Nov 30, 2008

RAW workflow, an introduction

Back in August I was thinking of doing an informal review of the various RAW workflow applications out there to determine which one would suit me best. I figured with three months off, I'd have plenty of time to do a writeup; I'm not sure how that never came to fruition. Hopefully I still remember enough to come up with something moderately useful in the next few installments. I definitely do not recall enough for a comprehensive review; my methods were neither stringent nor controlled.

Before jumping in, this is an introduction for beginners. What is RAW? Why should I use it? What's the difference between RAW workflow software and Photoshop?

The first digital camera I had, the Canon G1 in 2000, could save files to either RAW or JPEG format. At the time, I couldn't quite figure out the benefit of using RAW files. They were bigger, and they were a pain to "process" on the computer before I could post them online or do anything with them. This recent (and in my opinion, heavily flawed) comparison of the two options reflected my thinking back then: JPEG were easier to post online, RAW files were a hassle and used up all the space on my 128MB CF card. However, when I got my for dSLR, I spent more time playing with RAW, looked into RAW workflow software and eventually moved to shooting RAW exclusively.

The JPEG format was standardized in 1994, and is pretty much the standard for photos stored and displayed online. Pretty much every camera can save its images as a JPEG. JPEG uses a "lossy" compression format, meaning that it will drop detail information to make a smaller file. Most cameras have some quality settings for JPEG to balance the file size and detail level. At the highest quality level, detail is not a problem with JPEG. The primary issue with JPEG is that the range of possible colour values for each pixel is limited compared to RAW. Every pixel is stored as three values representing red, green and blue. In JPEG, each of these values is an 8-bit number, meaning it can range from 0-255.

Now unlike JPEG, there isn't a single RAW format. Rather the term refers to a camera specific format that contains all the "raw" data captured from the camera's sensor, before it's compressed into JPEG. As cameras improve, the RAW files contain more and more data that ends up being lost when compressed to JPEG. On my G1, the RAW file contained 8-bits for each colour component, no better than the JPEG. On modern dSLRs though, the RAW file contains up to 14-bits for each colour, a range of 0-16383. All this extra data is lost when compressing to JPEG. The camera picks a subset out of that range for each colour in order to get the proper white balance and drops the rest. Details in very bright or very dark areas may also be lost in the compression. Camera settings such as contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpness are also applied before saving to JPEG, and cannot be fully undone. Though not available on most point-and-shoot cameras, some form of RAW is available on some high end models and pretty much all dSLRs.

The larger RAW files gives much more flexibility to save not-quite perfect photos, especially when the white balance or exposure are off. These two changes in particular are practically impossible to do well after compression to JPEG. The extra data also lends itself to better results in general with other tweaks, reducing ugly "colour banding". With 4GB CF cards costing under $20, storage is no longer a significant problem; I'd much rather be able to recover an almost-perfect shot. Although modern displays can only show JPEG's 8-bits per component, technology is on the verge of improving this within the next few years. At some point in the future, all the extra data in RAW files would likely translate to richer colours and more detail in bright and dark areas than JPEGs would ever allow.

In addition to the file size, the other primary complaint about RAW files is the time required for processing. Back in 2000, the RAW conversion software that came with my G1 let me open a .CRW (Canon RAW) file, make some tweaks, and then save a JPEG version of the image. It might take a few minutes to go through this process, but even if it took me 3 minutes a photo, then going through say 300 photos from a wedding would still take 15 hours!

This is where the RAW workflow software comes in. Instead of following your average application's model of opening a file, editing and saving (much like Word or Photoshop), workflow software is specifically designed to expedite working photographers process of converting RAW files to JPEGs (or other publishing formats).
Usually this process goes through three main phases:
1) sorting photos, applying "tags" to make them easier to search later, and selecting the photos for publishing over a set of hundreds or thousands of photos taken over a shoot (known to photographers as "editing")
2) tweaking individual image settings of the selected good photos, and changing the picture to appear as desired (known as "postprocessing")
3) converting to a final JPEG (or other format) and printing, or publishing to DVD or the Web.

Workflow applications tend to combine all 3 steps into a single application. Photoshop on the other hand, is a general image processing app, aimed not only at photographers, but also for artists, video postprocessing and editing, game developers, web designers, graphic designers, publishers and even scientist, engineers and architects. Photoshop gives you amazing capabilities for step 2, but you'll need separate applications for steps 1 and 3. Workflow software on the other hand, gives the full package, but lacks the majority of Photoshops features in step 2. You'll be able to complete common photographer postprocessing tasks that apply to the entire image very quickly, with a UI and hotkeys designed specifically for efficiency: fixing white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, "curves", cropping, sharpenning, noise reduction. However, any "special effects" will require a more advanced processing application. You probably won't be able to do stuff like cut the ex-girlfriend out of one image or insert grandma into another, changing the colours or license plate of a car, or removing wrinkles and adjust the unevenly large right eye of your aspiring models.

