H-Focus - ingesting CR2 & DNGs - changes not recognized

[marlin]

Dear Helicon community,

I recently discovered Helicon Remote and Focus. Love it.

I'm a Canon shooter, 5DII (for this data set), on a Mac OS 10.6.8. 4 gigs of Ram.
Adobe PS6 + ACR version 8.2

I'm using H-Remote for acquisition of .cr2 files and H-Focus for stacking.

I noticed that H-Focus *will* ingest both .CR2 files and .DNG files. (yay)

It appears as if H-Focus *will process the 'as captured' image. But it *wont*, recognize or process the image 'modifications' (made to the .cr2 or .DNG files) after white balance and EV comp in Adobe ACR (adobe camera raw).

Here's My Question:
Is H-Focus not reading the xml.sidecar file? or the 'hidden' sidecar file inside of the DNG format? Is there a pref or setting that I can check to allow H-Focus to ingest and process my files from the CR2 or DNG format?

I've tried ingesting both CR2s+the xml side car as well as DNGs in separate event to reach the same result --- H-Focus only 'sees' the 'as shot' file, not any of my white balance or EV compensation adjustments.

Hope that this helps to ring a bell for any advanced users out there. Any information will be useful. I'm using the Trial version right now, and would happily upgrade to the Pro if this feature was available!

Thanks in advanced, I look forward to reading your replies.

Marlin.

[Stas Yatsenko]

Hello Marlin,

No, Helicon Focus is not able to read ACR corrections. The easiest part of it is to read its settings, the hardest is to emulate ACR effects, which means emulate ACR engine. More practical way to solve this problem is to call Helicon Focus from Lightroom. This would automatically apply any RAW corrections, convert source files to TIFFs and pass them to Helicon Focus for processing. Or, you can manually convert RAW to TIFFs and then open TIFFs in Helicon Focus.

[marlin]

Thank you for the reply Stas!

so much to learn so little time in the day.

Question.
I bumped into this Open Source version of 'lightroom' ---- LoghtZone
http://www.lightzoneproject.org/

would you happen to know if its possible to use this app to ... "to call Helicon Focus from Light*Zone. This would automatically apply any RAW corrections..." ??

in either event thought you and the community should know about this product.

marlin.

[Stas Yatsenko]

It looks like LightZone does not support plugins or call of external applications so Helicon Focus cannot be called from this program.

[dansroka]

The method any raw editor uses to create its images is a "secret sauce" that no software company would willingly give up! The XML sidecar is just a bunch of instructions that only the ACR engine knows how to process. Therefore "safest" way to make sure that your edits are used outside of Lightroom is to bake them into a TIFF.