Comments on lightzone: Linear Color Space Editing

Well, maybe Timo sleeps better now ;^)

2007-05-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe Timo sleeps better now ;^)

Well Timo could feel vindicated because if you bri...

2007-05-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

Well Timo could feel vindicated because if you bring an existing rendered image into Camera Raw or Lightroom, it's getting converted to a linear encoded color space with ProPhoto primaries for ALL processing (sometimes in 8-bit OUCH). Printing too (unless its draft mode).

Andrew,yes I know that Timo's stuff is controversi...

2007-05-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Andrew,

yes I know that Timo's stuff is controversial, but I think that he's spot on on most of what he's talking about. I'm an engineer (I have a master degree in EE and a PhD in CS) and I've been doing signal processing in many different fields for all my life, long enough to understand that gamma adjusted color spaces are not good for serious image processing.

Adobe seems to have gotten that too and I hear that Lightroom uses a linear color space internally too.

My opinion about "every serious color scientist working with imaging" is actually not very high.

As of today color science is vastly vodoo science, a pile of controversial information, half baked theories developed in a particular context and used in another where they do not really apply. Most of the stuff is obsolete and unapplicable to modern imaging and you really wonder how come nobody can write a decent book about modern digital image processing.

Moreover the issue is largely political, where the opinions of the "serious color scientists" are usually used to protect vested interests of large corporations. Poor Timo from Finland doesn't stand a chance...

Fabio, do you release that virtually every serious...

2007-05-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Fabio, do you release that virtually every serious color scientist working with imaging, many of the Photoshop engineers, and a pile of other's in the imaging industry have labelled Timo's theories as patiently ridiculously and have done so for many, many years.

Hi Samir,my "problem" with photoshop is that it do...

2006-11-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

Hi Samir,

my "problem" with photoshop is that it doesn't allow you to develop an intuition. It uses a purely numeric metaphor for image retouching which I believe is foreign to photography.

LightZone tries to use the experience of 150 years of photography, syntesized in the Zone System, to provide you with a tool that allows you to directly relate to your images and what you want to do with them, withour artificial numeric intermediaries...

Cheers,

- Fabio

Fabio,I have been using LZ2.0 for about 1 month an...

2006-11-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

Fabio,
I have been using LZ2.0 for about 1 month and I love it. But to be honest I fail to understand what is it you don't like in Photoshop. Could you better explain how different is LZ compared to PS?

Wow! I just found out about linear editing myself ...

2006-09-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

Wow! I just found out about linear editing myself and I fully agree with you. It pays off bigtime.

I currently use a workflow based on a bash script that calls DCRAW and ImageMagick's convert utility to get around this hurdle, but it only works on batches of well-exposed, colourcast-free images and it is limited to my camera, the Powershot Pro1.

I am anxious to try out Lightzone and I will download the Linux version if it is still available.