A2S DNG files are vignetted!

[Bobbogee]

I long ago gave up most of my photo editing activities for various reasons, and as part of that have let my Adobe subscriptions lapse. My big issue (like for many) is the subscription cost in order to use light room and photoshop. Now that I have recently purchased my A2S, I was keenly interested in the DNG support, and using other products such as Luminar 4 or something like that to do my editing with.

However, as I start to look at the DNG files, I have discovered that they all seem to be afflicted with a readily apparent case of vignetting. I have used Luminar and I have used RawTherapee, and both seem to agree that there is a vignette on each DNG file. After researching on this board, I saw a similar thread regarding a similar problem with the MA2, and it seemed that the solution was to use Adobe Camera Raw.

To test this, I downloaded Adobe Bridge which has a crippled version of Camera Raw included and took a look at the files through there. Bridge showed me a reduced decoding of my DNGs, and indeed they look perfect - or at least they agree with the JPG files when it comes to a lack of any apparent vignette. As the Bridge version of ACR is crippled, I cannot export the decoded file as this feature is reserved for the fully licensed-ware.

All that I can I conclude then, is that in order to have these files decoded properly, I only have two choices: 1) to just use the JPG files directly as created by the A2S, which is fine for most things except for special attention shots or 2) to re-subscribe back to Creative Cloud which I really don't want to do.

Does anyone have any experience with a raw converter that aside from ACR will actually do a good job on DNG files produced by the A2S, or the MA2 for that matter?

 

[sar104]

Can you post an A2S example file to test?

 

[Bobbogee]

Ok, I just tried to upload a zip file but the BBS software won't allow due to being too large. Here is a direct link to Google Drive for the zip archive. I believe when you click on it, you just need to download it from there. It will probably disclaim that it can't check for viruses, but my files are clean ....

DJI_0015.zip

If you are successful, you will see my ugly mug and also see what I am referring to ....

 

[sar104]

Ok, I just tried to upload a zip file but the BBS software won't allow due to being too large. Here is a direct link to Google Drive for the zip archive. I believe when you click on it, you just need to download it from there. It will probably disclaim that it can't check for viruses, but my files are clean ....

DJI_0015.zip

If you are successful, you will see my ugly mug and also see what I am referring to ....

Yes - that's not uncommon for raw from these cameras. DxO Photolab 4 doesn't have an A2S module yet, but Apple Photos 4.0 processes it just fine. Here is the raw image processed and sharpened - in my opinion the result is much better than the in-camera JPEG.

 

[Bobbogee]

Yes - that's not uncommon for raw from these cameras. DxO Photolab 4 doesn't have an A2S module yet, but Apple Photos 4.0 processes it just fine. Here is the raw image processed and sharpened - in my opinion the result is much better than the in-camera JPEG.

View attachment 128116

I agree, your conversion looks great and that is what I am looking for. Unfortunately, I sold off my old Mac Mini and am treading water waiting for the rumored new MacBook Pro 14". I also don't have DxO and really don't want to purchase more software, at least at this time.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Yes - that's not uncommon for raw from these cameras. DxO Photolab 4 doesn't have an A2S module yet, but Apple Photos 4.0 processes it just fine. Here is the raw image processed and sharpened - in my opinion the result is much better than the in-camera JPEG.

Wow, that is very clear for a drone photo, I guess the A2S camera (as a replacement drone) is well worth considering.

I agree, your conversion looks great and that is what I am looking for. Unfortunately, I sold off my old Mac Mini and am treading water waiting for the rumored new MacBook Pro 14". I also don't have DxO and really don't want to purchase more software, at least at this time.

Save 'em up and edit later

 

[melmartin]

FWIW I've looked at dozens of RAW images taken over the last few days. I don't see any vignetting in Bridge, Lightroom or Photoshop.I do recommend DxO PureRAW for fixing DNGs before they go elsewhere, but they don't have a module for the Air 2S yet. It's coming though.

 

[Bobbogee]

FWIW I've looked at dozens of RAW images taken over the last few days. I don't see any vignetting in Bridge, Lightroom or Photoshop.I do recommend DxO PureRAW for fixing DNGs before they go elsewhere, but they don't have a module for the Air 2S yet. It's coming though.

Right, in Adobe software it looks good, anything else that I have found is vignetted ...

 

[Bobbogee]

Save 'em up and edit later

That is the plan for now, I guess!

 

[brett8883]

I agree, your conversion looks great and that is what I am looking for. Unfortunately, I sold off my old Mac Mini and am treading water waiting for the rumored new MacBook Pro 14". I also don't have DxO and really don't want to purchase more software, at least at this time.

Well just fix the vignette in post then?

The DJI DNGs have embedded profiles to tell the photo editing software how to do lens corrections and fix vignetting. It’s just applying a determined amount of vignette correction in post processing. All you have to do is photograph a white wall or something and figure out the amount of vignette correction needed and apply that to all your photos.

There’s nothing magical that happens in Adobe over other programs, it’s just reading that embedded profile. Think of it as a built in preset for vignette correction.

