Dear DXO Staff, when can we use Photolab 5 for Sony ARW-files from A7 IV too?

Is there a date we can start to long for?

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Good morning @Stenis ,

Aproximately in March.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

Thank you for the info. One thing I’m wondering a little about is why you can’t offer a possibility to open and process images where there isn’t any profiles available yet. There are other converters that allow that?

From what I know DNG is not an option either because the limitation is based on the fact that there has to be a profile for the camera used anyway.

Today “Lens Correction” is not active if lens is not supported but still we can at least open it if the there is a camera profile present. Why not let the images pass and let the photographers decide if they want på process them with limited support or not? What is stopping you from doing this?

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Just so you know Svetlana, Capture One managed to handle A7 IV RAW 21 of oktober last year when it was tested at this site below. Sad to say but I think we have found an area of urgent improvement for you. From my horizon your slow handling of this issue doesn’t impress at all. How come the big difference here? This is definitely an embarrasing disadvantage for you thatcyou ought to address…

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I am not a Capture One user but based on my search it would appear that that they did not support that camera until version 22 15.0 was released in mid December, not October. Lightroom also added support on December 13th. Furthermore, Sony did not start shipping that camera until Christmas which was less than a month ago.

PhotoLab’s support for this camera is lagging behind Capture One and Adobe which can be frustrating for users. Your post suggests that DxO is taking an inordinately long time to include support for this camera.in PhotoLab compared to its competition. I don’t believe that is the case just yet, although it may be depending upon how much longer it takes.

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@mwsilvers - Mark

For once in my life - or maybee two I think we here in Sweden (on the same latitudes as your Alaska) seem to have been in front of you in Sonys priority lists for the shipping of A7 IV. The other time was when I got a very early delivery of a NEX 7. Gary Friedman, the one and only who has written us friendly manuals for so many years to our Sony cameras, asked me pretty desperately if he could borrow mine. That time it was more than a month after I got mine, so there seem to be some justice out there in the world after all or maybe we just live closer to Santa.

Quote below from a mail sent to me the 3rd of December from Scandinavian Photo in Stockholm. It says that they now have received the A7 IV bode I had ordered some weeks earlier. The next day I took the boat from Vaxholm, the island in the Baltic Sea archipelago I live on, to Scandinavian Photo in Stockholm to fetch my camera.

Quote:

Order: FO1945540

fre 2021-12-03 10:25

Hej!

Vi har nu fått in A7 IV Body till din order!

För att kunna leverera beställningen till dig ber vi välja betalsätt via följande länk:

Länken är endast aktiv i 24h. Utebliver betalningen efter tidsspannet kommer ordern per automatik att tas bort.

Meddela gärna oss via mejl när betalningen är gjord eller om ordern ej är aktuell för dig längre,
Tack på förhand!

Med vänlig hälsning
Joel Björn
Customer Service

End of quote

I was also just quoting the “Phoblographer” and their review where they wrote:

# Improved Animal and Face Detection! Sony A7 IV Review

21. Oct. 2021

… and they wrote:

"I’m also very appreciative of how well the RAW files play with Capture One. It seems that Sony is paying attention to the fact that many photographers don’t enjoy editing for hours on end. I’d love to see more creative looks that are usually only achievable via post-processing become available." (End of quote)

So we might have got our A7 IV-bodies close to a month before you in the US and if DXO had been up to the same developing speed concerning import profiles as the competition I could have used Photolab with my A7 IV ARW-files for more than a month now but DXO has told me/us that we shouldn´t expect anything before March. I still think that´s to loose too much of the early product cycle to be OK relative the competition.

This rises an important question: How is it these days with DXO and it´s profiles after they split up the company in two some wears ago?

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I suppose you could always offer to drive down to Paris and lend them your camera :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :laughing:

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I´ll think of it. It´a few years since I was in Paris. I hate the winter here and this feeling gets worse for every year I live. So it sounds really tempting in fact. … besides I don´t use cars at all because boats are more practical really where I live. What´s wrong with flying? A lot of people normally leaves this country in the winter time but Omikron/Covid has put a brutal halt to that still I´m afraid.

… to get to the point: I didn´t understand why Sony sent me a NEX 7 more than a mont before they sent one to Gary Friedman the author of really helpful friendly manuals for all Sony system cameras that probably promoted their camras quite a bit and I don´t understand why they didn´t send DXO one from the very beginning of their priority list instead of sending one to me. It just doesn´t make sense at all. I refuse to believe it is just because Sony are especially eager to promote their own converter Imaging Edge.

The JPEG-quality is also really good straight out of the A7 IV, so it´s not a catastrophy or a panic because it still looks really good especially after some minor tweaks in Photolab but it would be nice to be able to see the full potential in low light conditions on high ISO levels with Deep Prime too.

Reading this – are you on a run?

No but I’m planning to as soon as it’s possible and resonably safe but right now we might have the highest spreading rate of Omicron in western Europe.

One of the main indicators that identifies an immature business bransch is lack of standardisation.

