On Fri, Jan 20, 2012, at 06:43 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> The real key is the *reliable* determination of the clipping point. If
> there's not a reliable fixed point then using "three or four" is no
> protection since there's still the possibility of a one stop error.
Sagelight provides some options when passing a file through raw
conversion. There is a kind of standard import, where the image is
given some sort of modest auto-correct values and looks pretty good.
Another option is to preserve highlights. Even if one accepts the
standard import, there are reminders and a little interface to recover
highlight detail. Another option is simply to import the file with full
highlight recovery as the ruling factor.
If one imports for full highlight recovery, the result can look a bit
too dark. But it looks better pretty quickly after using the fill light
slider to move pixels en masse to the right. In general, Sagelight has
some powerful color tools. Images seem visually exciting without
looking like Velveeta Gone Wrong.
If one values this kind of thing, this is a pretty good editor. I've
been photographing my wife's orchids a good bit of the day and running
upstairs to the computer to test this and that. If I try to match
ACR/Elements with Sagelight, I can get a pretty close match on the
finished photograph, but the Sagelight version looks a little better to
me. The interface is quite a bit more fun to use too. Sagelight has a
great curves tool. I've had to resort to Elements to cope with Canaan
raw files, and it is OK, but its curves tool is a joke. I realize that a
curves tool is a bit like a kick starter on a motorcycle these days, but
I learned to do so much with that tool. And why you can't do some things
in 16 bit mode in Elements that you can do in my ancient copy of PS is
beyond me (e.g., healing brush). I apologize if I am casting aspersions
upon Elements (my version isn't the newest -- 8.0) because I certainly
have not been using it for a long, long time. If I am wrong about it, I
hope someone will correct me.
There are a couple things that Sagelight seems to lack: 1) no way to
alter (i.e., "correct") perspective, and 2) no healing brush thingie. I
have a couple little sensor specks on the 5D that show up in uniformly
blue sky. I whisk the image into PS for clean up and just sharpen while
there because I've got Intellisharpen plugged into my copy of PS and
just find that nothing works better for that task for me.
Really enjoying Sagelight and it couldn't have come along at a better
time. Thanks to Mike L. for calling attention to it.
Joel W.
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