Why Apple Won't Support Leica M8 or Epson R-D1

[wlaidlaw]

The next load of poo is about to hit the Apple fan. They have been served with a class action for poor quality of their Macbook Pro screens. Apparently they look better when running windows in Boot Camp. According to the suit, Apple decided in their wisdom to spec a 6 bit display for the MBP in order to save money and the software uses dithering to make up for the screen. The illumination is quite uneven and the screens often appear banded or "sparkly". Service reps have been told to tell complaining customers that their expectations are too high - yes really. Top end laptops usually have 8 bit screens. The suit goes on to say that unlike what customers might expect, the highest spec screen is on the cheapest Macbook not the pro.

Wilson

[robertwright]

Originally Posted by Eoin

I've built a profile with the matrix 1 & 2 values and applied the factoring ratios used elsewhere for the MC. The max entry needs to be adjusted along with the white point. Yes you can get almost perfect punchy colour out of it but ...... it's just like lightroom, the "pinkout" pinks, purples and to a lesser extent reds all show excessive saturation and posterisation. Now I can't tell if it's the Adobe DNG converter doing this as this is common to both lightroom and converted images for aperture but I suspect it's within the matrix of the M8 it's self as C1 also gives this effect.

Needless to say I've built many table entries, tweaked them, tossed them but I keep coming back to the Nikon D-200 profile with adjusted Max values of 16383 and whitepoint set to 16383 for the best results. Yes a .10 to .15 punch on contrast, up to .20 on the saturation and pull back in the shadow detail with the shadow slider 10 to 20. and your home and dry till apple decide were worthy of a few man hours effort for our M8's.

I actually find the Lightroom color fine-I am not sure what you mean by pinkout?

So the relevent entries are the M1 and M2 values, plus another 8 MC values. could you post the MC values or PM me? If I could get what I am getting in Lightroom in aperture that would be great.

thx.

[Olof]

Apple need all its programmers at the moment for their iPhone, when the iPhone has been launched, the next release of OS X has to be finished and then they have manpower again to think what they could do next... so i guess fpr christmas we could get Aperture with M8 support.

[Eoin]

What I mean by pinkout is this,

First image M8 Matrix values in Aperture no adjustments
Second image default Nikon D200 no adjustment
Third image crop of hand showing pinkout with M8 matrix
forth image crop of hand with Nikon D200 profile.

I'd suggest you use Safari to view these as firefox is not colour managed. Well you are on a Mac after all.

[Eoin]

And then what I'd consider normal with the D-200 profile and a little boot on contrast and saturation

[Eoin]

And lets not leave out lightroom
again default settings

[Eoin]

Here is the entry that created the first photo in aperture

<key>M8-Matrix WhtPt 2</key>
<dict>
<key>black0</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>black1</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>black2</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>esein</key>
<real>2.6200000000000001</real>
<key>eseth</key>
<real>3.96</real>
<key>esint</key>
<real>0.5</real>
<key>gresc</key>
<real>3.3999999999999999</real>
<key>m1</key>
<array>
<real>1.0468999999999999</real>
<real>-0.53139999999999998</real>
<real>0.128</real>
<real>-0.43259999999999998</real>
<real>1.2176</real>
<real>0.2419</real>
<real>-0.088599999999999998</real>
<real>0.2437</real>
<real>0.71599999999999997</real>
</array>
<key>m2</key>
<array>
<real>0.76749999999999996</real>
<real>-0.2195</real>
<real>-0.030499999999999999</real>
<real>-0.58599999999999997</real>
<real>1.4117999999999999</real>
<real>0.1857</real>
<real>-0.24249999999999999</real>
<real>0.4007</real>
<real>0.65780000000000005</real>
</array>
<key>max</key>
<integer>16383</integer>
<key>mc</key>
<array>
<real>1</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>1</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>0.0</real>
<real>1</real>
</array>
<key>nek1</key>
<real>0.027199999999999998</real>
<key>nek2</key>
<real>0.00019799999999999999</real>
<key>nek3</key>
<real>5.5999999999999997e-09</real>
<key>nek4</key>
<real>1.1174999999999999</real>
<key>nek5</key>
<real>-0.0020330000000000001</real>
<key>nek6</key>
<real>9.0272900000000001e-05</real>
<key>otrc</key>
<array>
<real>0.27000000000000002</real>
<real>0.094</real>
<real>1.3200000000000001</real>
<real>0.23300000000000001</real>
<real>1.429</real>
<real>0.56899999999999995</real>
<real>0.97699999999999998</real>
<real>0.83999999999999997</real>
</array>
<key>spknd</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>white</key>
<integer>16383</integer>
</dict>

[rclompus]

I have been an Aperture user since January after taking a two day course at MacWorld in San Francisco. Joe Shorr came in at the end of the class to answer questions about Aperture. I asked, "when will Aperture support the Leica M8?" He said they were evaluating the camera. They had one on loan from Leica. They were waiting for more stable firmware. At the time, it all made sense. There were banding and green glob problems and the increased IR sensitivity issue. Everything about the camera seemed in a state of flux. Here we are four months later with no further information from Apple.

I'm sure Leica M8 raw support will eventually be added. I'm just not convinced Apple is really ready to apply resources and take on Adobe as the leader in imaging software. Aperture was the reason I upgraded to an Intel iMac. The computer is great. I may just quietly move on to Lightroom and call it a day. Adobe's strategy was to take the best parts of Aperture, put it into Lightroom and integrate it into their Photoshop family of products. Smart move on their part. Apple is ahead of Abobe on video editing technology but the same diligence and support doesn't seem to be there for editing and processing still images.

