Moving from ACR to RPP

[Peter Gallagher]

RPP seems to be an outstanding raw processor... I've decided to use it to (mostly) replace Adobe Camera Raw. But I'm concerned about its longevity.

Here's my recent 'journey' to RPP. I wrote it for myself, but if you're here because you're curious about RPP, it may interest you, too.

Like a lot of people (apparently) I first looked at RPP a year ago when I was trying to avoid the Adobe subscription model but I didn't really understand the choices RPP offered or what it was doing behind the scenes. I liked the keyboard controls, but still... the interface seemed unduly bare, maybe amateurish, and the delay enforced by applying floating-point calculated adjustments was a bit of a pain.

So I subscribed to the Adobe suite and followed the (excellent) advice of Ming Thein (http://mingtheinstore.outthink.us/home/25-a2-photoshop-workflow-2.html) on using a Bridge-ACR-Photoshop processing workflow that produced impressive but naturalistic, sharp results emphasizing the subject/idea of the shot without using elaborate filters and in about 90 seconds per image once you know the ropes. Most important for balancing time/effort and results, is that Ming does 70% of his processing in ACR and uses Photoshop for curves, dodging & burning (if needed) and sharpening (all destructively; no fiddling with layers).

Alternatives to ACR
===================
Recently I decided (for fun) to take a look at what alternatives were available. Serif's Affinity seems OK but still inferior to the ACR-Photoshop system (except on price, of course). Photoline is very powerful, mature, and a bit eccentric: I like it. But it doesn't have any 'wow!' factor. The GIMP? I tried it once. There is an English word "gimp" borrowed from the german 'gimpel' that I think of every time I consider trying it again. Pixelmator, Acorn? Not targeting this market.

RawTherapee surprised me by its breadth and innovation: an hierarchy of "wavelets" in place of high-pass or calculated edge masks as the basis for sharpening; CIECAM02 color-contrast modeling (very impressive). It offered excellent results, used good quality color gamut profiles (ICC sRGB v.4, for example) and could integrate my camera profiles created by X-Rite ColorChecker. It has good contrast curve controls (including LAB curves) and some automation. The project seems pretty vibrant with a lot of activity.

Still, it was the superior results I could get with RawTherapee ('smoothness', better color control, finer contrast controls) that made me consider using it as a replacement for ACR and curve adjustments in Photoshop. 

Then I decided to take another look, too, at RPP. I now appreciated (from Ming's tutorial) the value of careful white balance and camera color profile. I now understood more about the value of a careful contrast selection and compensated exposure settings (with black-point adjustment if necessary). And I have a faster computer now that applies adjustments in only a second or so. So I took the time to reprocess some shots (Nikon D610 and D810 and Ricoh GR) in RPP with excellent results. I got even better processing results, more simply (with fewer adjustments) than I could from RawTherapee. I loved the 'film-like' color treatment and the optional film profiles.

I saw a reference on this forum to Pavel Kosenko's "Lifelike" iBook (https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/lifelike/id996625182) on color practice (some theory) and RPP 'for beginners' and spent a day reading and testing some of his ideas. I made a minimum contribution ($US15) to get the profiling and integration support for RPP and have been re-processing more of my old shots and making detailed comparisons. With some presets and making limited adjustments, I can now process a raw to a 16-bit BetaRGB Tiff in under a minute. Command-drag WB; guess at and apply contrast & compressed exposure (with practice usually about right the first time). I might check the gamut diagram and exposure for a region or two of the image (control-drag) and adjust the exposure again using the histogram zones. Sometimes I flick through a couple of 'film profiles' (mostly, I use Kodakrome-64 or Portra-160). Then I'm done.

Not a complete 'solution'
======================
After a week, I'm still very impressed with the quality of results from RPP. I now propose to use it in place of ACR (mostly). But I don't think it has relieved me of having to buy the Adobe subscription. RPP images still need:

1. Curves: Contrast in RPP is great but it seems to apply (perhaps on a curve, but that is not clear to me) across all brightness levels in the image. An explicit curves control is still an essential tool for achieving expressiveness in an image.

