Yes i have tested it for a few days and i think it IS impressiv.

It is a bit slow. But the rendering of small details is great.

I managed to quench out more details then with Lightroom.
And im not a Lightroom newbie, thought im a Photoninja newbie.

What looks smeared in LR often shows details in Photoninja.

Im not sure if it´s because the Noise Reduction of Photoninja is better.

In LR i normaly use around 15-30 luminance noise for images under ISO 800.  I think that is not so much.

But you can see that you lose some details in foliage etc.
With Photoninja i get the same clean image, or cleaner, but with more details.

One thing that bothers me with LR since forever are these strange artifacts you can see in your example image too, this "pixelation" around contrasty edges.

It comes from sharpening i guess but Photoninja does not show it, or much less.

Sorry i hope you all understand what i want to say. I can´t say it better with my bad english.

I also find that the colors looks great.
At least for my canon cameras i find the photoninja colors more pleasing, without any tweaking

I can only advice anyone to test this RAW converter and build your own opinion!!

I would also like to hear what you think about it.

I have been testing it for a week now.

Yes you don't get all the features of Lightroom but regarding image quality this piece of software is VERY impressive.

I have tested a lot of converter and I can say that detail rendering is the best I have seen and color rendering is on par with Capture One (but different). These 2 software are the only one I think that gives very good color rendering. Lightroom has been out for years and colors are still crap ihmo.

Noise suppression is good too (better than C1) but I would not say better than LR: it is smoother but less detailed.

Highlight recovery is also the best I have seen (but sometimes you have to mitigate it).

Well, it is a very strong software. I you need a speedy workflow, LR is better, but for image quality Photo Ninja is way ahead.

-Agfaclack- wrote:

 

One thing that bothers me with LR since forever are these strange artifacts you can see in your example image too, this "pixelation" around contrasty edges.

It comes from sharpening i guess but Photoninja does not show it, or much less.

Perhaps what you are seeing comes from sharpen masking? - in the transition zone between masked and unmasked regions...

I call it "sparkling".

Romain_Th schrieb:

 

 

 

I have tested a lot of converter and I can say that detail rendering is the best I have seen and color rendering is on par with Capture One (but different). These 2 software are the only one I think that gives very good color rendering. Lightroom has been out for years and colors are still crap ihmo.

 

 

Yes Skintones are a weak point in LR if you ask me.

I think all the LR profiles for my Canon cameras are bad.

I bought a Colorchecker Passport because i am so dissatisfied with Lightrooms Canon profiles.

Read the postings again.. nobody denied the issues PN has.

Still the RAW engine is great in my opinion.

I did not dismiss LR 4 because it´s Clarity feature sucked... i waited for a fix.

And i guess the Highlight feature in PN will be fixed soon too.

No need to have the ability to see into the future or be very clever to make such a guess.  

Keith_Reeder schrieb:

My opinion is nothing to do with "skimping" - the simple fact is that it's not worth the price, which is a different thing altogether.

That´s to a great deal subjectiv.

For some Photoshop is not woth 10x more then Elements.

You get Linux for free.. Windows not.

ps:

someone gave me the tipp to use "color recovery" to get rid of the introduced colors in the highlights.

you may want to test that if you did not already.

my guess is they do it this way because if you want to recover highlights in skintones it is better to interpolate to the the surrounding colors.

shadow/highlight in photoshop, for example produces gray.

photo ninja tries to get a color similiar to the skintone.

of course that is counter productive when you have pure white... like your swan.

i will test it as soon as i am at home.

ps ps:

yep it´s all explained here:

http://www.picturecode.com/tutorials/hr.php

Keith_Reeder schrieb:

 

This is the best PN could do (and don't anyone even think of suggesting I need to learn to use PN. No user error here).

Well.... i guess you should not be so confident about that next time.

I tried it on a few images (some white bird images like yours) and it worked flawless when done right.

Any one remember Raw Magic Light? That too had the majenta highlight recovery and was realy slow!I think one had to add Green some way or another, . so long ago cannot recall however when you got it right it was great.... In those days RML was one of the best RAW developers for NEFs but had for me a steep learning curve. Photo Ninja is way easier.

Most of the magenta/ Rose (blown) highlite problems I have been able to solve with with a reduction to around 50% in color recovery of Photo Ninja, usualy less, say 75%. Sometimes LR4 does the job easier, never automaticaly in Capture NX (nikon user) oftener Photo Ninja.

I had promised myself to stick to one product but I keep on chopping and changing. Mostly agree that skin tones seem better in Photo Ninja.

And again - so what?

We're not talking about Lr then, or PN in three years time, we're talking about PN right now, and it comes up wanting, whether or not you're prepared to accept that.

