I realize I've been away from this forum for some time. That's because I've just been extremely busy running a film processing lab, and developing my scanning software Simple Image Tools into something that I can make available for others to use.
With that being said, I'm looking to see what cameras and hardware/OS/Platform most people use so I can target an initial audience for beta testing and support to get the widest spread. If this is something you might want to participate in, just respond here with what you use.
What is Simple Image Tools? It's an in-house digital camera film scanning software application written by me for use in my film processing lab. I've been using it almost exclusively since roughly 2018-2019 time frame and have been eating my own dog food and improving it this whole time. It's been through many revisions in that time period, and many of you used my services and have seen scans from it for a while, though if you've not sent film in for processing recently, then you've only seen early outputs. It's done nothing but get better since.
At any rate, I've had multiple people here (and elsewhere) express an interest in having this tool available for their own use. I'm not against this, as long as I can support it, but... this tool was originally written to work in a high volume lab environment and does not have a very user friendly interface, and in many respects, was missing major pieces of UI functionality in favor of configuration files and was originally designed to generate DNG files and be used primarily alongside Adobe's software suite.
Well, that was then. Now:
1. Uses libraw and natively supports most cameras libraw supports, though in the interest keeping things sane for me, I will have a supported cameras list. Technically, it can do it, but it does actually have to do it acceptably, so needs to be officially supported by me.
2. Outputs generic baseline tiff files with embedded ICC profile that can be used with anything that supports tiff files, so no reliance on Adobe products.
3. Runs as a standalone (with a much nicer looking) GUI application that does everything internally, so no reliance on any third party paid software. Uses Libraw, libtiff, littlecms internally.
4. Planned support for different scanning profiles for those that want to do their own custom profiles, though the current baseline c-41 is pretty good, can do C-41, E-6, and BW.
5. It's a full on multithreaded monster that will use as many cores as you can throw at it. More processing cores means it processes the frames in a roll faster. You're only limited by processing cores, ram, and how fast your storage is.
6. Implemented using as much generic code as possible with plans to support multiple platforms.
Point 6 is where you guys and gals come in. I personally use x86-64 on FreeBSD and MacOS (with no plans to change that any time soon), but I also fully recognize that other people use other stuff.... So... what is this other stuff you guys/gals use?
I'm still probably 3-6 months away from having something ready that can be tested by the general public, but I'm close enough that I want to focus efforts on what most people that would be interested in this are using.
So let's have at it. List your stuff out.
With that being said, I'm looking to see what cameras and hardware/OS/Platform most people use so I can target an initial audience for beta testing and support to get the widest spread. If this is something you might want to participate in, just respond here with what you use.
What is Simple Image Tools? It's an in-house digital camera film scanning software application written by me for use in my film processing lab. I've been using it almost exclusively since roughly 2018-2019 time frame and have been eating my own dog food and improving it this whole time. It's been through many revisions in that time period, and many of you used my services and have seen scans from it for a while, though if you've not sent film in for processing recently, then you've only seen early outputs. It's done nothing but get better since.
At any rate, I've had multiple people here (and elsewhere) express an interest in having this tool available for their own use. I'm not against this, as long as I can support it, but... this tool was originally written to work in a high volume lab environment and does not have a very user friendly interface, and in many respects, was missing major pieces of UI functionality in favor of configuration files and was originally designed to generate DNG files and be used primarily alongside Adobe's software suite.
Well, that was then. Now:
1. Uses libraw and natively supports most cameras libraw supports, though in the interest keeping things sane for me, I will have a supported cameras list. Technically, it can do it, but it does actually have to do it acceptably, so needs to be officially supported by me.
2. Outputs generic baseline tiff files with embedded ICC profile that can be used with anything that supports tiff files, so no reliance on Adobe products.
3. Runs as a standalone (with a much nicer looking) GUI application that does everything internally, so no reliance on any third party paid software. Uses Libraw, libtiff, littlecms internally.
4. Planned support for different scanning profiles for those that want to do their own custom profiles, though the current baseline c-41 is pretty good, can do C-41, E-6, and BW.
5. It's a full on multithreaded monster that will use as many cores as you can throw at it. More processing cores means it processes the frames in a roll faster. You're only limited by processing cores, ram, and how fast your storage is.
6. Implemented using as much generic code as possible with plans to support multiple platforms.
Point 6 is where you guys and gals come in. I personally use x86-64 on FreeBSD and MacOS (with no plans to change that any time soon), but I also fully recognize that other people use other stuff.... So... what is this other stuff you guys/gals use?
I'm still probably 3-6 months away from having something ready that can be tested by the general public, but I'm close enough that I want to focus efforts on what most people that would be interested in this are using.
So let's have at it. List your stuff out.
