RAW format and Lightroom questions

[PhilBurton]

Can the Silverfast RAW format file be read by Adobe Lightroom? Are there any limitations compared with a digital camera RAW file? For my digital photos, I always shoot NEF format, rather than JPG.

Is the DNG produced by Vuescan useable by Adobe Lightroom? Any important limitations?

Phil Burton

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Yes it is.

 

[jtk]

Excellent video!

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Excellent video!

Thanks

 

[Stephen Prunier]

Excellent video Chris. I always enjoy watching and learning from you on your YouTube channel.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Is the DNG produced by Vuescan useable by Adobe Lightroom? Any important limitations?

I think I answered this before. Yes, the DNG files are usable by adobe LR. Limitations? The IR channel is ignored as LR doesn’t support that.

 

[PhilBurton]

I think I answered this before. Yes, the DNG files are usable by adobe LR. Limitations? The IR channel is ignored as LR doesn’t support that.

Thanks, and sorry if I repeated myself.

Right now, I'm waiting on the Silverfast forum to work again, so I can post some questions there. I need to compare Silverfast and Vuescan, and I know that Silverfast is complicated enough that I need access to the forum. But the forum has apparently been done for a while, and I couldn't do a simple password reset.

 

[jtk]

Silverfast has a long history of poor communication.

 

[Kodachromeguy]

Can an older Photoshop, such as CS3 or CS5, read the Silverfast RAW format? If yes, any advantages or reason to do so?

 

[juan]

What is the advantage of a RAW file over a lossless tif file?

 

[jtk]

IMO there is no advantage ... It's a matter of particular unique workflows.

 

[jtk]

LR is partially best understood as a mass organizatioo and post-production convenience tool.

Many LR users who print their own would prefer Nik.

LR is good for high volume repetitive work such as sports, social situations etc.

Nik is better for those who think in terms of single shots. When I photograph I usually previsualize a finished print that I will personally make..Nik with occasional PS tweaks serves my purposes better than LR.

Anyone differ?

 

[Adrian Bacon]

What is the advantage of a RAW file over a lossless tif file?

There is one major difference: a raw file is exactly that. Raw CFA samples off of an image sensor. There is no associated color space, and usually the file is actually just a monochrome file with some tags to tell the raw converter how to interpret the samples to make a color image.

A lossless tif file on the other hand is post raw conversion. For color it has 3 samples per color and the samples conform to a color space. The file usually has an ICC profile embedded in it. The samples are typically gamma encoded or something like 2.2. A lossless tif file is typically bigger than a raw file because the raw file is the rggb samples and the tiff file has been debayered into rgb samples for each pixel.

You can think of a raw file as a developed film negative. It has image data but needs more work/processing to get a usable image. The lossless tif can be thought of as an optical print of a film negative in that you did some work to get a usable image. That’s a simplified difference between the two. You can’t really say one has an advantage over the other one because that’s like asking what the advantage of a film negative over a print is. They’re not the same thing.

 

[juan]

Thanks all.