Fuji Anyone using Raw Photo Processor w/ X Pro

stanleyk

Top Veteran
Location
Taylor, Texas
Here is the site:

Raw Photo Processor (RPP)

This forum has a rather long discussion and the gist seems to be it is much better than Lightroom 4.

raw photo processor (RPP) +Fuji X PRO 1 - Fuji X Forum - Page 11

I'm not very good with computers so I'm naturally leery of downloading this software. That said, I really trust this forum for good information, especially in manner a technologically challenged idiot like myself can understand.

Thanks!!!

SB
 
It's dead easy! I have used RPP on and off for years and it does take a little geting used to but I find that it handles X-Pro files very well.

Yes, currently RPP provides the best RAW conversions, IMHO, for those situations where Lightroom does badly. Others will say Silkypix etc but I prefer to do some minimal conversion in RPP, then convert to TIFF and import into Lightroom for the rest.

Lee
 
I'm probably more like Christi, but I think I will give it a try. I have never shot a RAW file with the X Pro. I had the camera + lenses listed for sale but the only buyer backed out after leaving me a 1/3 deposit. I understood, it's an expensive purchase and to be honest I wouldn't buy one used unless the price was really low. Anyway, thanks so much for the encouragement. I'm going to keep the camera for a while + the X100. I still stink as a photographer, but it gives me something to do while the dogs are having fun creating havoc on the hiking trails. This AM they took off after a huge deer. Something tells me they didn't give too much thought to what they would do if they caught up with it.
 
I'm probably more like Christi, but I think I will give it a try. I have never shot a RAW file with the X Pro. I had the camera + lenses listed for sale but the only buyer backed out after leaving me a 1/3 deposit. I understood, it's an expensive purchase and to be honest I wouldn't buy one used unless the price was really low. Anyway, thanks so much for the encouragement. I'm going to keep the camera for a while + the X100. I still stink as a photographer, but it gives me something to do while the dogs are having fun creating havoc on the hiking trails. This AM they took off after a huge deer. Something tells me they didn't give too much thought to what they would do if they caught up with it.

Hi Stanley

Why did you think of selling them? I bought the X100 last year and just loved its so much that the Pentax K5 I had purchased earlier that year hardly got a look in. I have always been a RAW shooter but with the X100, after a lot of pixel peeping I decided that I could not do better than the JPEGs with any RAW converter. It was quite liberating - at last a company that knows how to produce great JPEGs 'out of the box'. No longer did I have to waste time faffing about with PP, and if I really needed to, the JPEGs were good enough to push around anyway.

When I bought the X-Pro, I assumed the same would be true - and it is true that the JPEGs are great. However, pixel peeping showed me that something a little odd was going on, e.g. distant foliage would maybe just be a little mushy. I know pixel peeping is bad - but the Fuji marketing promise of 'amazing detail' seemed to encourage it. I tried Silkypix but honestly couldn't match the JPEGs - perhaps I didn't give it enough time. Then RPP came along in beta and, wow, detail, real detail. Look closely and there are artefacts too - the odd colour noise, some 'zipper' effects. Everyone was moaning about lack of Lightroom support and then, when it came, it disappointed. Not always, not for every image but any with lots of detail in, it just wipes the detail away. I bet Adobe wish they had left it cooking with their developers a little longer ... I am sure they will fix it.

How much any of this matters, I'm not sure - I haven't printed any yet and do wonder how an A3 print of a scene in JPEG, RPP RAW and Lightroom RAW will compare for the level of detail visible - and even then at normal viewing distances would it matter? There's more to a good photo than detail-level rendering.

The JPEGs with auto-ISO, auto-DR are really great. Sometimes, though, I just prefer the RPP RAW rendering.

I don't plan on selling mine. In fact I sold my K5 and my K20D to partly fund the X-Pro and the 3 lenses. I wish I have had more time to play with it and enjoy it. I still have my X100 but it hasn't seen much action recently, though I really don't see myself selling it ever. I think it is a classic, more so than the X-Pro in a way.

In advising somebody whether RPP and RAW is worth it - if you have any landscapes with quite a lot of detail e.g. distant foliage, or rocks, or maybe stone walls etc - maybe the JPEGs look a little too 'digital', 'plasticky' - try the RAW version in RPP. Choose ' As Shot' White balance, VNG interpolation, maybe one of the TrueFilm simulations (such as K64), save as TIFF and open in Lightroom or whatever and compare with the JPEG at 100% and see what you think.

Enjoy the camera. None of the above may matter!

Lee
 
A couple of shots initially processed in RPP, minor adjustments in LR:

7520228214_422f151096_b.jpg


7501023450_01eebd62b9_b.jpg


Lee
 
Thanks Sapphie!!! I'm going to give it a whirl. Those photos are beautiful!!!!!!!!!

