Light Zone

[boriskudelsky]

I am gathering information on Light Zone. Its pros and cons. I'll appreciate your feedback.
Thanks a lot

Boris Kudelsky

[steve simmons]

There is an article about Lightzone in the Jan/Feb 07 issue of View Camera The isse was maied about 9 days ago and should be on th stands any day.

steve simmons

[Ted Harris]

I have been using LightZone since it first came out and find that, for many images, it is superior to PS CS2. Why? Because the Zone Mapper feature allows me to think and work visually in Zone terms rather that numerically and it shows me what is going on in therms of the image rather than a histogram .... just more intuitive. OTOH it does have some file size and memory issues that are beeing addressed. Right now I don't that I can replace PS with LZ but I do find I use LZ whenever I can.

[Bruce Watson]

...it does have some file size and memory issues that are being addressed.

What are the limits? My file sizes tend to be large since I scan to the largest enlargement I think I'll ever need. So... what's the biggest file size they test with? What kind of performance do you get with the biggest files they allow?

And when will the file size and memory issues be addressed?

[Ted Harris]

Bruce, hopefully Fabio will see this thread and post. I don't know the answer. I do know that I have used files in the range of 600mb with LZ and it worked. Trouble is that it was rather slow since IIRC it has not yet broken the 2Gig memory barrier ... that is it doesn't recognize the full capability of the new 64 bit procssors. Again, this is all from memory and discussions some two years ago so I could be wrong.

[D. Bryant]

I have been using LightZone since it first came out and find that, for many images, it is superior to PS CS2. Why? Because the Zone Mapper feature allows me to think and work visually in Zone terms rather that numerically and it shows me what is going on in therms of the image rather than a histogram .... just more intuitive. OTOH it does have some file size and memory issues that are beeing addressed. Right now I don't that I can replace PS with LZ but I do find I use LZ whenever I can.
I recently down loaded the latest trial version and LZ failed to open a 566 MB Tiff file. I have 2 GB of memory running on an AMD 3500 64 bit CPU. PS works fine. I hope they address this problem as it sounds like an interesting app.

It did open my Canon CR2 RAW files without a hitch though.

Don Bryant

[Ted Harris]

Addendum .... I am sitting here working on my laptop, a Macbook with 2 Gigs of RAM. I set the LZ prefs to use 1.5 Gigs of RAM leaving enough for the OS and some overhead and then went to open a 600 MB file .... took way too long for my patience level. Then did the same with a 300 MB file ... took a while to openbut not intolerable and editing actions were fine.

[Bruce Watson]

Addendum .... I am sitting here working on my laptop, a Macbook with 2 Gigs of RAM. I set the LZ prefs to use 1.5 Gigs of RAM leaving enough for the OS and some overhead and then went to open a 600 MB file .... took way too long for my patience level. Then did the same with a 300 MB file ... took a while to openbut not intolerable and editing actions were fine.

I was afraid of this. Thing is there's lots of information on a LF negative. Way more than 300 MB. A 10x enlargement of a 5x4 film at 300 ppi output resolution, 16 bit/channel, is around 1.1 GB. And if one uses a scan-once-use-many workflow, file sizes like this are not unusual. And let's not even talk about larger formats...

Like Adobe, I suspect that they are putting a lot of effort into their RAW converter (and the world really needs more RAW converters ;-) with little effort going toward large file sizes.

I like the idea of what they are doing, but find it frustrating that they are pushing Zone System ideas at people with digitoys while ignoring the LFers who actually could use what they are providing. It just seems like they are missing their own point.

[D. Bryant]

Addendum .... I am sitting here working on my laptop, a Macbook with 2 Gigs of RAM. I set the LZ prefs to use 1.5 Gigs of RAM leaving enough for the OS and some overhead and then went to open a 600 MB file .... took way too long for my patience level. Then did the same with a 300 MB file ... took a while to openbut not intolerable and editing actions were fine.
Well my file never did open. I left the computer and back an hour later and the Loading file message was still there.

Don Bryant