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 p.1 #3 · Photo Ninja - experiences/feedback? | |
Played with it for a few minutes, seems all right. Highlight recovery is good. Better than acr 7/lr4 or raw therapee? Maybe, maybe not--good, though. Demosaicing algorithm does seem good. Better than lr4/acr7? Yeah, I'd say so. Better than amaze in raw therapee? I'm thinkin no (maybe it's better on camera without an AA filter but I don't have one of those). Noise reduction is not up to acr7/lr4 standards, topaz denoise, newer nikon jpeg, new DPP with 5d3 files, new beta unstable raw therapee NR.. Course, I just used it for a few minutes and didn't make a profile or anything, just used the built in one and the analyze image options, respectively. Seemed real destructive to detail. I couldn't make an iso 12.8k d800 image look nearly as good as camera jpeg or acr7, either.
Has some neat lighting and detail (think clarity slider) stuff. Works good, no halos. Downside is no local adjustments.
I think it might be a useful product in some cases, once it is supported as a photoshop plugin so that one can use smart objects and layers to get around the no local adjustments issue. Is it worth the money though? I don't know. If it was $39, maybe. But for $129, I'm not so sure.
I think that any other software at this point has two big hurdles:
1. Lightroom 4 is cheap, photoshop cs6 is cheap if you are a student or your significant other is a student, whatever. It does a good job, maybe the demosaicing isn't the best but in most cases it works great, the NR works amazingly well, local adjustments are easy to use, highlight recovery is great now, etc. It's easy to use, makes quick work of most images, is affordable now, etc. Sometimes you might want to sharpen in photoshop instead to get around the gritty look that can come with masking, but meh. It delivers good results easily in almost all cases.
2. If one wants the best technical demosaicing on a base ISO image...well, raw therapee is free. Amaze is unbeatable, it's just slow. God bless Emil. The auto CA reduction works great, and it'll also read the correction profile files from acr or lightroom now if desired. It's floating point, has great highlight recovery, etc--it just takes work and computer smarts. Plus, the new noise reduction, while very very slow, is tops for iso 100 through about 3200 files--it just isn't stable yet. And, once again, it's free.
Those two programs cover both angles. So any other software has an uphill battle and must offer something *really* special. DXO might fit the bill, we'll see how their new version is. DLO in DPP might fit the bill. This Photo Ninja software looks good, but I'm not sure it has enough real special sauce to make it a hit. I wish them well, though, I hope it is a success.
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