Is Android Raw format now supported in PL3?

Yeah, I was pretty bemused to find that DNG images from my previous Pixel 2 and current Pixel 4 can’t be processed by Photolab. Looking back through the forum, I can see assurances from DXO staff 18 months ago saying that this was being worked on…

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Indeed the promis is only that they will not be covered before the end of 2019, not that they will in 2020.

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LOL - so we’re not sure of it to be supported! Let’s hope they will as Smartphone photography is increasing because the compact camera market is dead. They would be stupid if not.
And the quality provided by phones RAW files is quite good.

Hello Svetlana, could you ask management to allocate more resources to the completion of the project? It seems that management is not aware of the tremendous potential to make PL attractive for all owners of Android phones that are not currently supported. I guess that if more users ask for it that would also help to prioritize this long standing feature request.You previously mentioned that the feature request is already in the queue so more requests are not necessary, but that may have led to the impression that three is not a lot of interest.

I still use my DSLR but more and more I take pictures with my LG V20 when I do not carry the DSLR with me. The V20 is receiving the Andoid 9 update and is the last flagship camera with removable batteries. This makes it the smartphone of choice for people who need extended battery power and others who do not want to be tracked by interested parties :wink:
Thanks
Harald

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@harald.d Totally right! People taking a huge amount of shots with their smartphones and quality is getting better and better. Even though not all are professional photographers I see a great potential in the market to provide a tool to process and mange the shots.

Despite of that most of the competitors already can handle it! :wink: So @sgospodarenko Svetlana please push it!

Yeah, I noticed that.

If it’s not here by the end of 2019, it needs to be before the end of Q1 of 2020.

Hello guys,

  • We do understand your needs in smartphone DNG support and once again I’ve sent the mail to the dedicated team to show how much this need is supported by you. But guys, it’s not an easy task as it might seem to be. As soon as I get a reply I’ll let you know.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

Hello,

we are aware of the need to support smartphones but this year we focused on catching up usual cameras support and didn’t have resources to work on smartphones. But one goal of 2020 is to be able to support them easily. I’m sorry I can’t give a date of support.

Regards,
Marie

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Of course it’s not easy (phones getting more and more lenses :smiley: ) and resources are mostly the bottleneck. But the posts state that it is worked on since a year now.
But hey, we have only enduser perspective and implementation (also with high quality) maybe much more difficult as it has to fit into the architecture of PL as well (camera module, lens module, jpg, raw)!

So thanks for taking care about this topic! BTW - is there a mailing list about updates to camera/lens modules? Or is it announced via the DXO newsletter?

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Not only the various raw formats for phones but the HEIC format is sorely needed. I can’t use my new PL3, FP5, and VP software on any HEIC files. I am using the HEIC on my new iPhone 11 because the files are much sharper and more detailed than jpeg or dng shot with the ProCamera app. I can also blow the HEIC files up much larger. ON1 software works very nice with HEIC files. Because the files are smaller they work much faster and can be masked very easily without a lot of overhead. With this new computational photography I believe the Iphones and Androids are going to be a huge market. I’ve been able to print 13x19’s at a very good quality using Qimage as print software.

Out of interest - how much of an improvement do you actually get with DPL over out of phone pictures.
Any comparisions by someone?

Of course there’s a real benefit between processing phone vs DPL because of the filters and tools provided.
But the real bummer is DNG which has to be done externally at the moment (speaking for Android and a Pixel 3) or via TIFF from e.g. Affinity Photo and alike.

Hard to say how much of improvement it is. Maybe I find time and the opportunity to post some shots under suboptimal conditions to get you an example.

I have a “new” iPhone 7 Plus that I’ve picked up on clearance. Being a long time Nikon shooter I was expecting great things from Raw~DNG files. Exposing for the highlights…

I was stunned by how much work it took to get the DNGs - in either PhotoLab or Photoshop - to look as good as the “out-of-the camera” HEIC files - and sometimes they didn’t look as good no matter what.

The noise suppression, sharpness, color, etc. is amazing - and I’m using an older iPhone model… not to mention the depth of field effect You can get from the two-lens iPhones.

Only the most extreme dynamic range situation does Raw offer an improvement. PhotoLab’s “Lens Sharpness” typically offers marginal improvement. The “Prime” noise reduction can be very effective.

