ACR versus ACR

[Donald]

For reasons I won't bore you with and which will cause me considerable anxiety, I may have to consider looking for a RAW processor other than DxO Optics Pro which I've been using for a while. This is because of a problem artefact that it is causing to appear when I convert to B & W in Silver Efex Pro2.

I've been looking at ACR. Now what I've managed to learn is that the version of ACR that comes with Elements is not the same ACR that's in Lightroom and Photoshop.

I've been trying to find out what is not in the Elements version that is in the other version. But can't find details. Can anyone tell me?

The reason I ask is that a large part of my workflow is done at the RAW processing stage in DxO and I want to keep it this way.

[ScoutR]

Donald, here is a link that may or may not help. I have not read through the whole thing but I guess it's worth a look

http://www.imagemaven.com/adobe-came...-and-elements/

Wendy

[The Blue Boy]

Donald,

This topic has got me interested so I went to check on the Adobe forums. Here's a link to a similar query,

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/845810

But as I use Nik software I'm more than curious as to the artefact that is occuring!

[Donald]

Donald,

This topic has got me interested so I went to check on the Adobe forums. Here's a link to a similar query,

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/845810

But as I use Nik software I'm more than curious as to the artefact that is occuring!

Mark

Don't know if you've been following the story. It all starts to unfold here.

[The Blue Boy]

Donald,

Banding and noise is quite visible in all of these shots. I think it might be a workflow issue. I've gotta go to bed mate but will check back tomorrow. I will just say that I use high structure but I'll always bring down the opacity of the layer, contrast and change the blend mode.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Donald,

I'm not sure if anything has changed or not, but PSE used to limit users to only the first two tabs - tab one has the usual exposure / levels / clipping points / saturation etc, and tab two - off memory - curves.

So if it's still the case, you'd miss out on things like lens corrections and the ability to control hue / sat / brightness on a colour by colour basis.

[arith]

I have never seen any posturisation as a result of using (elements ACR) since it is 16 bit. But you will miss the levels which I use to adjust colour balance sometimes, you could always just use the temperature slider and watch the graph. Or get Canon DPP if you want to use levels as I sometimes do.

You can use levels in elements whilst still 16 bit, as well as hue/sat.

I only see posturisation when I use 8 bit applications, and do extreme processing; mostly everything I do is 16 bit except right at the end when I apply a lot of layers, compress the histogram with a difference layer and spread it out more evenly with a levels giving the clouds a special look, or making a haze more hazy ect.

[dje]

Donald I have Elements but I'm away from home for a couple of weeks so I can't access it to give you more detail. I haven't used the ACR part of it for a while, I prefer DPP. It is a bit limited I think eg I think the tone curve can only be manipulated by sliders rather than direct access to the curve itself (I could be wrong about that though). Have you downloaded the Elements trial ? that gives you full functionality for a month.

Also are you not happy with the GIMP Raw plug-in ? (UFRAW is it ?)

Cheers Dave

[arith]

Do you mean like this Dave

[Donald]

Thank you everyone for your help.

I'm still in communication with DxO and we are slowly moving forward, but I suspect it might be towards a brick wall!

One of the great challenges in using online support is trying to get your message across to someone who may well operate under a different frame of reference.

The person at DxO is enormously helpful and polite, but is clearly a technical person. I am not (a technical person - maybe I'm not helpful and polite either!). So understanding where each other is coming from takes up the first few exchanges. Trying to get beyond - 'There's never been this issue before and I can see nothing wrong with DxO and I can't replicate your problem', takes up the next few exchanges.

And then, 'Well I would do it differently and as you can see from what I've done with just DxO, there is no problem' and, 'But I don't want to b..... use just b...... DxO. I want to use Silver Efex Pro 2 as part of the workflow and are you telling me you won't or can't investigate this further?', takes up the next series of e-mails.

But, as I say, we are still exchanging e-mails.

Dave - I have used UFRAW and RAWTherapee. Nothing wrong with RAWTherapee, but I think DxO is such a wonderful tool. I find it so intuitive and just an excellent piece of kit.

The only problem is that by processing the RAW in DxO and then taking the resulting TIFF into Silver Efex Pro 2 being the preferred workflow, something is not working either in DxO or in the way SEP2 handles TIFFs outputted from DxO. Because, as I've said in the other thread where the problem has been discussed, I cannot replicate the artifact in SEP2 with a TIFF processed from RAW in either DPP or ACR in the trial version of Elements that I downloaded.

There must be more people in the world than just me using this combination of DxO and SEP2 in their workflow.

[Lon Howard]

So if it's still the case, you'd miss out on ... the ability to control hue / sat / brightness on a colour by colour basis.

For what it's worth, as an inexperienced user, I am finding this feature to be somewhat addictive, and would presently feel lost without it.

[Colin Southern]

For what it's worth, as an inexperienced user, I am finding this feature to be somewhat addictive, and would presently feel lost without it.

Hi Lon,

It's a handy feature for sure, but one can essentailly do the same thing (with more control, although not as losslessly) via an HSB layer in Photoshop (reason I mentioned it is that Donald won't be able to do that as he's not using Photoshop).

[Lon Howard]

Hi Lon,

It's a handy feature for sure, but one can essentailly do the same thing (with more control, although not as losslessly) via an HSB layer in Photoshop (reason I mentioned it is that Donald won't be able to do that as he's not using Photoshop).

Thanks, Colin. I was thinking you were drawing a distinction between the ACR capabilities in PS as opposed to PSE; obviously only a factor if it came down to a choice between the two.

[dje]

Do you mean like this Dave

Steve that's what I was referring to. Can you move the points on the curve directly or only by the sliders ?

Dave