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Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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78<br />

The <strong>Digital</strong> <strong>Photographer's</strong> <strong>Software</strong> <strong>Guide</strong><br />

saturation, noise reduction, and four advanced sharpening methods: unsharp mask,<br />

gaussian, hybrid, and (Mac OS X 10.4 or later) Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution, an iterative<br />

technique often used by astronomers to recover latent images that have a known<br />

amount of blurring. RAW Developer also offers filters for removing hot pixels, those tiny<br />

sparks of color that appear as blemishes on low-light scenes taken with a long exposure,<br />

and dead pixels, which are from individual photosites on the camera’s sensor that have<br />

no response to light and always read zero.<br />

Comments<br />

RAW Developer from tiny Iridient has been compared very favorably with software<br />

coming from large corporations. It produces terrific image quality with a real “film<br />

look.” Sharpening controls are first-rate, with no in-built tendency to oversharpen.<br />

Although it lacks the high-throughput features of Capture One, its quality is comparable.<br />

Keen photographers should certainly try it. The trial version is fully functional.<br />

Version: RAW Developer 1.7.2 (2008)<br />

OS: Mac OS X<br />

RAM: 512MB<br />

Supported file formats: RAW (most), JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and JPEG 2000<br />

Price level: Approx. $100<br />

Address: sales@iridientdigital.com<br />

www.iridientdigital.com<br />

SILKYPIX Developer Studio<br />

Vendor: Ichikawa Soft Laboratory (ISL)<br />

Purpose: RAW file processing package with adjustments for color, tone, and white balance<br />

Description<br />

It might not be the first choice of RAW developer for a photographer in Europe or the<br />

United States, especially after trying to read the (machine translated?) Website. Yet<br />

SILKYPIX Developer Studio is highly rated by many users, especially by reviewers on<br />

account of its outstanding tonal quality and high level of detail. Not the least of its<br />

attractions is the incredible speed with which ICL responds to the launch of a new camera,<br />

usually being the first third-party developer to offer a RAW conversion for it.<br />

Features include adjustment for color, tone, and white balance, chromatic aberration<br />

control, unsharp masking, and lots of “taste functions” that emphasize different aspects<br />

of the scene such as blue sky, red enhancer, and even “nostalgic toy camera.” It supports<br />

ICC profiles, batch development, contact sheet printing, and Adobe RGB and sRGB<br />

color spaces.

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