All these different RAW-formats that is not standardised even on a brand level despite the files might not differ practically more than a model number in the hexcode of the files, costs a lot for both users and the third party software manufacturers to handle. I have tried once myself changing old Minolta D7D and D5D-files with a hexeditor. I´m tempted to do the same with my A7 IV ARW just to try. I wouldn´t be surprised if it would work just to change these files to A7 III instead.

There are some new ARW-file types now but it might succeed at least with the Lossy compressed files because these we have also in A7 III.

Why has smaller camera manufacturers found Adobe DNG sufficient as a RAW-format when Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fuji hasn´t. We have talked about this since Michael Friedman at Luminous Landscape lifted this issue around 2005 but nothing happens. Why are we still in this mess? Isn´t it about time now that we get a common RAW-file standard that all manufacturers and photographers can relate to and use. We need to concentrate on more vital issues than these pseudo problems. A standard like that should save a lot of costs for the manufacturers and save the users from a lot of inconveniences and irritating non necessary incompatibility issues.

When there is none ISO-standard for RAW to lean on we can at least try to use DNG that is open to use for everyone. The de facto standard setting company in this business has a long time been Adobe. They have already given us TIFF, PDF and XMP for the metadata. Why can´t we trust them with DNG for our RAW?? Many museeums have already standardised on DNG and they are supposed to preserve our cultural heritages for ever. If they trust DNG why can´t the rest of us??

I just downloaded a nice and free hexeditor called “HxD” and tested to change all the three RAW-formats A7 IV supports, uncompressed, lossless and lossy. Lossless is new and is not a part of the RAW-support in A7 III.

From what I can see the only thing I needed to do was to change “ILCE-7M4” to “ILCE-7M3” in two places in the hexcodes of the images with “Search and Replace”. in order to get the A7 IV RAW-files to work with Photolab 5.

All the things that that normally are open with RAW in Photolab like Deep Prime and Lens Correction sharpening works perfectly fine as does the profiles for the lens used.

So what is the big thing they have to do at DXO to fix this when these cameras seems to have very close properties. And all I really have to do is change the model code in the hex code of the images to get it to work fully to my liking. … and what is so important for Sony when supporting different ARW-flavors for different models when these different ARW-flavors doesn´t seem to differ almost at all?

I´m not taking any responsibility if you start using this technique in production and it fucks up your database. I have just shown you an example of how this works - or why it doesn´t to be more precise.

A lossy compressed Sony A7 IV image slightly converted to the A7 III image hexformat. After this minor tweek it was possible to work with my A7IV-files in Photolab 5 in exactly the same manners as if it had been an A7III-file.

The image shows an unfriendly and wet south harbor in Vaxholm Sweden just after a heavy rain. The difference from the summer is striking because Vaxholm use to get around one miljon visitors a year normally and most of them during a very short summer. Vaxholm it is the gateway to the 30 000 islands outside Stockholm in the Stockholm Archipelago, that stretches about 200 kilometers from north to south.

Personally I think that what the camera manufactures forces us to put up with is a bad joke.

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Good morning @Stenis ,

Camera delivery and support is a question to @Marie. Let me draw her attention.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

Hello,

Support of Sony A7 IV RAW files is planned in March.

Regards,
Marie

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Bonjour Marie,

Deux questions :

  • serait-il envisageable d’ajouter les dates prévisionnelles dans la liste des appareils supportés sur votre site DxO.com ? (évidemment, pour ne pas générer de frustration il faut que les dates soient assez fiables). Il y a en effet des demandes récurrentes, sur le forum, sur les dates de mise à disposition des profils ; j’ai moi-même fait une demande sur DxO.com pour un objectif (sans grand espoir, il doit être assez peu utilisé : Laowa 50 mm macro pour MFT)
  • sans dévoiler de secrets, serait-il possible que vous nous expliquiez comment vous procédez pour intégrer un appareil ou un objectif aux profils de PL ?

Merci

Cdt

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@Marie : I know but your competitors has fixed this in Lightroom and Capture One in December. March is way to slow to be acceptable!

I suggest you change this control in Photolab that prevents us from opening RAW-files without camera profiles. Be aware of that there is people that choose to open their RAW-files even in Photolab without any automation activated since they themselves want to be in control.

As I have shown above you can let us use an A7III profile instead of a nonpresent A7 IV-profile. Sometimes Photolab makes mistake too with recognizing the equipment like lenses and suggests a Canon-lens instead of a Sigma for example.

We just need to get in! As long as we can get in we’ll manage and know how to handle the job. Closing us out like you do will force professional photographers to look elsewhere for a converter.

Imagine a pro decides to buy an A7IV, do you really think a person like that who has to get up and running directly can wait 3 or 4 months for you to make a profile? … a profile that doesn’t need to bee any different than the one for the previous version A7III to work perfectly fine. What is it that takes you so long to fix?

Suggestion: Even if it’s pretty easy to change the hexcode in my A7IV-files as I have shown you above it’s not a solution I like. It would be far better to be able to open these files in the same way as Windows lets us run old software in a “compatibility mode”. So instead of rejecting my A7IV-files you could open a dialogue box and let me “emulate” an A7III-profile by letting me select that camera in a drop down box instead or just let me in. You need a logic that uses a profile I select if there is no matching profile and use the right profile when you have made one.