2. Gradient controls: the ACR gradient/brush is still very useful in some circumstances; applying a de-haze filter or changing exposure levels in specific areas of an image. I can call ACR as a filter in Photoshop (for RGB images, not LAB).

3. Sharpening: I was surprised to see sharpening in RPP and it is good although simple and a bit brutal. Nothing I know (not Topaz, not NIK/Google) sharpens as accurately or selectively with such fine controls and good results as Photoshop (USM + Smart Sharpen).

4. Image ingestion and catalog management: Bridge is a very limited file manager but good in specific respects. It does not force me to use Adobe's proprietary image database (Lightroom!). I can set its defaults to work with RPP.

Longevity?
=========
I guess the thing that concerns me about investing my effort in RPP is that this is a proprietary program apparently created by a couple of individuals for their own use and then commercialized. I think some excellent image analysts associated with LibRaw, RawDigger and FastRawViewer (that I also own) have contributed. But I'm not sure if RPP is basically a sort of 'hobby' or whether (despite being 'donationware') it is a commercial project.

I'm interested only in software longevity (living, breathing) not novelty for its own sake. At least I can assume that Adobe will be maintaining ACR/Photoshop for (let's say) a decade or more. Will RPP continue to keep up with e.g. sensors, raw formats, color profiles?

Best wishes to all,

P

[Dp Mailit]

> 4. Image ingestion and catalog management:

frv = fastrawviewer.com , has an option to general .rpps for RPP

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[Dp Mailit]

> then commercialized

it is a donationware... as the amount of your donation to unlock some convenient (for workflow) features is not mandated I'd not call it "commercialized"...

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 6:48 PM, Peter Gallagher <pwgal...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Iliah Borg]

Dear Peter,

RPP attempts to treat raw the way the film is processed. It is a digital developer. Ignoring immense number of man-hours invested into film does not help.

There are only certain curves that are available with film, rest is Photoshop; same goes to other things. They are not applied to raw data in ACR anyway.

As to longevity, I'm an old guy but I guess I have at least 10 active years ahed. I can't speak for Andrei, but while I'm still kicking, RPP will not go to oblivion. We do not see any alternatives to RPP, that's why RPP was born to begin with, and that is why it is maintained. Folks may not see the internal problems with other converters (one of those you mentioned has very crude math), but what matters is how a photographer rates the converter outputs.

Do not hesitate to blend in Photoshop the RPP outputs from different demosaicking algorithms, and different sharpening settings. Do not hesitate to use floating point output, too.

RPP is not a commercial product, it is donation-ware ;)

--
Best regards,
Iliah Borg
LibRaw, LLC
www.libraw.org
www.rawdigger.com
www.fastrawviewer.com

[Peter Gallagher]

Dear Iliah,

I'm an old guy, too :-) I have found that I rely on so many of my contemporaries for independent software development. I agree with you about the importance of the film heritage for digital photography.

I own Fast Raw Viewer, too. I know it can open RPP directly (I have the keyboard shortcut set to "r"). But I have not integrated FRV into my ingestion procedures (yet).

However, I bought an FRV license specifically because it seemed like a great product from a smart image analyst.

So I'm delighted to hear your determination to continue RPP. 

Yes, I made a donation for RPP. But I'm happy to donate more if that will help with the incentive to continue to develop it.

Best wishes,

P

[Iliah Borg]

Gentlemen,

After 2 months of closed Beta cycle FastRawViewer 1.3 Release candidate 1 is in public testing, adding Grid mode, operations over groups of files, and more. Changelog and downloads:

http://www.fastrawviewer.com/testing/fastrawviewer-1-3

[Kirk Thibault]

Wow… major update!

Thanks Iliah.

Kirk

[Peter Gallagher]

Fantastic Iliah... Eager to try this out. Right click on selected images means access to executables (e.g. scripts) on OSX which opens a wealth of possibilities.

Thank you.

Peter