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Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:50 am
by hic
The more I work with XnViewMP, the more I love it. and the more I find things that I don't understand.

I take my pictures mainly as raw pictures. The format is .orf (Olympus E-M5). When I try to open these ORF in the full screen window, either the embedded jpeg is shown or (if I changed the behaviour to half- or full-size raw) the image is displayed with a strong green color cast. It seems that the integrated raw converter doesn't have the correct colour table for these files. Can I change this behaviour somewhere in the program?

Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:22 am
by hic
Ok, if I change the white balance to "use camera wb", the green cast disapears. So automatic wb doesn't work with ORF. But the resulting image is pale with still wrong white balance. I don't know if XnViewMP uses dcraw, but if so perhaps it is outdated?

Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:45 pm
by m.Th.
hic wrote:Ok, if I change the white balance to "use camera wb", the green cast disapears. So automatic wb doesn't work with ORF. But the resulting image is pale with still wrong white balance. I don't know if XnViewMP uses dcraw, but if so perhaps it is outdated?

Regards,
hic
Perhaps. But download the official command-line dcraw and test. Anyway, usually the RAW files have dull/pale colors because they have a lot of information in there - it is your task to process them. That's why usually the embedded previews have curves applied.

Also, you can speak with Dave (Coffin) about this and, also, you can set up in Settings | View the "Camera Raw, Use:" to "Embedded Preview".

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:55 pm
by hic
dcraw has no problems in converting ORF.

Using the preview image is not the solution because that is too small to judge about the quality. That's why I would like to use half raw size at least.

Perhaps Pierre could tell me what is used to decode raw files?

Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:36 pm
by xnview
do you have tried to change RAW settings?

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 3:48 pm
by hic
As far as I found them I tried to change the raw settings. I found some in the menue of batch convert. There I changed the settings to "use camera WB" and I increased the brightness.

This I how the preview looks like:
Screen-2014-03-27_16-43.jpg
and this is the embedded preview:
Screen-2014-03-27_16-44.jpg
You can see that the colur is missing to some extend. I didn't find any other place to change raw settings

Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:14 pm
by m.Th.
Hmmm... I'm really not convinced that it is a problem here.

Perhaps you must know that the 'preview' is a 'doctored' image of the actual RAW data. Let me say it again: When you look at the embedded preview you look at other image than the actual RAW image. Usually some curves, increased contrast, saturation, sharpen etc. are applied.

See bellow the difference between the thumb in top-left and the actual raw data (bottom) of the same file of a high-quality digital back (Hasselblad H4D). The purpose of the raw file isn't to look 'pretty' but to keep as much information as possible. That's why, generally, in order to keep as much as they can from the dynamic range of the light which hits the sensor, the colors appear dull, lacking contrast (especially if the files use Adobe RGB color space). If you do some PP the image will look indeed prettier, but this isn't the purpose of the RAW data.
Preview-Raw.jpg
There are brands/cameras known to do enough PP before saving the thumb in the Raw file. Perhaps that's why Photoshop's Camera Raw plugin has a special tab (page) dedicated to presets for each camera model they support which mimic the PP applied by the camera on the Raw data. Hence if a beginner wants to see his Raw "exactly like he saw it in Explorer", he can go on that tab and choose "Normal", "Vivid" etc.

But if you think that it is really a problem and you don't mind, you can upload your file somewhere (eg. sendspace.com) and send the link to me through PM to have a look at it in another program (Photoshop, ACDSee, ZPS etc.).

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:37 am
by xnview
which settings do you use with dcraw?

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:52 am
by hic
xnview wrote:which settings do you use with dcraw?
With dcraw I use -w -b 2 -T:
test.jpg
Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:00 am
by hic
m.Th. wrote:Hmmm... I'm really not convinced that it is a problem here.

There are brands/cameras known to do enough PP before saving the thumb in the Raw file. Perhaps that's why Photoshop's Camera Raw plugin has a special tab (page) dedicated to presets for each camera model they support which mimic the PP applied by the camera on the Raw data. Hence if a beginner wants to see his Raw "exactly like he saw it in Explorer", he can go on that tab and choose "Normal", "Vivid" etc.

But if you think that it is really a problem and you don't mind, you can upload your file somewhere (eg. sendspace.com) and send the link to me through PM to have a look at it in another program (Photoshop, ACDSee, ZPS etc.).
Thank you very much, but I already work with CS6, and I worked with Lightroom, ACDSee, ZPS, ASP etc. pp. I really know what a raw file means :wink:. And I love XnViewMP because it is a far better "version" of Bridge than the original

The point is, that obviously the raw converter in XnViewMP has a wrong colour table for ORF, maybe for other files as well. That's why I guess that perhaps an used dcraw or whatever library is used may be too old? Or is there any other option to tweak the raw settings than just correcting Gamma and choose automatic wb or camera wb?

It is not only an issue concerning the preview. If one wants to let XnViewMP create the thumbnails instead of using the embedded ones, the problem occurs as well. The same occurs if one wants to use the picture tools with a raw file.

Regards,
hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:17 pm
by m.Th.
hic wrote:
m.Th. wrote:Hmmm... I'm really not convinced that it is a problem here.

There are brands/cameras known to do enough PP before saving the thumb in the Raw file. Perhaps that's why Photoshop's Camera Raw plugin has a special tab (page) dedicated to presets for each camera model they support which mimic the PP applied by the camera on the Raw data. Hence if a beginner wants to see his Raw "exactly like he saw it in Explorer", he can go on that tab and choose "Normal", "Vivid" etc.

But if you think that it is really a problem and you don't mind, you can upload your file somewhere (eg. sendspace.com) and send the link to me through PM to have a look at it in another program (Photoshop, ACDSee, ZPS etc.).
Thank you very much, but I already work with CS6, and I worked with Lightroom, ACDSee, ZPS, ASP etc. pp. I really know what a raw file means :wink:. And I love XnViewMP because it is a far better "version" of Bridge than the original
Hyia bro! :)

The point is, that obviously the raw converter in XnViewMP has a wrong colour table for ORF, maybe for other files as well. That's why I guess that perhaps an used dcraw or whatever library is used may be too old?
Perhaps - but not only. AFAIK dcraw should be (one of) the latest - but I think that the code which uses it sometimes needs updating. It seems that there are other small glitches with raw subsystem as well.

Or is there any other option to tweak the raw settings than just correcting Gamma and choose automatic wb or camera wb?
There are some in Batch Convert | Settings | Load format settings... but I don't know how much impact it has outside of Batch Convert.


It is not only an issue concerning the preview. If one wants to let XnViewMP create the thumbnails instead of using the embedded ones, the problem occurs as well. The same occurs if one wants to use the picture tools with a raw file.

Regards,
hic
??? AFAIK XnView MP always uses the embedded preview when it generates thumbs. Can you rephrase a little?

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:12 am
by xnview
hic wrote:
xnview wrote:which settings do you use with dcraw?
With dcraw I use -w -b 2 -T:
could you send me original file?

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 9:42 am
by hic
Of course, where should I send it to?

hic

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:25 am
by oops66
hic wrote:Of course, where should I send it to?
hic
... A workaround ... maybe you can use a custom ICC profile ...
http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.p ... 30#p118830

Re: Raw preview of ORF leads to green image

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 9:54 am
by xnview
contact at xnview dot com