Before we start, I’d like to say HAPPY BRITHDAY to Iridient (launched exactly 9 years ago). I’ve contacted Brian yesterday for the first time, asking him if there will be a Windows version of his software. He answered immediatly: “[…] I have nothing at all against Windows, but it’s unlikely there will be a port of Iridient Developer to Windows. […] That said I have had discussions in the past and will likely have more in the future regarding opportunities for someone else do a Windows version, but so far nothing concrete has come to pass.“
_ _ _
Do you remember this post, where thevisualexperience explained why DPreview may be sometimes wrong when they jugde the IQ of cameras? He suggested them to use Iridient Developer to process the X-Trans files. The results with this Mac-only software are, according to him, much better than those of Adobe.
Now, here is another example. Soundimageplus compared the [shoplink 13668]Leica X Vario[/shoplink] with the [shoplink 12881]X-E1[/shoplink]. Which APS-C camera deliveres the best IQ? This was his answer before using Iridient:
BEFORE IRIDIENT
“So having consistently described the Fuji X-Trans sensor as the best image quality, taking everything into consideration (raw, jpgs, high ISO, sharpness, colour etc.) that I’ve ever used, it seems I’m now going to have to change that. The Leica X Vario now officially, here at Planet Soundimageplus at least, is the producer of the best IQ overall, that I have ever seen in a camera I own. Its taken me pretty much all day to come to that conclusion, but its been an enjoyable and informative process.”
But then he tried to process the X-E1 RAW images with Iridient and changed his opinion. He is sure that you’ll be impressed by the files that the X-Trans sensor can produce… Read the second post of soundimageplus here:
AFTER IRIDIENT
“I don’t really know what a ‘demosiacing algorithm’ is but I know what I see with my eyes. Unlike all other software conversions for the Fuji X files, there is no ‘foliage mush’ ‘smearing’ or ‘watercolour effect’ present in the converted files. The files are crisp and sharp, even without any added sharpening in the software. […] The conversions are so good that I’m able to upsize them quite dramatically to 24MP and 36MP in Photoshop, using the new resize option, with very little loss of detail. In fact the 24MP upsized files I’m producing look virtually identical to my Nikon D7100 files. […] So for me this takes my X-E1 into another league. It is pretty much like I suddenly have a new camera. In terms of image quality, I thought that my X Vario just shaded the X-E1, but now I’m not so sure.
So a £60 software programme turns a decent camera into a pretty special one and I’m going to be using the X-E1 a lot over the next few days to shoot some new images knowing that I’m going to get some pretty impressive files.”
enjoy your day
Patrick
34 Responses
Grerat news for Mac users! For the rest of us: I use a process using Capture One as RAW processor and Lightroom for post prosessing.
1. Import to C1. Sharpening – radius set to 0.2. Noice reduction – set both croma and luminance noise to 0 (can’t understand why the factory setting is 50 on a scale 0 – 100)
2. Export as TIF 24bit Pro Photo RGB
3. Import to Lightroom and do post processing. Now you can do sharpening without the image falling apart. No smearing problem. No green foliage problem.
In general C1 produces a better punch result compared to Lightroom (applies also with D800 files). But it also means oversaturation and also risk for sharpening halos. My method can show some grain at 200%, but that does not show in a print at A3 size. To me some grain is better than artificial smoothness. After all everything is not made in plastic! 🙂
Maaaaaeeenn… I might have to try this Iridient thing 🙂
I hate the internet and mounting pressure of awesomeness.
hmm…ppl are actually buying Leica X Vario?
I cant believe people are buying the X Vario?!?!
Some people value design and function over whatever Fuji and the like offer. And they can afford to pay for that. Everyone else can go buy an M1, right! And then pick one of 5 different RAW converters to get the feel they like from the RAW files, but make the wrong choice and the output will be “horrible”.
The Leica costs more, but its better for the sanity! Kind of like a Mac or a BMW, costs more for a reason, but you have to own one to understand.
troll
Whatever. How it is better for the sanity? That it is an overpriced under- featured camera? The only thing it has going on for itself are the lenses, but then you will be paying thousands of dollars for micro-contrast.
And how you even managed to compare Apple to Leica is beyond me.
the lens – singular. The Vario has a fixed lens.
Someone has to, we need to know if it will blend 🙂
For those who are mac-less but would like to try irident, try googling “vmware mac os x” or viewing this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSe6MglVaH0&feature=youtu.be
You should have a fairly usable mac up and running within a few minutes!