 

[Charles E]

You should only have a few more months before the Macbook Pro 14 comes out. Last time I checked, it is supposed to be released in July 2021.

 

[Dave Maine]

Most jpeg conversions on digital cameras remove some or all vignetting and other distortions before outputting the final image. This is true for both DJI drones as well as other relatively inexpensive cameras. Lens design is always a tradeoff between performance and cost. A good, high quality lens can easily be more expensive than the entire drone. Fixing the problem in software is far less expensive.
In general, performing the fix as part of the post processing stage gives a better result than trying to do it at the moment of exposure.

 

[Bobbogee]

All you have to do is photograph a white wall or something and figure out the amount of vignette correction needed and apply that to all your photos.

There’s nothing magical that happens in Adobe over other programs, it’s just reading that embedded profile. Think of it as a built in preset for vignette correction.

Of course I know this, and I know how to do it, but the whole point I am making is that I shouldn't have to go through all that manual post processing effort to correct it. The ability to handle it in Apple Photos and ACR demonstrates that it is quite possible to do it in a utility program rather than "photographing a white wall ..." and such. Unfortunately it appears that most programs utilize the DCRAW library or similar to handle raw conversion and that solution provides limited functionality, certainly in this case with this camera.

 

[Bobbogee]

Most jpeg conversions on digital cameras remove some or all vignetting and other distortions before outputting the final image. This is true for both DJI drones as well as other relatively inexpensive cameras. Lens design is always a tradeoff between performance and cost. A good, high quality lens can easily be more expensive than the entire drone. Fixing the problem in software is far less expensive.
In general, performing the fix as part of the post processing stage gives a better result than trying to do it at the moment of exposure.

I don't think I am asking for it to be done at the moment of exposure

 

[WJbdB]

You wouldn´t want to pay a lens that doesn´t vignet. Even the best Leitz and Zeiss lenses ( I´m talking about $3000,- and more) have problems with vignetting. It´s part of their optical properties. So never mind about it, just adjust it in your postprocessing.

 

[sar104]

You wouldn´t want to pay a lens that doesn´t vignet. Even the best Leitz and Zeiss lenses ( I´m talking about $3000,- and more) have problems with vignetting. It´s part of their optical properties. So never mind about it, just adjust it in your postprocessing.

Film-based camera lenses don't noticeably vignette, for obvious reasons, so that's not generally true.

 

[Bobbogee]

You wouldn´t want to pay a lens that doesn´t vignet. Even the best Leitz and Zeiss lenses ( I´m talking about $3000,- and more) have problems with vignetting. It´s part of their optical properties. So never mind about it, just adjust it in your postprocessing.

It seems that my topic title is leading people astray. I am not saying the lens shouldn't vignette, I understand all of the optics and such. What I am saying is that the postprocessing choices for RAW files, at least on Windows, are mostly inadequate to do anything about fixing the vignetting issue from the DNGs unless you are willing to pay for a solution that locks you into a subscription or that is priced in the hundreds of dollars.

I have been looking at the solutions that are available and not subscription-ware, and may have finally found one (Affinity Photo) that does have promise. It is relatively cheap (sale going on right now), and actually has a RAW converter that can deal with the vignette issue. It also has enough editing features to be competitive enough with PhotoShop to meet my needs for now, until I get my new MacBook Pro. I believe that RawTherapee does have support, but I haven't yet been able to figure out how to get it working well enough.

 

[sar104]

It seems that my topic title is leading people astray. I am not saying the lens shouldn't vignette, I understand all of the optics and such. What I am saying is that the postprocessing choices for RAW files, at least on Windows, are mostly inadequate to do anything about fixing the vignetting issue from the DNGs unless you are willing to pay for a solution that locks you into a subscription or that is priced in the hundreds of dollars.

I have been looking at the solutions that are available and not subscription-ware, and may have finally found one (Affinity Photo) that does have promise. It is relatively cheap (sale going on right now), and actually has a RAW converter that can deal with the vignette issue. It also has enough editing features to be competitive enough with PhotoShop to meet my needs for now, until I get my new MacBook Pro. I believe that RawTherapee does have support, but I haven't yet been able to figure out how to get it working well enough.

I forgot to mention that Affinity will also fix it (I tested 1.9, which is the latest version), but it's not based on a lens profile. It did do a perfectly good job on your sample photo though.

 

[Bobbogee]

I forgot to mention that Affinity will also fix it (I tested 1.9, which is the latest version), but it's not based on a lens profile. It did do a perfectly good job on your sample photo though.

If that is what you used for your post of my converted picture, then I think that is a good testament to its capability - it looked totally satisfactory. Maybe other converters can do better, but for most things it should be enough. Thanks for your interest!

 

[sar104]

If that is what you used for your post of my converted picture, then I think that is a good testament to its capability - it looked totally satisfactory. Maybe other converters can do better, but for most things it should be enough. Thanks for your interest!

No - that version was processed with Apple Photos 4, which automatically removed the vignette. I tested it separately with Affinity Photo 1.9, using the manual vignette removal. It worked equivalently well.