[Digikam-users] Opening raw file from different programs shows different results

[Wilkins, Vern W]

Raw editing seems to come up a  lot and I'll just say again that Ufraw in my opinion does by far the highest quality conversion, with the least amount of work.  I'm not knocking Digikam, because it has been, and likely always will be, my favorite photo management application, but I have used it for more years than I can remember and have never been able to get consistently good RAW conversion results, without a lot of work.  Some of the things that frustrate me with Digikam's conversion include the fact that the settings I need to use seem to have changed at times from version to version, and more importantly, there seem to be too many settings that need to be adjusted for almost every photo (and these are rarely consistent from photo to photo), and I have never gotten good results with my camera profile.  I'm not saying it's not possible, as others have obviously had success, I have just always found Ufraw better (in terms of results and ease/efficiency of use) than Digikam for this, and in fact better than every application I have ever tried, including Darktable, Photivo, RawTherapee, and even commercial Windows apps like the various Adobe products.

It's no trouble for me to incorporate ufraw into my workflow for the initial conversion from RAW to PNG (so there's no quality loss), and then I do the rest of the editing in Digikam before saving to JPG.  Generally all I do in Ufraw is apply my camera profile, and if necessary adjust white balance, apply a curve, or adjust exposure.  In Digikam I tend to crop, resize, sharpen (using Refocus which is just unmatched!), edit metadata, and save as jpg.  In all these areas I have always found Digikam to be the best.  I use Darktable in my workflow, between Ufraw and Digikam, only in some unique instances.  For example, I have found Darktable's spot removable to be excellent.

Vern


-----Original Message-----
From: digikam-users-bounces at kde.org [mailto:digikam-users-bounces at kde.org] On Behalf Of Remco Viëtor
Sent: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 2:15 AM
To: digiKam - Home Manage your photographs as a professional with the power of open source
Subject: Re: [Digikam-users] Opening raw file from different programs shows different results

On Tuesday 09 July 2013 07:57:51 HaJo Schatz wrote:
> I think he's saying that a developed RAW displayed in UFRaw looks 
> darker
than the RAW, after developing, in DigiKam. Maybe.

That's quite possible (perhaps even likely).

> I don't work with UFRaw but this is the behavior with darktable since
DigiKam will always display the original, not some modifications that the DT development did.

You can't display the RAW image. So neither DigiKam nor DT will display 'the original'.

But, every RAW file (afaik) has an embedded jpeg image developed in-camera according to the camera algorithms and settings.  This jpeg is the image you see when reviewing your shots on the camera screen, and when looking at RAW files in Digikam's or DT's album view (or equivalent).

To see a bit of what I tried to explain, try developing a RAW several times in Digikam with different 'White balance/highlights' settings, and with and without 'Auto brightness' ticked.

And check the tone curve DT applies to the RAW image after demosaicing, it's rather spectacular. I'm sure Digikam applies a similar curve 'under the hood', as it's needed to get a visually 'correct' image.
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