Hi Community,
I've been using Corel PHOTOPAINT for many, many years (CorelDRAW since 2.x) but have just upgraded from X8 to 2018 a few days ago. I do a great deal of photo editing.
My problem is that PHOTOPAINT 2018 appears to be rendering noise into images opened in that app. So far, it's happening with .jpg, .tif, .png and cr2 raws after import. I'm at a loss to fix it.
My monitors are well and truly calibrated, I have ICC profiles installed, I've set rendering intent to perceptual, but no matter what I do, I can't remove the rendered noise.
Here's two comparisons between PHOTOPAINT 2018 and Photoshop CC 2018 - but it could equally be Lightroom, Win10 Photos, or even Gimp.
If someone could point me to the culprit settings, I'd be hugely grateful!
If you can please send me a link to a high res TIF file please to test.
If I have a TIF file from Photoshop, open it in Photo-PAINT the file looks sharper in Photo-PAINT than in Photoshop. If I save that original TIF file and rename it in Photo-PAINT. Then open both the original PS and PP version in Photoshop both TIF files look identical in Photoshop, softer than PP.
If this is not what you see there is something wrong. Photo-PAINT only makes changes you ask it to make.
If I open both TIF files one from PP and one from PS in Photo-PAINT both files look identical to each other but sharper than the PS display.
In any scenario the two TIF file print identically.
Hi David,
located here are two files - a crop of the Hi-Res TIF plus a comparison of what I see between PhotoPaint-2018 and Photoshop-CC-2018: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PKs4jAQdzMrojauN8
For clarity, the RAW (CR2) image was first opened in Lightroom (no edits) then saved out as a full res TIF, then max res jpg. Viewing those files in PhotoPaint-2018 adds the noise you see above and in the links.
As indicated earlier, today I tried 'reversing' my pipeline: I used the native PhotoPaint-2018 CR2 import utility (no tweaking) then saved the image out as both TIF and JPG. In this case, the noise is non-existent and a comparison between PhotoPaint-2018 and Photoshop-CC-2018 shows virtually identical results (shown in same link above) So, that's a win, I guess.
However, it would seem that almost all the older files I have checked that had a Lightroom > TIF/JPG > PhotoPaintX8 pipeline show similar levels of noise - but only when opened in PhotoPaint-2018. For me, that is a *significant* issue. Noise that was not evident in X8 is now overwhelming in v2018 - and what's more, it's retained when saving out of v2018 into any format.
I'm no expert, but it seems that PhotoPaint-2018 is not reading/rendering stuff that has been 'touched' by Adobe stuff the way it used to be. I'm at a loss, but if I can't find a work-around (for the 1000's of images created in X8), sadly, I'll need to move away from PhotoPaint.
Hope you or someone can assist.
Had a look at the file with the arm and made a comparison between PhotoPaint 2018 and Photoshop CS5, and the result confirms what I said in previous post; the difference between them are solely because PP doesn't use bilinear interpolation when zoomed out by default. After changing this setting, they are equally smooth in both apps.Regarding destroyed file after saving from PhotoPaint I'd say that as long as you save in a non-destructible format, like TIFF for example, and do not resample in any way, there should be no difference whatsoever after saving.If you change the size or save as JPG for example (lossy compression), there will always be a change, and most likely not for the better.Exactly what has happened in your case is hard to say, but it appears that somewhere in the chain RAW > Lightroom > TIFF/JPG (no-no!) > PhotoPaint, something has gone wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is not caused by PhotoPaint by itself.
Ronny not sure what display you're using but on my image correcting system even with bi linear turned on Photo-PAINT has a sharper image then Photoshop. You are correct it has no effect on output and also correct that Photo-PAINT has nothing to do with this issue unless the person doing the editing injected something into the process. Look at the link I posted, I have two copies of the original TIF set to 24 bit and saved as PNG one from PSP and one from PP. They display identically. The issue being that this way of viewing images leads to many images being sent to print that should not be. This image we looked at without serious noise reduction cannot be used in high end ink jet work, no medium end ink jet work where the image will be printed large, 175, 200 AM line screen and no stochastic print process with any chance of quality. The amount of digital noise makes this image borderline unuseable. This is typical of much of the image work we see today and I believe it's due to the soft display in image editors. Photo-PAINT is currently the only image editing software I know that works for the photographer with a purest attitude.
A rather simple Samsung 23.5 inch monitor at 1.920 x 1.080 is in front of me.Maybe PhotoPaint and Photoshop use different algorithms for on screen interpolation, which explains the small difference you see, David, also after enabling interpolation in PP.Like Bilinear in PhotoPaint and Bicubic in Photoshop, for example.
I'm sure the two applications are using something different in terms of how they program for the display. The bi linear feature in PP seems to be a solution for those who don't have a need for super critical viewing. I keep it turned off as it really makes it easy to detect errors in the file such as digital noise, over sharpening and a few others. As far as my photography goes, I'm a purest, I prefer to utilize the camera and make the best capture I can and use editing as little as possible. I shoot RAW, maybe18 to 20 bracketed captures of the same shot, using different F Stops. I convert in AfterShot Pro eliminating those shots that have issues. The I open the files in Photo-PAINT using that super crisp display and looking for issues. Out of 24 shots I may dump 12 to 18 in AfterShot and then dump 4 to 6 more once viewed in PP. The interesting this is the image we were supplied, look at how PP shows the real image and how a web browser fools you into a false interpretation. If you buy images on the web BEWARE!