New Camera RAW in Photoshop - no M8

[mitchell]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Wilson,

 

I think your problem is you're trying to download Raw photos, or perhaps even jpegs with iPhoto. iPhoto doesn't do Raw as far as I know, and may not do M8 jpegs.

 

I use a card reader on my Mac, but you could try using a USB cable if you prefer.

 

The important thing is to try down loading images to a file on your desktop with iPhoto turned off. Then open them in the program of your choice, PSE, or Camera Raw, but not iPhoto which doesn't support them.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Mitchell

[stunsworth]

Just to confirm what I suspected, I tried opening a Leica RAW file on my MacBook usiing Elements 4 and it opened ok.

[Stephen.s1]

Yes, Lightroom will read DNG files direct from the card. If my beta copy'll do 'er. I know V.1.0 will. or it had better... the cd should be here in a day or so.

 

It hasn't been mentioned, but, as I recall when you download directly thru the camera, you're sucking the battery down. Just one more reason to yank (the card),and bank the images.

[wlaidlaw]

Just to confirm what I suspected, I tried opening a Leica RAW file on my MacBook usiing Elements 4 and it opened ok.

 

The problem I seem to be having is that I cannot "see" the M8 other than in iPhoto or Image Capture. It appears as a mounted item on the left bar on iPhoto. I am wondering if there is a fault in my M8. I would have expected it to show up in Finder but it doesn't, even when it is showing up on iPhoto. I have tried a few different makes of card in case it was a card problem but no go. It was like the Digilux 2, when you had the USB mode set wrongly but as far as I can see, there is no menu option like there is on the D2 or am I missing something? Can others "see" the M8 in Finder when connected with the USB cable? Should I have received another disc with a USB driver? I only got the two, with on # 1; Leica Digital Capture for direct camera control plus all the different language manuals and on the other CD; Capture One only. If I cannot "see" the M8, I cannot load the DNG's, which I can "see" and load with no problem using a card reader.

 

Wilson

[andybarton]

I think this may have been raised before, but on the DMR you have to use a Menu option to set it into "Disk Mode", otherwise it is not recognised when connected to a Mac (well, my Mac anyway). The SD card inside the camera then mounts onto the desktop as any external drive would do.

 

If there is a similar option on the M8 this could be the cause of your problem.

 

Steve - can you read from your M8 into your Mac when connected via USB2?

 

As a last resort, try setting yourself up with a new, frsh user account and see if the M8 mounts as a drive when logged in there. With OSX's fast Log-In changing, it's dead easy to change accounts without having to log out of your main one.

[andybarton]

Another thought - try opening Image Capture, and go to its Preferences window (Apple-key comma)

 

Then, set the app to "When camera is connected; No application"

 

That might help.

[stunsworth]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Andy, just tried connect my M8 to MacBook - first time for everything - and it worked.

 

Connecting the camera doesn't cause it to appear as a drive in Finder - this could also be inferred from reading the differences between connecting to XP and a Mac in the instructions - pages 121 and 122.

 

When connected, if I launch iPhoto the M8 appears as one of the source on the left hand side as 'M8 Digital Camera'. If that's selected then the number of images on the card appear available for import. I imported three or so.

 

Once they'd been imported I could then access the DNG file by drilling down from the pictures icon in finder to Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals.

 

So, no problem here, but I'll continue to use my card reader :-)

[andybarton]

There you have the advantage on me, because I only have a DMR to play with

 

With XP, of course, nothing mounts on the desktop.

 

Presumably, then, the iPhoto folder that is created contains both the jpg AND the DNG files? Perhaps Wilson has the files downloaded after all, but hasn't found them. Once you get used to the way that iPhoto stores images, they are easy to find.

 

If this is the case, there is nothing to prevent Wilson moving the DNGs into a more convenient location.

 

Have you tried shooting ONLY DNGs onto a clean card (maybe you do this already) and seeing if iPhoto will still download them?

[stunsworth]

Yes the DNG files are stored in the 'Originals' folder and the embedded Jpegs in another - sorry, can't remember where.

 

Moving the DNG's to a more convenient location should be easy.

 

Incidentally according to the manual if you connect the camera to an XP machine an M8 window will open automatically - this happens when I connect a card reader to my XP desktop - so in this respect things are easier for the XP user :-)

[wlaidlaw]

Thanks to all for various suggestions. I will try other things tomorrow. I had set Image Capture to delete the images after loading. It deleted the JPEG's but has left the DNG's. They still show up as two images to load in Image Capture and iPhoto but will not then load them at all saying "unsupported format". When I selected "no application" in image Capture, it just downloaded the JPEG's into pictures but did nothing else. Basically I have decided to give up and use a card reader.

 

Wilson

[andybarton]

The reason why the DNGs are "Unsupported Format" is that Apple and Adobe are having a tiff and Apple can't be bothered to support DNGs yet.

 

Now that you have established that you can download them via this method, you will be able to open them using Photoshop, provided you have a copy of the Camera Raw application too.

 

Capture 1 will open them without the need for Adobe Camera Raw, of course.

