Love it or Hate it, Adobe Lightroom is one of the most popular image processing and management solutions for a reason. It is just simple, easy and intuitive, but as we all know with Fujifilm X-Trans files it has some flaws. Adobe has made strides in their X-Trans support, but one key area that continues to frustrate Fuji-X shooters is the sharpness or lack thereof in the Lightroom files.
Yet still, many continue to use Lightroom not out of some loyalty, but simply because learning a new processor is a pain in the rear end and most of us don’t have time for that. Iridient Developer is one of those alternatives that is known to handle Fujifilm X-Trans files better, at least in regards to sharpness. But what if I told you that there is now a way for Windows users to get the benefits of Iridient Developer while continuing to use lightroom?
How – you might ask? Iridient X-Transformer, an RAF to DNG converter that utilizes the Iridient Developer engine to convert your RAF files into Adobe DNG files. Which you can then use in Lightroom just as you would a RAW RAF file, with the benefit of not having the sharpness issues that an RAF file imported into Lightroom would have.
The software is currently in Beta, and I recently downloaded it and have been playing around with it. It is not perfect, but I would not expect it to be issue free, it is a beta release after all. But I wanted to share my experiences with it today and talk a bit about how I have worked it into my workflow to allow me to continue to use Lightroom.
First off, this software chews up your CPU, no way around it. I have an enthusiast grade CPU, the Intel I7 5820K, which runs 6 cores and 12 threads (the software sees 12 cores, not 6) that runs at 3.6Ghz, but I have mine overclocked to 4.3Ghz. My system also rocks 32GB of RAM. My point here is not to brag, but to point out that my the system I am testing this on is not underpowered at all.
I converted 526 RAF files to DNG using the Iridient X-Transformer, and it completely pegged my CPU to 100% for the duration of the conversion process, which was about 25-30 minutes. My system was pegged to the point that it was slow and barely responsive while I was trying to do other things during the conversion process (not something I have experienced before with this machine). When the conversion process ended the system went back to normal and everything was fine, but in the future, I will probably not do a large conversion like that when I could be doing other work, instead starting it before bed or a meal.
I looked in the settings to see if there was a way that I could limit it processor usage or anything like that, and at this point there is not. So on less powerful systems, where the conversion of a large batch of images would take even longer, I would definitely recommend waiting to do the conversion until a time when you can go without your computer for the duration of the conversion process. Hopefully in the final release they optimize the software further to not peg out the entire CPU, or give us the option to limit resource usage.
That was my only real problem with the software from a performance standpoint. I will also note that for smaller batches of conversions (30 images and under or so) the system was still pegged out, but not with the responsiveness issues that I had with the larger batch conversions.
So how about the files, do they look better? Are they even worth adding this extra step into my workflow? I would say yes, with a few caveats. First, there are still some issues with the conversions, occasionally there is an image that is not converted correctly and the DNG is flawed. I am fine with just chalking this up to the software being in Beta, but it is worth noting that you may have to go back and reconvert an image or two here or there if you decide to give the beta a go until the final release.
The second issue, which is really more of an annoyance, is that portrait images in the DNG are not displayed with the correct orientation when imported into Lightroom. In other words, the portrait orientation is not transferred to the DNG when the image is converted. So you have to go into Lightroom after imported the DNGs and rotate all of the portrait oriented images to their correct orientation. You only have to do this once per image, and while it’s not a huge deal with a small number of images, it would be rather annoying for a big shoot.
In terms of the sharpness, there is a very noticeable difference between the DNG and the RAFs converted via Lightroom. Simply put the DNG files are simply sharper and the sharpness is ‘cleaner’ than an RAF file sharpened with Lightroom.
As far as my workflow with this software. I pull the RAF files off my card, into a temporary folder on my computer. Then I convert them with Iridient X-Transformer, and then import the DNG files into Lightroom as I would normally do. From that point working with the files is exactly the same as I would the original RAF files.
After the conversion I transfer my RAF files over to my external backup drive and work exclusively on the DNG files. So far, I have been loving it, and it works great.
I went ahead and purchased a license and will be implementing this into my workflow. My hope is that the minor issues and caveats get addressed throughout this beta process to make the process smoother and issue free. In my opinion, even in its current form, this is well worth the $30 they are asking for the license. This allows me to work with clean and sharp Fuji files in Lightroom, and that makes me incredibly happy.
If you are interested in giving the software a go for yourself you can find it over on the Iridient website, here.
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