adjustable RAW noise reduction / sharpening
2023-06-30 02:54:25
It appears Pixelmator follows the same RAW development pipeline that macOS (Finder, Preview) does, where Noise Reduction on both Luminance and Chrominance cannot be set to zero and are always applied. We can see evidence of this from the lack of Chrominance noise in how Preview and Pixelmator Pro handles the below RAW image compared to Adobe, Capture One and Affinity Photo 2.
2023-07-04 00:20:23
I think that would require a custom RAW engine, which would go a long way in getting pixelmator closer to a complete photo editor (Apple raw compares poorly in the highlights as well as with noise), but is unfortunately probably too much work for them to consider.
I've resigned myself to developing noisy raws in other programs with better debayering and noise handling.
I've resigned myself to developing noisy raws in other programs with better debayering and noise handling.
2023-07-05 18:44:16
Thank you 9ven, your term RAW engine led me to a Reddit thread of others acknowledging the default macOS engine over processing of RAW files by default.
Affinity Photo 2 allows a choice of their own Serif Labs RAW engine or Apple (Core Image RAW). A Pixelmator RAW Engine would be greatly appreciated based off how drastically different the Apple Core Image pipeline processes RAW versus Serif, Capture One and Adobe. In the below example (ISO 204,800 Nikon Z6 RAW thanks to our friends at DP Review) Chroma and Luma Noise Reduction is turned off, yet is still heavily applied under Apple Core Image RAW Engine. Not to mention a slight cropping due to lens correction that also cannot be turned off.
Affinity Photo 2 allows a choice of their own Serif Labs RAW engine or Apple (Core Image RAW). A Pixelmator RAW Engine would be greatly appreciated based off how drastically different the Apple Core Image pipeline processes RAW versus Serif, Capture One and Adobe. In the below example (ISO 204,800 Nikon Z6 RAW thanks to our friends at DP Review) Chroma and Luma Noise Reduction is turned off, yet is still heavily applied under Apple Core Image RAW Engine. Not to mention a slight cropping due to lens correction that also cannot be turned off.