Windows user at disadvantage. Adobe Lightroom need to buck up on improving the conversion of raw files to the best. Hope Adobe is listening here.
I am not so convinced at the superiority of Iridient yet. Though to be honest have only been able to view other peoples examples. I remember reading the first article that this post links to after seeing it on Google+
At first glance without pixel peeking the Baileys bottle and playing card on the Iridient side look clearly better. However zooming in on the image reveals colour artifacts on many of the edges.
This is most obvious if you zoom in on the dot above the “i” in “Baileys”. It’s a pinky orange colour. These artifacts are also very prominent around the edges of the paper clips.
What causes this and whether it is a problem with normal viewing I will leave the experts to argue about. But they are definitly there.
Thanks to Per K for the PC processing summary. I am aware that this Iridient ‘solution’ is Mac only. So – If anyone else has some good PC processing routines and ways to get the best out of the Fuji X files, particularly how to get round the green foliage smearing problem and allow decent levels of sharpening, then I would be happy to publish any links you might have on the blog. Plus of course they will be available for others here.
I don’t understand Fuji’s policy, release a great sensor which can only be developed to it’s best potential with obscure tools and in limted OS. It can’t be taken seriously until they find a way to solve this problem or at least release a good propietary alternative free for Fuji owners, and no, Sylkipix isn’t. This has been known and said for more than a year, I am starting to loose hope.
I’m not sure they particularly want this kind of processing. Iridient does produce a lot of moire and colour noise which it then filters out. Often however I’ve found that there is still some CA and fringing that needs removing, even after that. So it does involve more work. Its the classic dilemma, clean slightly soft images or sharper images but with more noise to remove. Adobe, Capture 1 and Apple are I presume working with what Fuji give them and I presume again that Iridient like raw Photo Processor have come up with their own solution using dcraw as a base and adding their own spin on that.
Plus for a lot of people it isn’t a problem. What I shoot involves a lot of green foliage so I notice it more than others. I know a lot of portrait and wedding photographers who use Fuji X cameras and they like the cuurent ACR results just fine.
However its taken the Iridient software to show me just how good this sensor is, with admiitedly some extra work. It does however have a batch function which makes life easier.
I spent some time yesterday with Iridient Developer (my main developer is C1) and I can see benefits but sometimes, the sharpening (default one) creates halos and the images do look oversharpened. It does need a bit of tweaking. I guess, I’ll stick to C1 and will use Iridient when I think it matters. C1 does produce good results, very close to the ones one can get from Iridient. But I will keep an eye on Iridient as it also supports Foveon files and it would be quite nice to use only one raw developer for both Sigma and Fuji.
Anyone who noticed this in the original article and knows a bit more about these ‘superdeals’? A x-pro1 + 2 primes for 1200 pounds sounds like a really good deal!
“Particularly since today Fuji have announced another of their ‘superdeals’. Buy an X-Pro 1 + 35mm f/1.4 combination and Fuji will send you an 18mm f/2 for nothing. This camera / 35 lens kit can be bought in the UK for £1200. Since the two lenses currently cost around £800-850 to buy separately, you can see how cheap that makes a new X-Pro 1 and I may well go for this deal. “
Its here:-
http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/xpro1free18mm.html
Thanks! That is a good deal. Hopefully it’s also available on mainland Europe.
I don’t understand why Fuji can’t take the in-camera algorithm and give it to application developers as a black box library for inclusion in their products.
We all know how great OOC JPGs are.
+1
I’ve played with the demo version of Iridient Developer and gotten mixed results. In some cases the results have been very good. In other instances not quite so.
I have two problems with Iridient:
1) It doesn’t fit into my workflow.
2) I do not find the controls to be intuitive at all.
Even if the sharpness and “image quality” were slightly better, for me that would be outweighed by the difficulty I have consistently producing pleasing images with respect to tonality and color.
I’ve been playing around with Iridient for a bit since seeing it on the site. I think it’s certainly better for low ISO shots where I pull back the highlights. Tried it on a few landscape shots and was pleased with how it compared to Adobe. I found the tonal range to be better. It’s also significantly sharper than Adobe across all the images I was playing with. The issue I had was that on higher iso shots, it seemed to introduce more noise, and I found that noise to be less pleasant than what Adobe was producing. Since I did little editing in Iridient (I simply used to convert the raw into a tiff and sent it into Lightroom), it could be that I could minimize this noise with some settings before converting. This was a pretty quick analysis of a few types of images, and I’ll certainly play with it more. I need more time to play, but right now I could see using it situationally for low ISO, landscape, or detail shots in good lighting.
