Silkypix Comments
Silkypix
has been around for a number of years and has won serious respect from
quite a varied audience. Originally it was only available in Japanese
but the English language version opened it up to a whole new audience.
It's
purpose in life is being a RAW converter, but it now also handles jpeg
and tiff files and can output in jpeg or 8/16 bit tiff files.
The full version to input any camera RAW, jpeg or tiff file is available as a 30 day trial.
The
free SE version is supplied with Panasonic cameras that are RAW
capable and were sold with Silkypix on the CD in the box, and will handle only RAW and jpeg files from those
Panasonic cameras.
The
online manual (on local hard drive when Silkypix is installed) is a lesson in confusion as the names for many familiar
features are a little different, and the manual is hard to fathom due
to possible translation problems from Japanese, but it all does make
sense with careful reading and experimenting with every control.
My recommendation is to read the SE Manual in this order.....
Section 1. Overview and Introduction
Section 10. How to Handle SILKYPIX® Developer Studio 3.1 SE Perfectly
Section 6. Useful Functions for Adjustment
And
then just look for the details you need to know. All the while reading and playing with the controls to get used
to where to find things.
In
that section 6. there is a full list of keyboard shortcuts that will
help navigate the program. Realise also that when looking at a preview
image if you double click on the image it will show at 100% pixel size,
double click again and it drops back to fitting the preview window.
That's easier than fiddling with the zoom control. |
Some general remarks about Silkypix
As
to the program itself, the usual Open File or Open Folder is available
and when saving files the name to look for is "Develop" amongst the icons. There are no
"Save" or "Save As" functions available. The familiar keyboard shortcut
of Control-S for Save leads you to the "development" function. The
Development can be done one
at a time or can be marked for later batch developing, or a whole
folder or selected images in a folder can be set for batch development.
The input file can be RAW, jpeg or tiff. The development can be to
variations of jpeg, and variations of 8 bit or 16 bit tiff files.
Silkypix started out as a RAW converter only and when they added input
from jpeg and tiff files they kept the same internal workings, that is
they create a sort of RAW file from the jpeg or tiff and then the usual
controls work on that file. At output time you "develop" that
internal pseudo RAW file to the requested jpeg or tiff file. This means
any edits on jpegs and tiffs are working in 16 bit mode internally even
though the source and destination may both be 8 bit jpeg or tiff. Hopefully
this means extreme adjustments to jpegs are a bit less likely to cause
image problems than if working all the way through in 8 bit mode only.
The
power of Silkypix cames in the form of "Tastes" which can be considered
variations of parameters that can be stored for later use. Each
individual control already has some canned factory Tastes, such as the
variations seen in the say, Contrast dropdown in the Control window on the
side panel. The user can make their own variations to the Contrast
manual controls and then save them with a new name as a new user made
contrast Taste for later re-use.
All the individual controls can have
those custom made Tastes plus there's the overall Taste available seen
in the dropdown from the top box of the Control panel where at the
start the choice is "default". The dropdown choice of canned tastes
shows things like "landscape", "sunset" etc where the controls have
been optimised to improve the effect and then stored (at factory level)
as those choices. You can use one of those canned choices and then fine
tune the available adjusts and then store it again as your own custom
Taste (with a new name) so you get get the result that you liked again on another image.
At
any time on any image you can "grab" the control settings by using the
normal Control-C and then on any other image or thumbnail in the same
session, use Control-V to drop the controls onto that other image or
more than one image. If wanting to drop back to the original image,
then Control-X restores everything to default to redo then just
Control-V to drop the changes back onto the image. Also the Cloakroom
boxes can
be used to store up
to four sets of Control settings to enable quick changes between
trial settings to see the effect on an image. Those Cloakroom boxes are
temporary and are reset when the program is closed, so if one setting
appeals, best to make it a named stored Taste for future use.
My
personal experience is that I have found Silkypix to be the easiest
program to get decent results from bad RAW files, so in my mind if the
difficult files work so well, then the easy files will work even
better. There are many available controls in Silkypix and the confusing
manual does not help the new user at all. It pays to experiment with
every control and adjustment to see what it does and to get used to
finding those possibly unfamiliar named controls. Best now to go to the
menu page to find things of interest.
Later
experiments with various RAW converters lead me to notice that the
Silkypix Pro (V4) version does indeed yield a better result than the
free Panasonic SE version (V3.1) but the differences are mainly only
pixel peeping differences and would be hard to see on any size print.
Until I build some individual help pages for various features I will place them here.....
Trim. (Control-T)
The
Trim function in Silkypix would be called Crop function in any other
world. It's a little different in that when working with RAW files you
can get to the edge pixels that are mostly never seen by anyone.
This enables a wide lens to be a whisker wider.
In Silkypix - View - Trimming (or Control -T) brings up the Trim or crop
window. On the bottom right is the icon to get maximum Trim. On mouse
roll-over the message "Enable all data including invalid data in RAW
area" pops up.
Click on that icon and then double click on the image to get 100% view,
then go down to the zoom drop-down window and make it 400%. Then you
need to slide the image to all four sides (use the "hand" icon as you
drag the image around with the mouse) and then carefully move the Trim
lines to match the usable edges of the image.
In doing that I get only 3968 x 2232 for my 16:9 LX3 jpegs as jpegs
can't be changed, but for my LX3 RAWs I can get to 4008 x 2256 and the
bonus edges all look good. On other cameras sometimes the edges are bad
colour or totally grey or black, so be careful with the Trim. The
developed jpeg or tiff result will be at that genuine 4008 x 2256 size
or whatever occurs for your particular camera RAW files.
Some random unsorted hints
Remember for ease of use double-click on the image and it goes to 100% and double click again toggles back to window fill view.
If using a monitor calibration hardware/software package on your
computer then you need to go to Option - Display Setting and set the
program to point to the monitor calibration file created by Spyder3 or
whatever is used.
If you end up with an image adjustment
that you like then store it as a custom Taste so it's available again
to use directly or to further alter and maybe re-save as an even better
Taste. Those Tastes can be sent as files to others to share the Tastes.
Be aware that some V4 tastes may not work properly back on V3.1
Silkypix as a couple more features have been added and some things
changed a little.
Nobody
appears to have had the patience to have created a set of Tastes that
mimic any camera jpeg settings. I can see why, it's a case of why
bother re-creating the camera when the camera does it so well anyway.
Getting into Silkypix is for the situation where you want it to do
something different or better than the camera can do.
Control-C on any thumbnail or image stores the image adjustment
settings in the clipboard, and you can Control-V on any or all
thumbnails to drop those same adjustments onto them.
When
you make changes to any file and get a result by Development, the
settings stick with that original file so coming back to it at some
later date will still show that RAW file as B&W or whatever you
originally did with it to get a jpeg/tiff result. No worries, just
set the Taste to Default and it's back being a colour image again to
work on. The original RAW or jpeg or tiff is protected by default
and it takes a deliberate effort to ruin the original.