Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

http://www.ddisoftware.com

v2011.127    04/29/11    

Priority: Low    

v2011.127 introduces auto fill light, taking raw photo developing to the next level!  Click here for details.
Mike

Pretty neat stuff Mike. Works like a charm for a high percentage of shots.

Thanks.  I (and my handful of beta testers) found the same.  It nearly eliminates the need to fiddle with exposure/fill.  Of course, nothing can be perfect and there will be a small percentage that defy the algorithm.  The algorithm is pretty complex though and takes a lot of factors into account.  I'm actually quite excited about this feature as it's one of the more innovative ones in recent memory.  I'm not aware of any other raw developing tool that actually attempts to "look" at the image and analyze the data to try to determine a "proper" lighting balance.  It also helps with some images that you mind find look good more than one way: for example a "subtle" lighting versus a "well lit" scene.  When I run across one like that where interpretation is a big part of it, I like to use the new feature (right click in the thumbs) to "Remove Raw Refinements", setting it back to defaults to see what Qimage would do with it.  It often gives you a pretty good starting point, and a fair amount of time, the best rendition.

Mike

That's exactly what I did last night with a folder of recent images that I copied to a new folder so they were "fresh" without any raw refine applied. With some I preferred a Fill click or two one way or the other, others I clicked a rectangle once (blue outline) or twice (red outline) to deal with highlights. An occasional on had a touch of HDR applied.
What is neat is that the Fill automatically compensates when the image gets darker or lighter when a rectangle is clicked.  8)
Although I do like to check raw refine for images individually I can see Auto Fill speeding up my image processing because it provides a good starting point on tricky images.  :D
Terry

Now this is interesting.

The last two of my shooting sessions, I have suffered a lot of underexposure using the camera meter on multi segment and have had to use the fill at quite high value.

To day I was due to investigate why.

Now it is taken care of automaticaly - great, but I see one problem, Ultimate is masking my original error, Ok, the slider gives an indication of the error but I will have to watch it.

I have just looked up the image EXIF and the exposure is recorded as:-

AE Metering Segment 1: 9.3 LV (center)
AE Metering Segment 2: 9.6 LV (center edge)
AE Metering Segment 3: 9.1 LV (upper, mid-right)
AE Metering Segment 4: 9.5 LV (upper, mid-left)
AE Metering Segment 5: 8.9 LV (upper, right)
AE Metering Segment 6: 10 LV (upper, left)
AE Metering Segment 7: 9.1 LV (mid-right)
AE Metering Segment 8: 9.9 LV (mid-left)
AE Metering Segment 9: 9.6 LV (right)
AE Metering Segment 10: 9.4 LV (left)
AE Metering Segment 11: 10.1 LV (lower, mid-right)
AE Metering Segment 12: 10.5 LV (lower, mid-left)
AE Metering Segment 13: 9.6 LV (lower, right)
AE Metering Segment 14: 11.1 LV (lower, left)
AE Metering Segment 15: 9.5 LV (top)
AE Metering Segment 16: 9.5 LV (bottom)

Range of 11.1 to 8.9 is not excessive - is it?

Now going to load up camera and take a series of shots and see if I can repeat the exposure error.

Any way a great addition feature.

Jeff  

Hi Jeff,
I always use the histogram view on my camera screen. That tells you where you exposure is, under or over. My screen also gives an indication of blown highlights but that is for a jpeg so is pessimistic for raw.
If the exposure is out according to the histogram, I'll change the exposure compensation and shoot again. For action type shots, I make sure I've done test exposures first.
I end up taking a lot of exposures sometimes, especially in high contrast/backlit situations, but usually at least one is the optimum.
Terry

Jeff, you can easily turn off Auto Fill by clicking EDIT PREFERENCES and RAW OPTIONS, and turn it off.
Turn it back on the same way.
Alternate method: Manually move the Fill slider and it is off for that image.

Like anything else, there's some learning time involved.
Also take note.
This feature is designed to auto select a fill light which when applied, will make your new images look very good.
It is not saying that you cannot do better manually if you wish. I find it wonderful; all my shots in a folder look reasonably good. It gives me an idea which are keepers.
The beauty of the system is the fact that it doesn't apply a preset brightness to all the images like some programs do.
It looks at each image with a fresh eye, and calculates how much fill if any might make that one better.

Fred

Thanks Fred and Terry.

Did some tests this morning and there is nothing wrong with camera,

I will do some more checking when time available next week.

Jeff

Managed to get my checking done today, and blow me there is nothing really wrong.

I still had the images on the SD card (raws) so looked at them again in the camera, they showed up ok in the camera screen, a bit of blown out sky and some underexposure in shade areas. I stripped out the jpegs and they are about the same as on camera screen.   

(When I took the shots I would not be able to see the screen all that well, eyes not good at close range without the dreaded glasses.) and I don't think the screen reproduction is all that good, certainly Canon and Nikon screens seem better at showing the embedded jpeg

So it seems QUltimate was developing to keep the detail in the over exposed area and leaving me to adjust with the fill.

Then there was the .127 update and the fill was performed for me.  So between the two versions I got a bit worried.  Also I have started using aperture priority more, Freds sweet spot fault!

So all's well that ends well.  Just shows how good the new auto fill feature is.

Jeff

   

Wait til you try 128. It never ends! It keeps getting better!
Fred
PS Better hurry and get your copy of 128.
Mike might run out of stock fast.  ;D

I would concur with that  :D
I have just been through some images again and found that v128 does and even better job when I click a rectangle to recover highlights.
Many of my images seem to have areas of bright highlight that need recovery where one click on a rectangle to a blue outline or two clicks to a red outline is required. The auto-fill reacts very nicely to compensate in the darker tones as required. There seem to be very few where any manual intervention with Fill is required  8)
Terry