[Guest stnami]

.... now that was a classic case of making a mountain out of a mole hill

 

you can jump up and down on a beach yelling 'Hey fish come here"... but not much is going to happen

[hammam]

Still, in all fairness, I must say that it is rather odd not to be able to mount the M8 on the Mac desktop. And even more odd to read the Leica manual which says, p. 122: «1 - Use the supplied USB cable... to connect... the Leica M8 to the USB socket on the computer... 2) - Use the program "Digital pictures" to transfer pictures from the card to the computer.» As Wilson points, "Digital pictures" does not even exist on the Leica CD-Rom. All there is is a program called "Digital capture" which is a remote control program, not a file transfer, be it Jpeg or DNG.

[andybarton]

It was established some time ago that "Digital Pictures" is a poor translation from the German for "Image Capture"

[MarcRochkind]

Sorry if this was already mentioned in this long thread, which I didn't read in its entirety:

 

1. If Adobe doesn't always mention the M8, it's because the M8 (according to Adobe; Apple is a non-believer) does not have its own raw format. It uses DNG.

 

2. Camera Raw has supported the M8 since version 2.3 or something like that, which was a couple of years before the M8 was developed.

 

--Marc

[charlesphoto99]

Wow amazing - a $5k plus camera and then a fit over having to get a $10 card reader. And I can't imagine that you'll ever want to drop a couple hundred bucks on much better software than iPhoto like Lightroom or iView but it could make your life a lot easier. I remember being aghast at photographers that would take their pics with a $2500 lenses and then print them through a garage sale enlarging lens (like my studio mate at the time) and then wonder why their pics were soft. Everything's a process - even and esp so digital.

 

And Guy and the others are right - always use a card reader for less wear and tear on your camera. Otherwise the damn thing can get to be like a toaster esp downloading a 4gb card. And I doubt dust will be an issue. I'd be more worried about knocking the camera off the table. I did that once to my powerbook chasing a bee around the house (my dog was terrified of them) and caught the powercord with my leg. Fortunately the body landed first and not the screen.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

There is a serious potential issue if the cord gets pulled out while your downloading that you could fry the card or even the camera. This is not a best practice to work like this, I can't voice myself strong enough on this issue, please just trust me on this one.

[wlaidlaw]

Hopefully this might be the last post on this rather long thread.

 

1) I have found a way to download the DNG's to a Mac via the USB cable, should I wish to do it. However I think Guy in particular has persuaded me this is bad practice. It is very convenient travelling however, as all three of my cameras use the same cable but all are different media.

 

2) Should you want to do it, what you have to do is to get Image Capture to run without iPhoto starting. This is not as easy as it sounds once you have associated the programs. I have managed to do it on my iBook but on my PowerMac, no matter what I have tried so far, every time I connect the M8 to Image Capture, iPhoto fires up but mind you this was at 1 AM this morning . iPhoto will not handle DNG's as we know and if it is running, it stops Image Capture handling them. With no iPhoto, Image Capture simply downloads the DNG's to the Pictures folder from where either PSE, PS or C1 can play with them. BTW has anyone been seeing strange blue artifacts in PSE when you play with shadows in the RAW editor? They disappear sometimes when you zoom in and don't appear in C1, so maybe it is something to do with scaling for screen display. When running C1, this is the first time I have found my 1.4Ghz G4 iBook numbingly S------L------O-----W. There is a rumour that Apple may be bringing out an 11 or 12 inch Macbook Pro. If so, that may have to go on my wishlist.

 

3) It really was not the money to buy a card reader - I have just bought a 1.25 magnifier at an eye-watering £199. It was a) Another thing to carry around The almost total lack of instructions on the Manual (and part of those mistranslated) c) It was yet another thing that did not quite work right. I have decided if I am going to be a good boy and use card readers from now on, the family should do the same.

 

4) The "economy" card reader arrived this morning and actually seems to work fine. The PCB and standard of manufacture seem rather higher than a certain battery charger we know. I will pass this one to my wife to use with her Panasonic Leica, which is the only one of the family's digital cameras, which uses a different USB lead and which never seems to get remembered when we go away on a trip. I have ordered a Sandisk Mobilemate for myself from MyMemory.

 

Wilson

[andybarton]

 

2) Should you want to do it, what you have to do is to get Image Capture to run without iPhoto starting. This is not as easy as it sounds once you have associated the programs. I have managed to do it on my iBook but on my PowerMac, no matter what I have tried so far, every time I connect the M8 to Image Capture, iPhoto fires up but mind you this was at 1 AM this morning

 

Change the Preferences in Image Capture as I described above and you should solve this issue.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[wlaidlaw]

Change the Preferences in Image Capture as I described above and you should solve this issue.

 

Andy,

 

That is what I did on the iBook, having read your advice and it worked. However as I said, I was finding the iBook a bit laborious with C1 so I went to the Powermac, did the same things but that #¢•§ iPhoto kept popping up. When you look at preferences again, which will only open when you have a device connected, iPhoto has reappeared as the associated program. I may have to get brave and go and do something on Console Editor. The only difference between the iBook and the Powermac that I can see is that the Powermac has other declared Image Capture devices - my scanners. Maybe that is the problem. I will disconnect them and see if that is it. Thanks for help.

 

Just tried it before I posted this and yes - it was the scanners. disconnect them and you can get Image Capture to run without iPhoto - weird since they don't use iPhoto but PhotoStudio.

 

Wilson