As for the cameras, I'm just not a good photographer try as I might. The past few years have been a very difficult year for me. I've changed jobs three times and moved three times. My parent's and my sister's health isn't very good. My Mom has alzheimer's and my sister has been through two bouts with cancer. I'm a 52 year old divorced man with no kids and three dogs. Somewhere about 51 you start getting a bit philosophical about what it's all about so I've been very prone to depressive moods lately. On top of that, I'm really struggling with my recent rescue dog Ruby. She's just a puppy still but a huge barrel full of trouble and then some. She has already been bitten by rattlesnakes twice in less than 9 months. Those two snake bites cost me more than $3000.

I was a K5 user also. When I got the X100 last year without even noticing I just stopped using the K5. It's still a great camera (I've sold mine + all my Pentax lenses), but as I said, it just more or less sat there. That said, I'm still a huge fan of Pentax. When my grandmother passed away last year she left me and my sister some money. Since I don't have kids, I decided I'd splurge on the one thing I love as much as dogs. I got an X Pro + the three lenses. I really love everything about both Fuji cameras. They force me to slow down and think about what I'm doing. I rarely take more than 24 or so pictures when I take the cameras out. I don't know where I would find the time to look at more to be honest.

But...it still comes down to me being a really bad/mediocre/uninspired/not even marginally talented photographer. Sometimes you just have to give in to the obvious. :)

All that said, I'm going to hang on to the X Pro and the X100. I just don't feel like going through selling them. That becomes time consuming too. It's funny how when you get older time moves so much faster. I never seem to have enough. I saw this fascinating documentary on time perception the other night. Time does actually perceptually move faster as you get older. Kind of stinks......

I'm planning on doing a series of day trips by car around the area I live documenting smaller towns. Small town America is a very surreal (and sometimes frightening place). Until the last couple of years I was a city dweller (Boston, Miami, and Dallas). I'm still trying to decide if I like it. I like the fact there isn't any traffic, but it's very lonely.

Anyway, THANKS AGAIN for the input of RPP. I'm going to download it this week and see what I can do with it. Maybe my photography will get better......(yeah, right....).

THANKS!!

SB
 
Anyway, THANKS AGAIN for the input of RPP. I'm going to download it this week and see what I can do with it. Maybe my photography will get better......(yeah, right....).

THANKS!!

SB

Thanks for your kind comments about the photos and I really feel for you with your parents and sister's health problems. I know what 51 is like .... so can empathise a great deal on that one. We have lost some family in recent years and that just adds to the focus on lack of time. Seems pretty cruel eh - the less time we have left the faster it goes? I have been suffering from this one for years but it does seem to have got worse. Weekends aren't long enough anymore; I begrudge spending time at work when I could/should be with my other half, yet it is this work that allows me to buy cameras that I don't have enough time to use! I try telling myself there's no such thing as 'time', all there is at any moment is just that - the 'moment' but it doesn't work. I know there are many people worse off than me ... so I should be grateful.

As for your abilities as a photographer I have no doubt that you are doing yourself down and are actually very talented!! As I say, the JPEGs may be good enough but do have a go with RPP and let me know how you get on. BTW, if you have any shots a little underexposed - try adding 0.3, 0.5 or whatever in the *Compressed* exposure box as that will try to preserve the highlights.

Regarding the time thing, I think it's true what you say but I saw a quote somewhere yesterday: somebody's 12 year old child asked her mother why her summer holidays go so much faster than when she was younger ...

Lee
 
I'm planning on doing a series of day trips by car around the area I live documenting smaller towns. Small town America is a very surreal (and sometimes frightening place). Until the last couple of years I was a city dweller (Boston, Miami, and Dallas). I'm still trying to decide if I like it. I like the fact there isn't any traffic, but it's very lonely.

Anyway, THANKS AGAIN for the input of RPP. I'm going to download it this week and see what I can do with it. Maybe my photography will get better......(yeah, right....).

THANKS!!

SB

Hey SB,

Sorry to hear about your family's problems. Sometimes I wonder where photography really fits into it all, at least for me personally.

If you enjoy taking photos, then that's all that matters. And if occasionally you grab a frame that really feels personally meaningful to you in some way, I think that's the best thing of all and justifies whatever gear you choose to shoot with. I'm not particularly gifted at all, my kid pictures may not stand out compared to other peoples' portrait photos but no matter- they're very meaningful to me.

I really like your idea of the day trips in small towns, hope to see those here sometime down the road. Those Fuji cameras seem really great, glad you kept them instead of selling everything off. They should be perfect for that type of photography. I wish I had time to do something like that, eventually I will. ;)
 
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