The second question: digital noise

[C.Oldendorf]

On my macOS 26 box I let Creative Cloud update itself, and that included Camera Raw.
Little did I know this would kill off one of the workflows we are looking at here: the ability to generate Enhanced DNGs out of ACR.

With ACR 17.4 and newer, Adobe removed the separate Enhance → DNG creation step.
The sliders for Denoise and Super Resolution are still there inside the Detail panel, but they no longer spit out a new file on disk.
That breaks integration with MakeTiff, because there is no longer an “intermediate” DNG you can hand off — everything now lives only as an in ACR edit, with destructive ACR color

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The bad news: Adobe doesn’t let you downgrade ACR through the CC app.
Once Creative Cloud has updated the shared Camera Raw plugin, all installed versions of Photoshop on your system will pick up the new behavior, whether you wanted it or not.

The good news: for now, the older installers are still sitting on Adobe’s servers if you know the direct links.
That means you can archive the last version with the old Enhance workflow (ACR 17.3) and restore it manually.

Download links (archive these while you can):
macOS: https://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/ph ... w_17_3.dmg
Windows: https://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/ph ... 17_3_1.exe

If you care about the Enhance → DNG path, I strongly recommend downloading and archiving these installers while they’re still available.
Once Adobe cleans up those links, the only way back will be from your own backups.

[C.Oldendorf]

Here we go with the addition to yesterday's layered Tiff. You be the judge of that first...

[robyferrero]

Thanks,
I downloaded it and let it rest on Ventura 13.

But I see that DxO is stellar, and it returns Linear DNG.

[C.Oldendorf]

But I see that DxO is stellar, and it returns Linear DNG.

Yes, it did not install on macOS 11, but it did on 26. I do buy adjacent tools routinely out of interest, and this one I might actually end up using — though it will need more testing. There was a default setting of Luminance at “40,” and I need to figure out what exactly that is doing. It looks a bit brighter than the other methods, and I would prefer as few automatic additions as possible. I suppose for color negatives, any of these AI methods can be fatal. Film grain certainly isn’t factored into their AI models.

A JPEG of this praised result, so folks can follow along without the big downloads. And keep in mind this originated at ISO 6,400!

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A second version with less granularity, Superia Reala emulation (with all other film effects turned off, all those do is detroy color, IMHO)

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That, at the same time, is why it is fine to expose in a way that preserves the highlights.
What is gone is gone — see the Smart Clip thread — while we prove here that noise in the depths can be dealt with.
And do start out editing by scrolling BP Tails to whatever suits your individual image.

PS: That Tri-X Pan 400 / Superia Reala [CS] grain is also not by my legacy methods but simply by the sibling product DxO FilmPack 7. A lot of what it offers is not in my interest, but you can customize what it does and let it only add granularity based on a 35mm or 120 estimate. Not all films work well for their supposed grain in my opinion, but those that do make it worthwhile for me. It is less complex than what I used to do. Just saying this because while we used to figure shooting gray frames was necessary — we still can — it’s now more a question of priorities with tools such as this at hand.

[robyferrero]

I'm glad that new perspectives are opening up thanks to DxO.
It's always the case, with so many features and solutions, fortunately you always find something interesting.

The second example with Superia Reala isn't bad; I like the color grain on a color photo, but I prefer the first.
In this case, Reala seems to dull the tone of the image a bit and also shifts the color very slightly.
Among the various film grains I've tried, I have several Fujifilm ones, which are nice, but Kodak Portra remains my favorite.

[C.Oldendorf]

It should be noted that it’s September, and in previous years DxO offered substantial Black Friday savings once Thanksgiving came around. If I recall correctly, last year the discount was negligible compared to what had happened in earlier years. So we’ll have to see what they do this year.

[robyferrero]

But it just came out? Do you mean they're already offering a significant discount? Well, maybe.
Unfortunately, version 5 doesn't work on the Ventura 13; you need version 4, and I imagine it's no longer available.
It may have less performance, but it's still good. Plus, it's standalone, which wouldn't be bad in my case.

Then I'll get to the DxO pre-noise reduction examples.

[C.Oldendorf]

But it just came out? Do you mean they're already offering a significant discount? Well, maybe.
Unfortunately, version 5 doesn't work on the Ventura 13; you need version 4, and I imagine it's no longer available.
It may have less performance, but it's still good. Plus, it's standalone, which wouldn't be bad in my case.

Basically, that’s the downside of the macOS world: so many parties try to enforce the use of “the latest,” and we’re supposed to rejoice.

And then PureRAW 5 doesn’t install on macOS 26 Tahoe either, as if there had never been a beta of the OS.
I wanted to try it yesterday and ended up writing my own installer to get around the limitation.
Posted that here: https://forum.dxo.com/t/pure-raw-5-3-no ... ahoe/51633 I'll guess they'll love that

[robyferrero]

You did them a huge favor!
At the very least, they should buy a Color Perfect license. Do they know who you are?