On the argument of RAW processing taking a long time, you'll realize that step 1 (and perhaps 3) are steps that are required if you take JPEGs anyways. Step 2 will take significant amounts of time if you process each image individually. However, if you just stick to the automatic settings (as you would have by shooting JPEG), and convert to JPEG, it takes about an extra 6 minutes for every 100 images, which is probably manageable for most photographers.

I took a look at three apps: Phase One's Capture One 4, Adobe's Lightroom 2, and Bibble Lab's Bibble 4.10. There's a number of other contenders. Camera manufacturers each have their own RAW conversion software, which I haven't looked at. Apple has Aperture, which is available on Mac only. It's a very serious contender, but since I use Windows, I haven't taken the time to review it. Hopefully I'll have individual discussions up soon.

Nov 29, 2008

Zero.

Went fishing in Capitola and caught nothing. Zippo. Not one bite. So much for getting up at 6am. This is the second attempt, I'm not sure there will be a third. Should have been surfing instead. On the plus side, there's something extremely relaxing in napping in a gently bobbing boat with the warm sun on your face.
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In other non-news, my long weekend productivity has been mostly zero. Not only did I not catch a single fish, I've finally started (and caught up with) the current season of The Office and Heroes, and transforming characters seems to be the common point between the two series. The last few seasons of the Office have actually started to be funny. As Michael Scott has shifted from being tyranical to bumbling, so has the show's humour shifted from mostly uncomfortable awkward moments to actual hilarity. Ryan's schizophrenic shift from the hapless abused temp to the confident wunderkind to the disgraced yet manipulative temp further illustrates how the tone of the show has gradually shifted from season to season.
I had put off Season 3 of Heroes because of the utter disappointment that was Season 2. My hopes were pretty low after seeing this article on the show. Much to my surprise though, I was engrossed through most of episodes 1-9, and was quickly reminded of why the cliffhangers in the first season were so great. The writing keeps you on your toes as the story comes together amongst the twists and turns. The whole premise of the heroes becoming villains and vice versa certainly fleshes out a lot of the character and brings back questions about how we perceived the first season. The only disappointment is now that I'm all caught up in a day, I have to wait weeks between episodes now, just like everyone else.

Nov 28, 2008

A day in the life.

I'm trying to get over the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something better with my time. I'm still in the process of just learning to slack off on the long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Nov 26, 2008

On photography.

I think the question I've heard most often regarding my LOA is "So did you take a lot of pictures?". One answer might be yes, I think I took about 3000 pictures over the three months in europe (plus another 1000 over a weekend in San Francisco). From a numbers perspective, I guess it's reasonably large. But then a lot of them are duplicates, multiple shots of the same subject or scene, maybe with different settings or different angles. So off the top, there's only a fraction of those that contain different subjects. And out of those subjects only a fraction were probably really interesting. And out of the interesting subjects only a fraction were visually appealing.

To say the least I'm not particularly happy or proud of any of the pictures; I don't think I really "accomplished" much in terms of photography in the past few months. My initial lofty goals of intimate portraits of some human condition never came fruition. It never got off the ground. I really just ended up with a collection of tourist photos, distant and detached. I already knew engaging people isn't my forte. I guess I had somehow imagined I'd just get better at it by taking more pictures in an unfamiliar place; perhaps I'd be forced into it by the mere fact that I just didn't know anyone in Amsterdam.

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Obviously, it didn't come so easily, and getting to know random strangers doesn't come naturally either way. I guess I'll just have to make much more of an effort in the future. The first weekend I was in Amsterdam happened to be the gay pride parade. I did manage to take a lot of pictures of mostly drunk partygoers. There's other random pictures of Amsterdam here as well.

The one below's probably one of my favourite shots, from my first few days at the hostel. It's not really a picture of Amsterdam though, it could be a picture of any city. People each with their own destinations and priorities, passing by within a few feet of others with entirely different lives.

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Nov 16, 2008

Brutal Bond.

I don’t know what it is with all these poor reviews of Quantum of Solace.

For the most part it was brilliantly executed and impeccably choreographed. Craig is the most f!@#$%^ badass Bond ever. I think he’d be the first Bond who’d have me scared s!@#less as an adversary. Any complaints might be that he’s less suave (and perhaps less sexy, but I wouldn't know) than the Bonds of old. This Bond is certainly no Dalton, Moore or Pierce pretty pansy boy.

For all the action, you also see in Bond a broken killing machine acting on impulse, a driven psychopath in denial of his murderous inner rage. Yet in between there's moments of compassion before he buries beneath his facade of control. Maybe this was executed a little to deftly, too subtly, but I think for once you see there’s some emotions (albeit dark ones) in Bond, instead of a caricature of a superspy. I suspect however, many Bond fans adore the warm and fuzzy happy Bond.

