ArionFX for Photoshop

[glorybound]

I have been wanting to get into tonemapping, so when I saw this tutorial, I jumped on it. However, he wasn't a fan of ArionFX; he almost preferred PS's native RAW editor. I have heard ArionFX being endorsed here, but I don't want to purchase it if it's not any better than PS's RAW. Basically, he said that the highlights are too saturated and look fake. What do you think?

[cheerioboy]

I purchased it after reading Bertrand's comments about it. I've never liked how Photoshop handles RAW so I think it works much better than Photoshop's editor, especially with extra features for bloom, grain, & chromatic aberration. I just wish they'd make ArionFX for Nuke... !

[flino2004]

I got it yesterday....I like it a lot!!!

[glorybound]

I did the demo and I did notice all the extra stuff. However, I have been using a free tool called "real camera", which gives me some of those 'extra' things.

[glorybound]

Here, is a quick one from Camera RAW.

[glorybound]

Okay, I purchased it and here is a test using it. It's still not easy to balance things.

[cheerioboy]

nice! love the mood in that one, and the reduced sharpness

[3LP]

I'm actually combining both.
I use Adobe camera raw as it's the best to balance the color grading, and once I'm happy with the result, I send the thing through Arion FX to get the bloom/glare and other extra stuff.
Sometimes I do use the tone-mapping response curve, but not all the time, depends on how much work I did in camera raw before hand.
Because I keep everything unbaked and dynamic by using smart filers applied on linked smart objects, I sometimes ever push my Adobe camera raw to suite the Arion FX that's on top based on the response curve.
It's all about using the tools you need to get the result you want to achieve.

I talk to them last week about having Arion FX for something else than PS.
They said they had similar requests and that they might (if they have enough demand) take a look at integrating it to nuke.

Stan

[Donfarese]

I really like Arion FX, but what can we use for batch or animation with many frames?

[Donfarese]

It would be great if we could get Arion FX like controls in the Vray VFB, then we wouldn't need to do in post in another program. Is this hard to implement Vlado?

[glorybound]

VFB had almost everything, except for Chromatic Aberration.

It would be great if we could get Arion FX like controls in the Vray VFB, then we wouldn't need to do in post in another program. Is this hard to implement Vlado?

[Donfarese]

Actually seems to me to be missing a lot, we cannot select camera parameter presets which is huge, We don't have Chromatic Aberration which is huge, We don't have Noise or film grain which adds a lot of realism, we don't have sharpening which would be nice, and it would be much, much, better to me to have Lens glare and bloom in there as a slider instead of how it is implemented now. Pretty much everything the way ArionFX does it. These are just filter so I wouldn't think it would be to bad to implement them in the VFB. But of course Vlado would know better about that than me Our images would look superb right out of vray, That also makes the work flow WAY easier for when you have to do multiple changes for clients but keep all the post.

[glorybound]

Yes, I suppose that you are correct. Arion has more features.

[vlado]

Actually seems to me to be missing a lot, we cannot select camera parameter presets which is huge, We don't have Chromatic Aberration which is huge, We don't have Noise or film grain which adds a lot of realism, we don't have sharpening which would be nice, and it would be much, much, better to me to have Lens glare and bloom in there as a slider instead of how it is implemented now. Pretty much everything the way ArionFX does it. These are just filter so I wouldn't think it would be to bad to implement them in the VFB. But of course Vlado would know better about that than me Our images would look superb right out of vray, That also makes the work flow WAY easier for when you have to do multiple changes for clients but keep all the post.

I have close to zero desire to work on any of that - my hands are more than full with writing the renderer as it is. Not that those things wouldn't be nice to have, but I'm not sure what would be point. You have so many other tools to do that and I'm not at all sure we would do a better job (as evidenced by the lens effects).

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

Close to 0, so that means that there's a chance

Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com