Fuji X-Pro1

Over the past few weeks, support for Fuji's X-Trans sensor, as found in the X-Pro, X-E1 and the new X100s has gone from minimal to quite extensive. Phase One have for the the first time shipped a product with support (Capture One V7.1) and Adobe (with Lightroom 4.4RC and Adobe Camera Raw 7.4) have improved their X-Trans support. In addition, AccuRaw is close to release as a commercial product.

In previous blog posts (here, here, here, here and here) I've compared the then-current raw developer options, and discussed why demosaicing the X-Trans sensor is difficult. On various photo forums, Capture One has had a largely enthusiastic reception, while Adobe's offering has had a more mixed reception, some praising it, but other complaining of softness, blown blue channels and various artifacts.

How do they really stack up? Let's see: ......

Conclusion - How do they stack up?

Firstly, Adobe's products, even in the new LR 4.4RC/ACR7.4 form, still don't stack up. Although much improved over the previous generation, they still have excessive chroma smearing relative to image resolution.  If you were to select a raw processor purely on the basis of getting the maximum out of your X-Trans based camera, Lightroom wouldn't be it.

The other products are much more evenly matched - in my view, technically they're at the same level, just making slightly different choices as to the trade-off between chroma smearing and resolution that the X-Trans sensor brings with it. AccuRaw has the advantage that you can adjust that trade-off to suit yourself and the nature of the image - e.g., for landscapes you can generally use the "maximum resolution" setting because artifacts won't show. However, AccuRaw doesn't have the features that either Capture One or SILKYPIX have. 

So really, it's a choice, and that's a big win for users, and a massive step forward from just a few weeks ago. Nine months ago, my comment on the X-Trans was that with a good raw developer, it was almost as good as a conventional sensor. And "almost as good" is actually mostly enough - practically, with the new raw developers, the difference between a conventional sensor and a X-Trans sensor is small enough to get lost in differences in lens performance, etc. There are now enough good raw developers that most users will be able to find one that works for them.

If the users are the winners here, who are the losers? Adobe certainly haven't covered themselves with glory - they have huge reserves of money and probably the best engineering talent in the business, but don't seem to have been able to apply it. Fuji is also a loser. It's ten months since I first blogger about the X-Trans processor, and so far it's delivered nothing to justify the hype. Finally, the really big losers are the many camera "reviewers" out there that uncritically repeated Fuji's claims about the X-Trans sensor. To their credit, some reviewers did raise warning flags - Sean Reid and Thom Hogan to mention two, but they were the exceptions. So next time you read a camera review, here's a suggestion - take look at what they wrote about the X-Pro when it was introduced, and judge accordingly.

Well, I wasn't expecting to come back to the topic of Fuji, the X-Pro1 and its X-Trans sensor. However, I have been putting a lot of work into the suppression of artifacts when demosaicing. A lot more work than I had intended to, but that's another story. This is for a new product that I hope to release in a few weeks time (several months later than I'd hoped). But I did stumble into a better understanding of the nature of the chroma smearing (or watercolor effect, as it has also become known). The previous posts about Demosaicing the Fuji X-Pro1 are here, here and here. In previous posts, I compared renderings from Adobe Camera Raw, SILKYPIX and Fuji's in-camera JPEG processing, as well as DCRAW and RPP. Finally, I compared those renderings to renderings from PhotoRaw, both in its "retail" configuration, and in modified form with post demosiac filtering. Practically, DCRAW and RPP were pretty much outclassed -- they use VNG algorithms that generate substantial zipper effects. In post three, I hypothesized that the chroma smearing effect that you see very visibly in the ACR conversion, and to a lesser extent in the SILKYPIX conversion, was due to filtering, possibly mean filtering post demosaic. I now think that I was probably wrong, or at least partially wrong - the effect is due to filtering, but not mean filtering post demosaic. Rather, it's as a result of filtering during the demosaic process itself.....

In a previous post, I has mentioned the existence of a "new product". Well, AccuRaw is now in a closed beta. AccuRaw isn't of course aimed at the X-Pro specifically. AccuRaw is, as its name suggests, intended to deliver technically accurate raw conversion rather than the "Hollywood colors" conversions that most current raw developers deliver by default. But one part of what AccuRaw does to to give very fined grained control over the internal operation of the demosaic process. Specifically, it has sliders that control artifact suppression in luminance and chrominance, and post-demosaic chroma filtration. So you can tune the demosaic to suit your camera, the nature of the subject, etc, rather than have the one-size-fits-all of the mainstream raw developers.

Of course, this makes AccuRaw potentially useful to owners of camera with X-Trans sensors. So here's a quick comparison showing AccuRaw vs the other guys....