Il PDF eredita molte delle funzionalità del PostScript, un linguaggio di descrizione della pagina anch'esso sviluppato da Adobe. Postscript permette di descrivere. Latest ODV4 Version: ODV 4.7.10 (Feb 07 2017) Ocean Data View (ODV) is a software package for the interactive exploration, analysis and. Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack vs. Microsoft Camera Codec Pack. If you have any interest in raw shooting you must know by now that Microsoft has (finally!) delivered its own add- in enabling support for raw formats in Windows Explorer and Photo Gallery. TransMac - Open Mac disks and dmg files from a Windows PC, CrossFont - Convert OpenType, TrueType and PostScript type-1 pfb fonts between Mac and Windows PC. XnView is an efficient multimedia viewer, browser and converter. Really simple to use! Support of more than 500 image formats. No Adware, No Spyware. Click here to make a voluntary donation in support of ApE. Try the new ApE Wiki if you have any comments or questions about ApE. Get older versions. ![]()
The first questions that come to mind are is it any good? Is my camera and my operating system both supported by this new package? How well does it run compared to other similar products? Immediately after the release of the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack we began receiving emails from our users asking for comparisons between our own Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack, a mature product with 2. Microsoft’s new offering. First thing first, the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack is a free download from the Microsoft website. The Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack, on the other hand, is a commercial product that can be licensed from us for a fee. That makes for our first point of comparison. Microsoft pretends having “changed the game” regarding raw files handling in the Windows Operating System and achieved “GPU- like” performance by taking advantage of multicore CPUs, as well as covering all grounds regarding platform support and camera models, past and present. July 2. 01. 1 You. Tube video here. So far so good, the commercials sound vibrant but conspicuously omit a couple of key facts: Raw support in Windows is nothing new. ![]() On June 1, 2. 00. Microsoft officially announced their intention to deliver raw support to Windows Vista “that will enable consumers to easily work with RAW files” (press release). Later the same year, the company released the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP, adding raw support for a number of digital cameras to their flagship operating system of the times. Finally, Windows Imaging Component (WIC), the framework upon which WIC raw codecs rest, shipped as an integral part of the operating system with Windows Vista and XP SP3 in late 2. Windows releases since then. Camera manufacturers and 3rd parties have been supplying codecs for years. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Panasonic and small independent software vendors like us Fast. ![]() ![]() Picture. Viewer and Ardfry Imaging have been supplying raw codecs for Windows for a number of years (as early as 2. It took Microsoft more than 6 years to come up with their own take, but partners and ISVs have been supplying Windows- compatible codecs based on the WIC infrastructure for a long time. Back to our subject. ![]() ![]() The first thing we’d like to mention is that, while raw support is indeed a very nice thing to have in any operating system, some basic features like automatic rotation of plain old JPEG files, according to camera orientation, are still not addressed by Microsoft as of today: portrait images are displayed sideways in Windows Explorer, Windows Photo Viewer, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Media Center, unless manually rotated. The Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack addresses this shortcoming by providing a JPEG decoder with the intelligence needed to recognize the orientation data written within the files by digital cameras and the muscle to do the rotation when required. When our JPEG codec detects that an image needs to be rotated it performs the necessary action on- the- fly, without ever modifying the original file, and Explorer, Photo Viewer, Photo Gallery and Media Center 6. JPEG Decoding Performances. This brings us to our first performance metric: JPEG has been around for a long time and JPEG decoding libraries have been optimized and re- optimized over the years. One can expect that the JPEG decoder created by Microsoft and shipping with every copy of Windows since 2. ![]() ![]() ![]() Vista and XP SP3) is very well optimized – and in fact it is. Still, we managed to produce a JPEG codec that runs quicker than Microsoft’s, despite the additional work required to perform the rotations: Time required to decompress (and rotate, in the Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack case) an out- of- camera portrait- oriented 1. MP JPEG image created by a Nikon D3 DSLR. Intel i. 7- 9. 70 processor, times in milliseconds, lower numbers means faster performances. Results averaged over 5 consecutive runs with the same image after 1 priming run to factor out disk performance. That’s right: our auto- rotating JPEG decoder performs additional work and still runs 2. Microsoft’s which simply ignore the rotation information. Now that the introductions are made, we can dig through the heart of our subject. Supported Camera Models. Number of camera models supported by each codec pack. Higher number is obviously better. While Microsoft pretends to have covered all grounds they are far from supporting all raw- capable cameras on the market. Perhaps more importantly, their support is frozen 1. That means that all cameras released in the past year and a half are not supported by the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack, this includes cameras like the Canon 6. D, Nikon D7. 