What is the best way to process Leaf .mos files? I won't have thousands and they will all be of landscapes or images which don't feature people. I can open them in Leaf Capture or in Photoshop with Digital Negative converter. Those programs allow me to save the files in Photoshop format.

I am familiar with Photoshop and I would prefer to do all adjustments in that program. Leaf Capture and Digital Negative converter have lots of adjustment tools and options, most of which seem to me to have Photoshop equivalents. What do I miss out on by skipping those adjustments and doing them all in Photoshop?

I repeat that I won't have large batches of files to process. I will be printing the images on paper

If L Capture or A Digital Negative converter offer advantages, which is better? I need to keep my learning time to a minimum!

Hope you can help me!
Rogerxnz

I found Leaf Capture producing the best quality of images together with Iridient Raw Developer. LC11 is slow, RD is a lot faster. Both produce pretty similar files, RD even has the same profiles (or similar) as LC11.

LC11 is more user friendly, very easy and excellent in working tethered.

I used LC or RD for anything portrait and low volume. I used to use LC tethered and process via the image processor in the Bridge with PS for the high volume stuff (catalogue, pack, still, etc..).

With the profile you are mentioning I would advise to either use LC11 or RD.

I have no extensive experience with Lightroom.

Hi Roger.
I agree with Dustbak's comments.
I also have found that Leaf Capture gives my files from the Aptus 22 the greatest amount of detail.
To test, you should process a highly detailed/textured landscape file in each program LC11 and Adobe Camera Raw, then open each one in Photoshop and zoom into a fine detailed area.
You may find that the LC file holds a bit more.
Adobe CS3 and the latest Lightroom have caught up a fair bit though... there is a "Detail" slider
under the sharpening section that can help bring it closer to the quality of Leaf Capture.

If you cant see any difference I would then recommend using Lightroom, or CS3.
The colour controls in Lightroom are unbeatable, and it is great for applying colour settings across
a group of similar photos and batch processing.
Plus with it's Highlight and Shadow recovery sliders, you can really save a lot of information in you Skies in landscape shots for etc.

BTW. I don't see any reason to convert your .mos files to DNG, as they are supported natively in
ACR and Lightroom... but you may have your reasons.

all the best.
A

as an aside, has anyone heard status on the Windows version of Capture (would be happy with even a beta)? I've tried contacting Leaf/Kodak, but haven't been able to get a reply from anyone there

thanks

jim

I like Leaf Capture for one main thing. The moire filter is fantastic for some kinds of moire. It saved my bacon on an important shoot last year. LC 11 is now a very nice piece of software, particularly for tethered shooting.

Raw Developer, in my view, produces better final files than Leaf software. This is mainly because of its sharpening algorithm and noise handling. I don't like the way that the leaf software does this.

For everyday use I use lightroom for speed. I use Leaf Capture for tethering. I then use RD to process a few key files when I want large prints.

hey mate do a little search on my posting history
I managed to find a version of lc11 I use on my pc

OK, I'm getting the message that processing in LC can help get out the detail in an image. I forgot to mention that many images will be composited with others in CS3.

Should I still process those images in LC? Yes, to get more detail?

If the images are going to be further processed in CS3, should I still sharpen them in LC?

Thank you for your help.
rogerxnz

I would process them in LC, if necessary to 16bits tiff (when you plan on doing extensive post processing). You have to experiment with sharpening, I normally did a bit of pre-sharpening in LC and the largest part of sharpening at the end in PS (also based on my final output).

SilkyPix started to support Leaf backs. Why won't we make a comparison (with 100% crops) of different converters using the same Leaf RAW file. Can anyone share a sample RAW for this purpose?

If it is not too late, I would like to upload a small part of an Aptus 17 file for people to experiment with. I am particularly keen to compare Leaf Capture with Adobe Camera Raw. My "test" supports the view that LC11 brings out more detail than ACR but I don't know enough about ACR to know if I am doing the best in that program.

The next question is: how do I upload the (about 9MB) file? I have no way of hosting it and this forum will not accept the file.

Open an account (for example) on "YouSendIt" (www.yousendit.com): it's free and let you upload large files up for people to download them during a certain period of time or for a certain amount of downloads.