Fuji will not deliver their algorithm because it probably does not exist.
All Fuji has is is an extensive post processing JPEG engine that reduces artifacts sharpens the image and enhances the color, this can be done for any sensor.
Fuji does not want this secret to leak because a lot of pros will lose interest in Fuji’s system.
Up until now, the pros attitude towards aggressive post processing was that in most cases it damages the image in some way,
Fuji came to show that when the talking is done, people will prefer the post processed image over the original one.
I don’t understand the reasoning. Why would pro’s loose interest if the results were consistently better and the workflow easier?
I don’t understand the reasoning. Why would pro’s loose interest if the results were consistently better and the workflow easier?
I am sooo tired of reading all the hype and marketing of Irident. Have you got shares?
To me Irident might bring me marginal improvements, but at a too big downside. Irident is just a raw-dveloper, seriously lacking other elements of a satisfying work-flow as storing, printing and exporting as well as having a confusing user interface. It also seems to come from a very small operation, I would hate to rely on a company that may not exist further down the road.
Lightroom (could also be Aperture or Capture One) is good enough for me – I am not a pixelpeeper.
They’ve been in business for 9 years.
They also offer a student discount! Here is the reply that I got when asking about it:
“Yes, I offer 40% off for faculty and currently enrolled students. Please send proof of enrolment or educational employment (valid student/faculty ID, etc) and I’ll send you a discount code.
Note that use of educational licenses is intended solely for non-commercial work. If you make money from your photography you should purchase a full license.”
I would say thats a pretty generous discount.
Iridient is fine if you nailed the exposure and just want to extract the maximum detail from the raw file, although it can show some irritating colour noise (of which Adobe shows none due to the obvious detail smearing). The second you need to make exposure adjustments, it falls behind. It’s also not as fast as Lightroom or as good for cataloging.
I’m just waiting for either Adobe to update their algorithm or a new version of Aperture to come out with better highlight recovery and colour noise suppression. The one thing I’m not prepared to do is convert files to TIFF and then edit with a separate program – it eats up my hard drive space like crazy.
There is a free alternative. For max details, rather using the Iridient developer to covert the raw file to TIFF, try this little Mac application call “Rawker”. It seems to produce similar result to Iridient by using Mac standard built in converter.
Good point. A while ago Rawker had pretty much closed down and I’m glad to see it back with a new update. Previous version didn’t open X-E1 files, but now it does. Nowhere near as versatile as Iridient but produces a nice sharp file. Plus as you say it is free, though donations are welcome and its always a good idea to support these ‘independents’.
I personally enjoy these posts. But I am waiting for Lightroom to update its RAW conversion only because I don’t want to mess up my workflow.
That said, I tried Iridient vs Lightroom last night. Wow!! Is all I can say. Iridient is amazing. Lightroom’s processing of the same file looked out of focus by comparison (sharpening and noise reduction turned off on both.) Iridient’s was very crisp by comparison. Like a different camera. It definitely does need noise reduction turned on to get rid of the colored spots that it creates, but that seems to go away easily with little reduction to the overall sharpness.
Soundimageplus has a new post comparing the XE1 and D800E uprezed. It’s cool to see. http://soundimageplus.blogspot.com/2013/07/fuji-x-e1-upsized-compared-to-nikon.html
@Soundimageplus,It’d be really fun to see a comparison of green foliage from a field shot. I’m sure the D800E would really win here in terms of detail. But it’d really interested to see the how the D800’s Bayer compares to the Xtrans for foilage: E.g. XE1 (iridient & lightroom) & D800E (lightroom); three crops at the native size and three at D800E’s size. That’d be really interesting if you have the time. It’s cool that you have access to both. p.s. Are comments turned off on your blog?
I’ve tried the demo version of Irident and in fact the conversion is oustanding. I use Aperture and compared two conversions of the same photo and prefered the one from Irident. The only downside was notable higher noise from the Irident file compared to the one from Aperture (the ISO was 3200, by the way).
But then what. You convert a raw file and the software offers rudmentary workflow and editing. Why would I work raw with a software just because it “cracks the code” of the raw. If I’m working raw means I’ll tweak the picture, organize the raw somehow inside folders in the software. Meaning: Aperture is more than fine if I want to work with raw.