Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

There's an interesting discussion taking place on DPReview concerning QI Ultimate.  And there are some misconceptions about QUI, especially DCRaw updates.

I've made some feeble attempts, but some of you could do a better job of clarifying.  Here's the URL:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51628098

Best,

I have had a go as well.

What saddens me is how the DPR brigade flatly refuse to try anything new. They would rather spend a morning struggling with LR than a couple of hours testing QU.

It must be about the tenth time I have tried to get someone to look outside the blinkers - and they cannot be bothered. They would rather moan about their adopted software than try something fresh.

Tony

You can lead a horse to water................

Dpreview - what a depressing read.  Funny, it was in Dpreview I first came across Qimage.

I passed on Mikes recent discount offer to our Club Chairman who emailed all members, only one chap spoke to me about it to say he would not be trying it :( :( :( not even a free evaluation, of course if they did, as soon as they noticed that Qu did not have a PS interface - all brushes, grads and the like they would class it as no good, and remember it has to be compatible with Topaz :)

Jeff

Jeff,

Funny, it was in Dpreview I first came across Qimage.

Youngster! I was introduced to it when Compuserve had forums and met people like BAK (Brian Kilgour) who appears in the Pro section of DPR sometimes.

I was also introduced to Picture Window Pro and Breeze Browser.

Best thing that happened as I migrated to digital and I still use all three on a daily basis.

Having said that I do look at stuff like Topaz to make sure I am not missing something. And to be honest I would still be using Lightroom if Fred had not bullied me into moving my RAW converting to QU - if only as an experiment.

Believe me when LR4 was getting megabytes of hate mail as is was so buggy I still could not get people on the LR forum to look at QU. What is it that makes people so stubbon about trying an alternative for free - they don't even need to send the box back if they don't like the contents!

Tony

Thanks to all who helped clarify the discussion of QIU over on DPR.  I too learned of QI over on the Fuji Talk Forum in the early 2000s when I started into digital photography.  Many of those guys left DPR for good when a couple of individuals began to bully others--at least now they have moderators and it has toned down.

I have used Lightroom v1 and v4.  While v4 is a significant improvement over the earlier versions, I still haven't got the hang of it.  QI does an excellent job in developing my raw images.  Fortunately, the cameras I bought have been included in the DCraw base.

Tony,
You mentioned in that post on DP Review, that "Mike had/has a pretty aggressive spam filter". The usual problem is those to whom he sends replies - their spam filtering prevents his replies getting through and they don't or can't check what has been filtered out.  ::)
Terry

I am sure you are right Terry.

However, and I feel I can mention it here, I seem to remember there was a time when Mike was asking people to include the word Qimage in the message header. Maybe that is not the case now. I do for safety as it is no inconvenience.

This whole business of people seemingly losing emails is becoming worse in my experience. I put it down to so many trying to run their email with mobile phones with tiny screens - or am I just being kind?

EDIT. I find the problem with DPR is that the 'notify by email' facility does not work when a thread gets a fresh message.

Tony

I've posted a few (helpful I think and not "caustic") replies in that thread.  There are definitely a lot of misconceptions about old-vs-new Qimage and the benefits of Ultimate.  I think many people take a 5 minute look at Ultimate and, looking somewhat similar in workflow to the old Qimage, assume it really has no benefit or it's not "worth the upgrade".  I don't think they know about the non-raw improvements that I posted today at http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51791591 (http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51791591).  And I get the feeling that the majority of people who say things like Ultimate not being a real player in the raw tool department, just haven't tried it.  Either that, or they are just adamant that to get the most out of a raw, you MUST edit each and every raw photo.

I think one person perfectly worded the biggest misconception with raw when they said "I thought a main purpose of using raw was to tweak and diddle as you put it".  These people are used to raw converters where you have to tweak to get the most of them and they've lost sight of the fact that the real purpose of raw is to provide a higher quality end result!  They've never seen a raw tool that can actually analyze the photo and pull great detail, lighting, and color out of the photo so they are "stuck" with the old mentality that if you shoot raw, you'd better be prepared to take the time to open each raw shot in an editor and drag a bunch of sliders to get it to look really nice.  They probably don't believe that with Ultimate, you'll probably only need to fiddle with 10% of your raws to get them perfect... instead of editing 100% in other tools.  To that end, I think that DPR thread would benefit from thoughts from some of the many people here who know by experience how well QU can do on raw photos.

I'm quite familiar with Lightroom (and a number of other raw tools) but when I use them, it's mostly to help someone else out and more often than not, I'm working in those other tools trying to get their rendition to look as good as the automatic one from Qimage Ultimate!  And I don't think I'm the only one.

Mike

As most of you know, I am a believer in the "Show a sample or example" method of explaining.
This is sort of difficult on the forum due to the restrictions of file size and total bytes per post.

Let me try anyway!!

Qimage Ultimate looks at the Raw image and decides, based on Mike Chaney's own invented/discovered algorithm, how to apply Exposure and PLUS fill individually to each image.
He has some formula that measures bright and dark areas  over the major portion of the image and applies what it deems is appropriate.
It still is a computer formula, and cannot be expected to know that Uncle Harry over in the lower left was the person you wanted most. It doesn't read minds.

So what do we get?
We get a program that decides the initial exposure and Fill needed on an individual basis for each image.... and still leaves you options to change anything to suit your needs.
Other programs allow a preset.... same values applied to every raw image it sees. Naturally, you have to adjust so many because of that alone.
Others I know, shut off presets for that reason, and like to twiddle from scratch....

Let's look at two samples.   076 shows an image as it came from the camera with only Q Ultimate's initial decoding. Notice the FILL at +4 and the overall exposure in an excellent balance between sky, water, and overall.
Now let's look at 077 ~      This one has a Fill of +5.... different, and done automatically.  Qimage saw a difference in overall light and adjusted for it.
**  Note: The fact that there are no red brackets around any control (exposure, fill, white balance, and HDR) indicates that it is the default for THAT image!!
** Note2: If you do a White Balance, and Qimage detects enough change in brightness, the Fill will adjust itself.
** Note3:  The lowest value of the automatic Fill is zero.   If you still need to darken an image you either change the exposure using the grids, or move the Fill slider into the minus side.

I get 90% happy exposures and just take my shots into the editor to sharpen a bit, and straighten my horizon. I am famous for crooked images.
I can add anything in the editor as most of you know,,, but starting with a proper Raw image is paramount.

I need that 90%... after all, I am over 80, and cannot afford to waste what time I have left twiddling when Mike twiddles for me.
That's why I implore, beseech, cajole, and plead that you demo triers, take some time to really see how good Q Ultimate really is.

Have fun,
Fred

PS. I apologize for the low quality of the screen snaps, but I had to scrunch 'em pretty good to fit in the 128K limit.