When you have created your account and uploaded the file, make sure to send it to yourself at your email address. You will then get an automated reply with an URL link, like "http://download.yousendit.com/E380148B3A3E751B".
Post this URL here and everybody will be able to download it.

Simple, free and fast.

Best regards,
Thierry

I think good comments have been made so far.

While I agree LC11 can produce slightly more pinpoint detail than Adobe options, Lightroom as a whole is just much more superior in tool set with some very unique tools.

I use LC11 for my A22 to tether, but I have committed to using Lightroom now for all the processing work, with the exception of special cases as mentioned already like moire removal.

Funny thing is that I find less moire using LR anyway. Can't figure out why, but moire seems to show up more in LC11. I have Raw Developer for 2 years now but I see the workflow through it as slower, workflow, not related to quality of file.

With LR having tools like the TAT curve and color adjustments, I just can't go back to LC11 for bulk processing. And with the new features for LR 2 beta, I am amazed just how much can be done without needing Photoshop. Having the ability to import photos with default settings for my A22 to my taste is just too good to pass on. I have "all edges" on default for color fringing and it's night and day from other converters in that quality aspect.

Fewer people blow up their images than those who print at or lower than the native size so bleeding an image to get every last drop of detail may be a consuming goal which clouds good workflow, better tools and many other things. Trust me, I have been through it for many years and wised up. Drink the kool-aide, LR offers a lot in quality and tools for Leaf files. LC11 does and will always have its place though.

The overwhelming amount of shoots I have done with the Aptus have been printed below the captured file size. The overwhelming amount of personal and art photos have been printed way above the native file size and I don't see any suffereing in image quality from using LR.

Thank you, Thierry. I've opened a sendit.com account but my idea was to let people process a Leaf cmos file in ACR and compare their results with processing the same image in LC11. Now, I need to find out how to crop a cmos file down to 100MB (the limit of the free sendit.com service).

Looking at the LC manual, it says that you can crop but "The crop is effective only when the image is processed to a standard format. No crop is implemented to MOS or HDR formats."

So, is there another way to produce a small cmos file for testing?
Roger

Huh...? An aptus17 .mos file is supposed to be only about 40MB (even a bit less)? How can your files be 100MB? You should be able to send .mos files via Yousendit without any problem.

You cannot crop a raw file and save it again as a raw file. A functionality that can be very useful but unfortunately I have not seen it yet implemented in any software used by the MFDB manufacturers.

Leaf Capture V8 allows you to set a crop and to then use "Save As" > Select "Mosaic" and away you go...

Also, a compressed A17 file is about 22MB so should not give any trouble loading through yousendit.com

Yair

Thx for the correction Yair! Why isn't this implemented in LC11 or is it?

Not yet

Yair

OK, I got it sorted. I have upload a file to: http://download.yousendit.com/50C62828747F3AF5

It will be there for 7 days or 100 downloads.

I have uploaded this file because I tested advice given above that LC11 can bring out more detail than ACR and I found that, with this file, that seems to be the case BUT I don't know that I am doing justice to ACR because of my lack of knowledge. Not that I am an expert in LC11 either.

So what program do you think brings out the best with this file?

If you upload your results, can I suggest you focus on the area of the file that I have included in the attached image (note the cobweb below the top edge) and do not apply any sharpening so we can compare apples with apples.

I look forward to your views.
Roger

PS What is the largest file size that can be uploaded to this forum?


Click to view attachment

Just a quick question, there are a few things in Leaf capture v8 that I have not seen yet in 11, this was one of them, the other is the ability to set colour balance for shadow, mid tone and highlight independently using the 3 eyedroppers. Any plans to implement this most useful feature?

Cheers.

The three gray tone balance function is in LC 11. It's there at Adjust> Gray Balance> Advanced.

Thanks for that, well hidden in plain sight as they say.

Now all I need is for it to work with MOS files from all leaf backs, and I'll be able to ditch v8 at last. I have a couple of older multi shot Cantare XY's that make me about $110k a year in product work, that you will have to pry from my cold dead hands. So I want to be able to use the one solution for them and the Valeo22, and any future Leaf back I buy. but v11 seems to not work with older .MOS files, once again, am I missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance for any bright ideas.

the beta for windows has been available for a couple of months on the leaf america site:
http://leafamerica.com/download_software.asp