I bought a Panasonic ZS100 recently, and although I liked the camera, I was a bit disappointed with the quality and detail on the jpegs it produces. I own an older version of Lightroom, which would not support the camera, and ON1 Photo Raw 2018, which worked for me for the Sony A6000, but the raw conversion for the Panasonic was not good at all. After trying the demo for DXO, and a couple other software, I decided to bite the bullet and Purchase a license for the Elite copy. I’m really happy and impressed with the speed and quality of the conversions. I do have some small requests and criticisms toward the software though:
It needs a radial mask control for local adjustments.
A simple feature like a vignette should not be locked out in the FilmPack 5 plugin. Would be solved by having a simple radial mask maybe. More elaborate vignettes controls/shapes are fine to leave into the FilmPack.
For the same measure, a simple channel mixer for B/W conversion should not only be part of the FilmPack 5 Elite plugin. Also, without the channel mixer, the ‘essential’ version of FilmPack 5 is IMO completely useless. Keep all the presets for looks and grained locked out into a paid plugin, but vignette and channel mixer are too basic and included tools in almost all raw conversion programs I’ve tested.
The hue/saturation control needs more color selections, or color pickers for specific grades. It doesn’t have enough control to be useful. Also, the color selections produce unnatural, harsh masks that are not useful.
Display videos on browser - I don’t need/want playback, but for my workflow it is better to know that they are there, so that I can drag and drop them to organize along with the rest of my photos.
Finally, have an option to display photos for sub directories. This is the main usability feature that I miss with the Library compared to Lightroom, On1, etc.
Anyway, great work and I hope we keep getting improvements. With these few things I would be %100 satisfied.
I have a few responses/suggestions to some of your points;
I suspect that this may(?) relate to a misunderstanding of how U-point technology works for local adjustments … The U-point circle does NOT define the total absolute area that will be impacted by the Control-Point (as I also originally misunderstood to be the case) … Instead, it defines the “area of influence” of the Control-Point.
… see here for further discussion/explanation - with example
I’m not sure where you found the vignette feature “locked out” (unless it was for some specific FP filter, perhaps?). In any case, if you have both PL and FP then you don’t really need to work directly within FP at all - as all the FP tools will be incorporated into the PhotoLab interface … So, for example, all the controls for vignetting will be available directly from PL. <-FP PL->
I understand how the U-points work (love them, by the way). I would ask to have a radial mask, same as we have the gradient tool, for a radial shaped gradient. As to the second point, I have used the FP trial and can see the vignette tool in Photolab. My point is that it is $80 dollars (non-sale price) just to get a super basic tool that should be included by default. Alternatively, a radial mask solves the issue as you can create a vignette manually. A vignette or radial mask tool isn’t rocket science, and even crappy web based tools have them.
[quote=“flowerdealer, post:3, topic:6287, full:true”]
A vignette or radial mask tool isn’t rocket science, and even crappy web based tools have them.
[/quote]
A radial mask (radial filter) has been requested in a previous post und has long been promised. See here: Request for a radial filter
Still waiting.
Best
Wolf
Good to know, hopefully it will be implemented soon. I know how to get around the limitation. My comment is more a criticism about this arbitrary limitation in the Photolab 2 Elite toolset (no creative vignettes), and the bad value proposition of FilmPack 5 essential, for its price.
<-FP PL->