[Personal attack removed by Adobe admin to keep the forum a friendlier place.]

Message was edited by: TerriStoneCHL

1234ewqrd wrote:

 

Hi Hamada,

(Keith may call me a sucker here, I suppose ).

Why on earth would I do that? I truly don't care what you do with your money.

Yet again: the thread asked for people's opinions of PN in comparison with Lr: I answered. Nothing suggested that only responses that gushed mindless approbation for the software would be acceptable.

Why on God's green earth is it such a bloody problem for some people that PN doesn't satisfy my converter needs? I'm not going to apologise for having high standards.

I can't be bothered to rehash my findings, but you read about them - including the bugs - here.

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the link - I had not seen that thread on LuLa. Useful reading for others interested in PN.

In regards to my byline to you possibly calling me a sucker for paying ... it was intended as a joke only.

Hans

Hi finess99,

I'd be curious to give a test on your image if you don't mind. Would it be possible to send the original RAW to me ? Thanks a lot.

Also Keith, the swan image issue looks interesting. If you are OK with this, I am also interested in the original RAW.

I also experience some issues in highlights and I have had discussion with Picturecode.

Thanks everybody

Thanks for the info hamada2003

I never heard before of that very impressing peace of software.

It provides much more details and it´s hilight recovery is better than the one in Lr.

The out-of-the-box results are way better than I can achieve with Lr or C1.

@finess99

for me, the PN image looks more realistic than the other ones.

For uploading you nef, you could try this link:

http://www.2shared.com/

harrieb wrote:

 

But if PN could be used like a DAM program that would make a huge difference. Now it's "just" a superb converter and you would need something like Photo Mechanic alongside. And the GUI is flat out bad implemented.

Same with DxO - no DAM. This gives LR a very strong point.

 

So Adobe, take a look at Photo Ninja and maybe reverse engineer the demosaicing???

If you prefer PhotoNinja's demosaicing, you can use PhotoNinja in conjunction with Lightroom very easily:

Just save PhotoNinja's output to a folder accessible in Lightroom and manually sync folder after saving in PN, or use auto-import. (OttoImporter works very well for this, once it's set up).

And using both to work on the same photo works well too - i.e. just do the part PN is best at, and then take it the rest of the way with Lr.

One of the advantages of this approach is that rendering in Lr is much faster, so you don't have to spend so much time staring at the "Loading..." indicator.

I was just doing that with DxO as a test - worked great (comparison of DxO with Lr is "out of scope" (too far off topic) )

R

Gerhardt K. wrote:

 

From Lightroom you can "edit in" PhotoNinja.  PhotoNinja will find the raw file to which the tiff refers and then when you are done working on the raw file, it will overwrite Lightroom's tiff.

Even better, I guess.

PS - I got curious - just tried PN - not sure what all the fuss is about. - ok, it has some redeeming qualities, but overall, Lr much better. - you don't think? ( and I mean just the raw rendering aspects ... )

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see somebody give ACR a run for it's money, so to speak, but so far: nobody has. I mean Lr1&2 weren't any better than the rest, if as good (e.g. C1, NX2, DxO...), but the quality of Lr4 is so far unmatched, in my experience. Maybe google will create a competitor with Nik technology :-)

Rob

Rob Cole and Richard K., you are both right. I could take that approach.

Unfortunately that leaves me with two applications to use (three if you count ACDSee too which I use as first quick way to see what can be deleted). And there is that price point...

Sometimes someone comes to me who needs quick results from at it's best technically mediocre quality pictures and I use DxO for that. PhotoNinja would be a great alternative for that kind of things.

In my opinion it gives better - or more appealing - results with nature, architecture and products, but is too "revealing" with models.

And I will sure take a closer look at Rob's OttoImporter of which I never heard before.

Rob,

The highlight/shadow treatment of LR is the best I have seen so far, This is something - especially the highlight recovering - PN is not allowed to do for me. I made a start-point-preset in PN that only takes care of CR2 Demosaicing, Color correction (defaults), colour enhancement (scenic or flat) and most of all: Noise Ninja.

After your previous post and that of Gerhardt K. I've come to this sequence: I first do Lens correction, CA and defringe in LR,  sent the file to PN for he mentioned things and and do the rest  in LR.

And this raises another question: I somehow think it is best to do the Lens correction and so before sending a file to an other application, be it Photoshop, Photo Ninja or OnOne Perfect Suite 7. But is this the right approach or should these corrections be made afterwards or doesn't it even matter?

About your Survey: Yes, I've spent much much more on the hardware and that's why there isn't that much left for the software...

Greetings, Harrie