better in most cases, IMO). And it was much, much cheaper than C1Pro

Of course, software development being what it is, there will always be progress in both workflow and quality (which is one good reasons to keep the RAW files!).

If you're happy with C1 - fine
If you've not got C1, I'd say go with SP-DS3.

Getting back on thread... JPG processing is pretty excellent and intuitive in SPDS3 and may well open up a new range of possibilities for others. Not 100% sure about how it deals with JPGs - AFAIK it provides an internal "bridge" to internally deal with JPGs as if they were RAW. The EXIF includes details about the WB setting, so it can use that information in providing WB correction (but do note that you can't do as extreme adjustments because you don't have equal information in all channels).

Matt

A while ago, allmost a year ago actually I posted a thread that I was stuck with a large batch of JPEG's which were bad because I forgot to set the white balance correctly (that mistake converted me to RAW in a split second...)

Matt provided some great help on these pictures and I had them 'corrected' after a few days.
But once I got the hang of JPEG processing with SP I achieved the same, or better results in 2 hours...
But still I am sticking with RAW capture...