However, this situation could change when an app offers 16-bit HEIC files which would lend themselves to quality (extensive) editing. Right now I’m using “Halide” & Apple’s standard “Camera” app both of which output currently to 8-bit HEIC. Can’t push these images too far.

The overall point here is HEICs are processed extremely well in-camera and it takes more work with the DNG to get a similar result.

Below is an experimental JPEG output. Checkout the (low) noise. Either Photoshop or PhotoLab can easily smooth that out further.

Below that is an image I took this summer while in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy (taken with an iPhone SE5). This image has been slightly enhanced in Photoshop with a filter similar to DXO’s “Clearview”. Note the two story Rifugio (mountain hut) near the center of the image.

Reduced iPhone 7 Plus JPEG image

100% Crop.
The low noise - especially considering the size (and age) of the sensor - is amazing

iPhone SE5 JPEG - Dolomites
Best viewed at the optional larger size. Nice Dynamic Range.
Slight filtering (equal to “Clearview”) of image. Note the two story Rifugio (mountain hut) at center

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I shot 3 photos 1 with Procamera dng, 1 with Halide dng, and 1 with iPhoto HEIC. Uploaded to On1 and cropped very heavily. Then exported at 110%. Left is Halide, Center is HEIC, and Right is ProCamera. The Heic is a lot clearer with much less noise. The carpeting is much sharper and color is more accurate

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Ok, tried my best. These are 3 files same image *.jpg from Pixel 3 processed in PL, *_RAW.jpg exported as TIFF 16-bit from Affinity and processed in PL and the last exported from Affinity after RAW development.



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Of course the Pixel does a hell of computing in the background - like most of the flagship phones do nower days. As the first image is a HDR+ it’s a stack of several images merged together.
Also I’m not a Pro in Affinity RAW development. An interesting comparison would be PL RAW against the Pixel JPG.

Hi Tom!

Indeed that would be interesting… in my experience with Nikon Raw files I always exposed for the highlights - the shadows could always be brought up and DXO’s “Prime” noise reduction took care of the obvious.

I did not find this to be the case with the iPhone 7+ DNGs (and I’m still experimenting as I’m new to the iPhone 7+). The biggest issue is the deep quarter tones do not respond very well to enhancement like the Nikon’s Raw files did.

Adjustment #1 - A different shooting style is needed where I am slightly over exposing the highlights in order to get the shadows to look better when enhanced… but that means I lose a little something on the high end.

All things considered the little sensors on these phones just aren’t up to it IMO. Most of us worship at the “Church of Raw” and have a inbred bias against the idea that an in-camera processed image could possibly be as good - let alone superior - under many circumstances.

Unquestionably a DNG does better (than 8-bit HEIC) where a very High Dynamic range is required.

Adjustment #2 - Compose the HEIC images differently so extremes in lighting are avoided. Most of the time I found that’s possible without compromising what I wanted in the image.

When HEIC 16-bit images become available in a Camera app (at least I haven’t found one yet - maybe limited by the iOS) I don’t think DNGs will have an advantage under any circumstances.

I any event I’m enjoying the challenge and discoveries of a new shooting regime.

The thing with the new phones is - computational photography. There’s lot going on behind the scene when you take shot. And it’s hard to beat with RAW files.

With the Pixel I was first a little disappointed because it had nearly no manual settings. Using it now for quite a while I don’t miss anything (in most situations).
The produced JPGs are pretty good coming from several stacked, computed and merged images.

While preparing the 3 images above I find it quite hard to beat what the phone produced out of the box.
Of course I’m not superduper smart RAW freak that’s why I would like to have a descent tool to process the shots - and PL is doing pretty well what I found out so far.

Also I think there is still more potential in the phones hardware when manufacturer would aim more to photographers. Most of the phones by now are targeting the ponit-and-shoot folks (that not negative!).

If anyone needs a competent Android raw converter/editor, ON1 photo (at least the latest version) does the job well. Image quality and denoising is not as good as DXO, but it’s much improved in the latest version. I’m switching as I now use my phone camera much more than I use my zs100 Panasonic (and I sold my a6000).

If it can help to list what missing in supported raw files I created a list for wishing support of unsupported raw here Wish list to support old raw files by DXO #photo archive matter and don’t forget to vote by clicking on the button “Vote” below the title.