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Real Alternatives to Sigma's Photo Pro

This is a spin off from the SD14 Bulb & telescope adapter thread on the Sigma Cameras (digital & analogue) forum.

The image viewer that I already had long before buying my SD14 is IrfanView, a fast free image viewing package for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

For those interested in trying it out, here is the IrfanView Web site:

http://www.irfanview.com/index.htm

I have not gone through all the packages listed on the CDRAW site. I'm just familure with IrfanView, Iris, and DeepSkyStacker. I may take a look at some, but it's a long listing with 51 packages, besides, I already have a free package which out performs Sigma's.

Ivan Image Converter. It converts your Sigma Camera Raw files (X3F) to JPEG, TIFF, BMP, etc. (more than 40 image formats), also in batch mode or command line. You can edit Sigma RAW images directly in the program with a range of handy tools (resize, rotate, flip, mirror, crop, filters, watermarks, morphing effects, color enhancements, etc.).
 
Ivan Image Converter. It converts your Sigma Camera Raw files (X3F) to JPEG, TIFF, BMP, etc. (more than 40 image formats), also in batch mode or command line. You can edit Sigma RAW images directly in the program with a range of handy tools (resize, rotate, flip, mirror, crop, filters, watermarks, morphing effects, color enhancements, etc.).
more info here: ivanview.com
 
Ivan Image Converter. It converts your Sigma Camera Raw files (X3F) to JPEG, TIFF, BMP, etc. (more than 40 image formats), also in batch mode or command line. You can edit Sigma RAW images directly in the program with a range of handy tools (resize, rotate, flip, mirror, crop, filters, watermarks, morphing effects, color enhancements, etc.).
more info here: ivanview.com

Have you tried this? Because on their web site for X3F, it says:

Use the SIGMA Photo Pro software provided with the camera to download and manipulate the photos.

http://ivanview.com/converter/x3f-batch-converter.html

Other formats don't say they need software, only Sigma X3F. If you have to use SPP, then what's the point?
 
About IrfanView - it does display embedded jpeg file, not decode raw data.

IrfanView or IvanView? If that's what it does, it's not very useful. I was thinking it used dcraw to get all of the formats it supports.
 
Well, I unchecked "Try to load embedded preview image" in Irfanview raw settings and after that it didn't open SD14 file anymore. So is dcraw decoding speed less - about 1-2 seconds for X3F file, whereas Irfanview does display same file almost instantly.

Is Irfanview open source? Foveon part of dcraw is GPL; if Irfanview is not GPL, then it can't use dcraw foveon code anyway.

Back to topic - just today Silkypix released japanese beta for Foveon; seems to work fairly well. Faster than SPP, all good Silkypix options (including WB sliders, selective color control, full geometry/CA/perspective control and much more), lacks fill light tho (or I haven't found that slider yet - neither me nor my PC can read japanese :)).
 
I use the UFraw plug-in for GIMP, wich uses dcraw as wel....or better said, I have it installed...but don't like to use it. When opening a X3F file in UFraw it is over exposed "in the extremes" without any detail left, while there's not even overexposure in SPP...so far I have found no substitute for SPP when processing X3F Raw files. Somehow I always get the feeling there is more information in a X3F file than can be read by "other RAW editors".
 
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