[jonoslack]

Originally Posted by rclompus

I'm sure Leica M8 raw support will eventually be added. I'm just not convinced Apple is really ready to apply resources and take on Adobe as the leader in imaging software. Aperture was the reason I upgraded to an Intel iMac. The computer is great. I may just quietly move on to Lightroom and call it a day. Adobe's strategy was to take the best parts of Aperture, put it into Lightroom and integrate it into their Photoshop family of products. Smart move on their part. Apple is ahead of Abobe on video editing technology but the same diligence and support doesn't seem to be there for editing and processing still images.

I did that (quietly moved on to Lightroom and called it a day) and I paid for it. After 6 weeks, I was hacked off by the immediate hit - but considered let down of the colours, and really missed all the wonderful workflow aspects of Aperture like smart albums, websites etc.
I've moved back to Aperture, and the small overhead of the reconversion of the dng files (ten mouse clicks I counted) is trivial, even if Apple never support the M8 (which i don't believe).

[jrc]

I have no special knowledge of what either company is doing, but I suspect that Aperture might have been too late -- Lightroom more or less duplicates it, supports both platforms (with different versions), and can benefit from constantly on-going R&D on Photoshop, parts of which (the Camera RAW engine) it already uses. I think Lightroom can keep Aperture from ever becoming a particularly successful product, which is all Adob needs to do. Apple has bcome more-and-more a marketing- and profit-margin-driven, consumer electronics company, and less-and-less a hardcore programming company. I wouldn't be surprised if they just let Aperture wither...

JC

[gman]

I posted this earlier today on the RFF site:

I went to a Leica M8 workshop last week in NYC and was told by one of the Leica reps in attendance that Apple was indeed working on an M8 profile and it would be completed 'sometime soon.'

He said the problem with the slow response from Apple regarding the M8 had to do with the fact they they were waiting for the IR filters- just like the rest of us! They weren't about to release a version without the IR correction- maybe Leica can learn something from Apple after all....


jeff

[robertwright]

Eoin-thank you so much for your examples and hard work to put that together!

I am going to hack my aperture raw with the M8 numbers (instead of the d200 numbers) and play with that-

I see what you mean, overall, I have a different preference for skintones, and lightroom has been ok for me.

it is an interesting (and adorable) example, children's skin compared to adult (pale newyorker) skin, I think we city denizens benefit from pinkout! a little

Lr is a little Hot as you say, the defaults are punch, but then I found the Aperture defaults on canon punch too, I always was dragging the boost down.

my biggest headache on aperture was always sharpening and noise reduction. what do you think?

anyway, i do expect raw support in 10.4.10, I think they have had enough time, my opinion anyway.

thanks again!

[robertwright]

Eoin, is that the entire plist entry for the M8 or is it just the parts you altered? There are some values missing, don't know if I should leave them in un-altered or wholesale copy and paste this into the dict entry for the M8 as the entire dict entry..

I'm doing this in bbedit.

I have a working "hack" as is, changing the values you specified leads to the "unsupported image format" red screen of death...

if you have time, thanks

Robert

Nevermind, got it working...thanks. I just cut and pasted it wholesale....

[Eoin]

Robert, what I tend to do is have the camera name in the property list, class set as string and value I just edit to point to the various profiles. This is in PlistEditPro, I don't know how your editor works.

Just cut and paste in a line after a </dict> tag there should be no empty lines.

Jasmine is half Thai she gets her bad attitude and sallow skin from her mother and good looks from me So don't think her skin is white, it's golden. Play around and see how you get on, it way past bedtime here.

Goodnight

[ho_co]

Originally Posted by wlaidlaw

The next load of poo is about to hit the Apple fan. They have been served with a class action for poor quality of their Macbook Pro screens. Apparently they look better when running windows in Boot Camp. According to the suit, Apple decided in their wisdom to spec a 6 bit display for the MBP in order to save money and the software uses dithering to make up for the screen. The illumination is quite uneven and the screens often appear banded or "sparkly". Service reps have been told to tell complaining customers that their expectations are too high - yes really. Top end laptops usually have 8 bit screens. The suit goes on to say that unlike what customers might expect, the highest spec screen is on the cheapest Macbook not the pro.

Wilson--
Just curious: Can you cite a reference for that information? It's pretty scary if true!

Thanks.

--HC

[wlaidlaw]

Originally Posted by ho_co

Wilson--
Just curious: Can you cite a reference for that information? It's pretty scary if true!

Thanks.

--HC

Howard,

I have a PDF of the full text of the writ but it is on my iMac in France and I have come back to the UK for three weeks today. I suspect if you Google "Macbook Pro class action", you will find it. I think I came across the link to it on either Macrumours or Macworld News.

Wilson

[robertwright]

...name a laptop lcd that isn't 6bit and you have the rest of the story.

I will save you the time. there aren't any. All laptops use some form of pixel dithering to approximate millions of colors with hundreds of thousands.

the lawsuit has more to do with advertising than with the product. the macbook and macbook pro video cards do produce millions of colors, attached to a cinema display, you see that.

reminiscent no, of the 16bit M8 file?

[ho_co]

Thanks both, Wilson and Robert!

--HC

[timswan]

The info about the MacBook screens is just plain FUD. The problem only appears when using Bootcamp to Boot into Windows, not when using Mac OS X. It also appears to not to be a widespread problem. In short, I doubt that very much "poo" will hit the fan over this.