00. 0, Nikon D3. Nikon D5. 10. 0, Sony NEX- 5 and many, many others that can be seen today on every retailer’s shelves. The 1. 8 months gap gives a glimpse at their release cycles, which are unlikely to get any shorter anytime soon (the original Microsoft RAW Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP released back in 2. By contrast, the Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack gets refreshed about 6 times a year with raw compatibility updates, adding new features and timely support for all the latest models on the market: for example support for the Canon 6. D and the Nikon D7. Microsoft’s offering – was added to the Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack on November 1. NEX- 3, NEX- 5, D5. A2. 30, A2. 90, 6. D, T3i, X5, 1. 10. D, A3. 90, X1. 00 and more, raising our total to 3. August October 2. Microsoft. Microsoft has a long gap to fill regarding camera model support and will likely always be late to the game, due to their lengthily release cycles and everything else we don’t know about (such as changes in internal priorities). Writing imaging codecs requires a very specific skillset and chances are that the people able to actually do this efficiently are few and far apart, and likely have better (more important) things to do. It does not support Windows Vista RTM nor Windows Vista SP1. Windows XP alone still has about 5. That’s a lot of users left out of the “holistic story that covers all Windows platforms” recently touted by Microsoft. By contrast, the Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack supports all platforms onto which Windows Imaging Component can be (or is) installed. Our product can be installed on Windows version going as far back as Windows XP SP2 and Windows XP 6. Of course functionality is reduced on the old platforms (the XP Fax viewer will never display any raw files) but we provide extremely quick thumbnail support to Windows XP and XP- 6. Fast. Picture. Viewer Codec Pack. Raw Previewing and Full Raw Decoding Performances. When Microsoft originally introduced the Windows Imaging Component platform back in 2. As of today there are no (zero) known application that takes advantage of these features and as a matter of fact, the just released Microsoft Camera Codec Pack returns a “not implemented” error when queried about its raw conversion control abilities, via the Query. Raw. Capabilities. Info() call, which means that all the Microsoft codecs have to offer today is a default raw conversion using arbitrary internal parameters, with no user intervention possible. If one compares this complete lack of “tunability” to the level of fine control exposed by, say, Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, Raw. Therapee or Bibble Pro, just to name a few serious raw converters available on the market today, or open source efforts like UFRaw or DCRaw, one readily understand that WIC raw codecs are not going to have any profound impact on the “real” raw conversion business landscape anytime soon, where users tweak every minute aspects of the raw conversion process using countless sliders, presets, camera profiles and even individual lens profiles. As a matter of fact, Thomas Knoll (the original author and lead architect of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw, the raw conversion engine used by Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop) described WIC raw codecs as “basically useless for Camera Raw / Lightroom type of applications” (read his own words in Adobe’s forum). If one is looking for full photographic control, “a WIC codec is likely to prove unsatisfying”, according to Zalman Stern, Tech Lead for Adobe Camera Raw and author of the Adobe DNG WIC Codec (read his post on DPReview). This leaves us with one type of use for WIC raw codecs, albeit a very important one: help users visually organize their files in Windows Explorer by providing high quality thumbnails, fast previews as well as quick slideshows in Windows Photo Viewer and Photo Gallery. Users of Windows Media Center on Windows 7 or later also benefit from having WIC raw codecs installed as they can project raw slideshows on their living room TV though a Media Center Extender, such as the Xbox 3. Most camera manufacturers had the good idea to include a ready- made preview image within their raw files. This image is usually stored in compressed JPEG format and reflects all camera settings such as sharpening, contrast, white balance, and manufacturer “secret sauce” like Nikon Picture Control or Canon’s Picture Style. In fact, all camera options available through the camera’s menus and modes are reflected on the preview image, which is made by the camera itself and stored in the raw files as the pictures are taken. This preview image is perfect for the uses mentioned above: JPEG data can be unpacked very quickly (we showed above that we are pretty good at this) and the resulting image is faithful to what the photographer saw with its own eyes when the image was captured: if you like Canon’s skin tones then you are going to get them on the preview JPEG, if you like Nikon’s sunset colors you’ll get them on the previews too.
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