As it’s now it’s totally unacceptable. I know this isn’t really your fault that the camera manufacturers still use proprietary RAW-formats but you could easily help us a lot if you open a way to handle the problem in the mean time we are waiting for a matching profile. In doing so you will be able to give us a feature your competition not really have and make Photolab even more useful to your customers instead of forcing them to look for other software that happens to get updated far more rapidly than yours.

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Unfortunately, the major camera manufacturers seem to believe they have a competitive edge by keeping things proprietary (more ‘stickiness’ to try to keep users stuck on their brand). I suspect it would be to their collective advantage to go the standardization route, but there isn’t much evidence they’re considering it.

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@jch2103 : Still it’s not really obvious what a manufacturer like Sony gains when they in the reality creates a unique RAW-variant for every single camera they make. Or maybe they are just not aware fully of the problems their habits are causing downstream in the workflow. Sure, their own converter Imaging Edge, which isn´t bad, will support A7IV-files from day one, but that is of no use for people who has decided to stick with Photolab instead.

I also have hard to understand why DXO is doing what they are doing with these profiles. The difference between an A7 III and an A7IV-file is minimal. An A7IV-profile will give us a slightly different starting point in Photolab but from that startingpoint most people will still change the image to their personal preferences, så what’s the point to be as rigid as DXO is in this matter?

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Here you can see the differences in the metadata between A7IV and A7III. Despite these differences I haven’t experienced any praktical problems opening an A7IV-file in Photolab with the profile for A7III. That’s why I think it would serve us well if DXO could make it possible even to open and work with RAW-files lacking kamera profiles

A7 IV

    <ID make="Sony" model="ILCE-7M4">Sony ILCE-7M4</ID>

    <CFA width="2" height="2">

        <Color x="0" y="0">RED</Color>

        <Color x="1" y="0">GREEN</Color>

        <Color x="0" y="1">GREEN</Color>

        <Color x="1" y="1">BLUE</Color>

    </CFA>

    <Crop x="0" y="0" width="-10" height="0"/>

    <Sensor black="512" white="16383"/>

    <ColorMatrices>

        <ColorMatrix planes="3">

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="0">7460 -2365 -588</ColorMatrixRow>

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="1">-5687 13442 2474</ColorMatrixRow>

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="2">-624 1156 6584</ColorMatrixRow>

        </ColorMatrix>

    </ColorMatrices>

</Camera>

A7 III

    <ID make="Sony" model="ILCE-7M3">Sony ILCE-7M3</ID>

    <CFA width="2" height="2">

        <Color x="0" y="0">RED</Color>

        <Color x="1" y="0">GREEN</Color>

        <Color x="0" y="1">GREEN</Color>

        <Color x="1" y="1">BLUE</Color>

    </CFA>

    <Crop x="0" y="0" width="0" height="0"/>

    <Sensor black="512" white="16300"/>

    <ColorMatrices>

        <ColorMatrix planes="3">

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="0">7374 -2389 -551</ColorMatrixRow>

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="1">-5435 13162 2519</ColorMatrixRow>

            <ColorMatrixRow plane="2">-1006 1795 6552</ColorMatrixRow>

        </ColorMatrix>

    </ColorMatrices>

</Camera>

@Marie and @sgospodarenko

I got a very interesting link from a friend that is also using Sony A7 III. In this link below Dpreview makes a review of Adobe Camera RAW 13 vs Sonys free converter Imaging Edge 3.0.

Adobe Camera Raw vs. Sony Imaging Edge Desktop: Which is your best bet?: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Don´t miss out on the user comments. In these some Sony-users are complaning over the lousy support ACR has for the parameters the users have set in their Sony-cameras. What ACR just ignores but Imaging Edge doesn´t are for example the styles used that Sony calls “Creative Looks” (and the setting made in these styles like sharpness, contrast, saturation … and DRO (Dynamic Range Optimizing) just to name a few. If the photographer has selected BW (black and white) they will still get a color image. So ACR just ignores a lot of the settings the photographer might have done.

Imaging Edge is pretty strong converter today and it´s so good as a tethering tool now, even supporting wireless tethering, that I myself has decided never to upgrade my Capture One 20 again, that I mainly has been using for tethering.

Please also observe a really important point in this discussion:
Imaging Edge has had support for A7 IV RAW (ARW) from day one!!!

So DXO can´t afford lagging like you do with the support for Sony RAW or continue to locking us out from our DXO RAW-converter tools just because you have not managed to fix a profile yet for A7 IV-files or what ever comes in the future.

If you don´t solve these problems promptly and for good, you might even risk that some of your more impatient present Sony-users will migrate to a pretty decent and free alternative like Imaging Edge that always will support their Sony RAW from day one, once their cameras hit the market.

I say this as a warm friend:

DXO, the clock is ticking and the ball is yours now!

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