OnOne Raw Improves X-Trans Support - Sort Of
Since OnOne released their Raw software late last year, the company has been putting out major updates at a fairly regular schedule. A significant release was announced yesterday, and as part of it, the list of features included improved X-Trans support. In previous versions, the raw conversion of Fuji X-Trans files was extremely poor. I covered it in a recent post, and I pointed out the severe artifacts. So has it improved?
Well, yes, but it’s not nearly enough. The level of artifacting has been reduced, but it is still at a level that is beyond acceptable in my opinion. There are still significant zipper like artifacts on edges in this build too. It’s improved, but it’s still significant. I’m not sure why they’re having such issue with this, or more importantly, how anyone at On1 could think that this is fixed? I saw a blog post recently from someone who had access to the beta of this update and they also thought that the new update was now fine for X-Trans files. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I really find it hard to understand how one can consider this acceptable, either those at On1 or others testing it, given what I am seeing.
While it is definatley better, there are still significant issues with the decoding. If you find this level of artifacts in an image useable, then more power to you. In addition to the zipper like edge artifacts, the chromatic aberration is still excessive. They do plan to add chromatic aberration correction in a future update, so hopefully that will be solved.
1:1 Crop with Areas of Zipper Artifacts Outlined - This is scaled down to fit the post - To see this properly, right click on the image and select view in new tab
Crop of the crop - so it's easier to see on a smaller screen
Severe Chromatic Aberration (Click to view Large)
I get that some things are a matter of personal opinion, but sometimes things are just wrong, and this is just wrong. I would hope that On1 will continue to improve support for X-Trans files to the point where it’s useable for serious work, but it doesn’t help when since this release, people are writing about it saying that everything is great now, many of whom are just repeating On1's press release and probably haven't even opened a file. All you have to do is look at an image to see that it’s not.
I'm all for making your own decisions, and using what'right for you, but I don't believe that in this case, this is a matter of personal opinion. It's just not decoding the files correctly. If you feel that it’s good enough for you to use, that’s one thing, but that's a different issue. Regardless of whether or not it's "good enough" - it’s still not correctly decoding the raw files.
I’ve included a rendered out full res jpeg below. You can compare it to the previous version by going to this article.
[UPDATE] I've re-written this piece a bit, as when I first wrote this I was in a hurry and didn't give the language the attention it deserved. I also believe some of the points I made were perhaps not clear, and so I've tidied the writing up a bit and attempted to make it clearer. I apologise for the shoddy workmanship !