Overall I liked the way that most Bond elements were much more subtle than the films of old. There's no Q introducing over-the-top gadgets, but who wouldn't give their firstborn grandchild to get at M's multitouch international intelligence database, or Bond's phone with GPS suspect tracking and 3D camera? He doesn't order a martini, but his bartender up in first class certain knows he likes it shaken and not stirred (although that martini ended up being awfully clear for a shaken drink).

Even the plot that everyone complains about as being sparse mostly makes sense. The criminal organization here is no SPECTRE. There's no gaudy plot with Dr. Evil demanding a ransom of $1 million and the world blowing up. Instead they're less flashy, similar to any other profitteering corporation plundering resources from third world countries, insidiously invisible and efficient.

Overall this Bond film is about as realistic as Bond films get after all the flashy elements and cheezy oneliners have been toned down. Despite all that, Bond wreaks some mighty havoc.

Also worth mentioning, the trademark implied-naked-bond-girls opening sequence was one of the less cheesy ones, and the Jack White/Alicia Keys theme is pretty sweet too, up there with "A View to a Kill" and "Live and Let Die".

Nov 15, 2008

Regression.

Back in California. Back at work. Back living with the roommates that I lived with during school in '97. Back to playing video games till 5am, except now only on weekends. Incidentally, the game happens to be Fallout 3. The original Fallout also came out in '97.

So it seems like a regression of sorts. At work a "regression" refers to a bug where a new change breaks something that used to work fine. In that sense, progress almost inevitably leads to regression. Joints that crack a little more. Skin that's a little drier. Injuries that take a little longer to heal. Wrinkles that dig in a little deeper.

Wait, what am I talking about? I'm asian and well protected from solar radiation. Speaking of solar radiation, it's 24C and blazingly sunny. And the battery on my bike is dead. Bummer of a regression.

Nov 7, 2008

Feet planted loosely.

Before leaving Amsterdam I had whipped together one last cake. It was a failure in terms of using up my remaining eggs, butter, sugar and pancake mix - I still had a fair bit of the last two ingredients remaining. As a dense yet moist chocolate cake though, it worked pretty well. Especially surprising since I normally don't bake, and the saying the baking requires precision doesn't mesh well with my throw everything in the pan style. Oh, and it also helped me finish off one box of ice cream.

I was trying to use up the box of dutch pancake mix I had. Dutch pancakes are similar to crepes, so I figure there isn't much rising agent in it, so I suspect it's something like flour/milk powder/egg powder (if that exists), but I suspect this same recipe would work with just flour. It would probably lead to a pretty dense cake, hence the whipped egg whites in the recipe.

2 eggs
2 bars of 70% dark chocolate
8 heaping teaspons of sugar
4 heaping teaspoons of Koopmans pancake mix
1/4 stick of butter

1. Melt butter and chocolate together in a bowl in the microwave. Nuke for short periods of time (20-30 seconds), if it's soft, stir until melted, if not, give it another 20 seconds. Do not burn the chocolate. Let cool so it doesn't cook the eggs when you mix it.
2. Separate the eggs. Whip egg whites until soft peaks form. You should have a full bowl of egg foam, with very little liquid.
3. Beat egg yolks and mix in the sugar.
4. Mix melted chocolate with egg yolk mix.
5. Mix pancake mix into chocolate mix.
6. Fold egg whites into chocolate mix.
7. Pour into ramekins, bake for about 14 minutes at 250F (or until the batter inside does not stick to a stick that's poked into the center).



It amazes me that I've already been back home for a week.

Three months seemed to be just long enough to start getting to know people and finding a place to fit in. I think at two months, I would have been glad to head home, with little more than a bit of experience at a photo agency backoffice, having checked out visa pour l'image, and a few random interesting but ultimately forgettable one-off encounters. In the last month I found that I was actually getting to know people well enought that leaving meant missing newfound friends.

It's been good to be back, I was pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome here. Not having seen friends for three months is enough time for a good few changes. Some couples are now married couples, other married couples are now parents or expecting parents. Sunnyvale Town Center, where we used to go for cheap sushi-maru and dimsum, is now demolished, soon to be built into something else. I got back just in time to watch the first half-black president get elected in the US, after being able to get the European perspective on the importance of the American election.

Overall the past three months weren't as encouraging as I had hoped. I didn't really "figure out" the future, I've gotten home with more questions and fewer answers. There were a few lessons to be learned here and there, and some things did make an impression. I'm much more motivated to learn new languages, I'm reminded of the need to take more initiatives, I've even reaffirmed that my initial impressions of people tend to be pretty accurate. It'll probably be another year before I make up my mind on something significantly new, but since I'm back I think I'll put some of those lessons to use and invest my time here better than I have in the past.

Oh, and how come I've never known of the awesomeness of the Pixies? I mean that song from "Fight Club" was great, although I never knew who it was by. That plus it sounded thoroughly cool when the movie came out in '99, even though "Where Is My Mind" was out in '88!