[ev1enet]

Nitro is an awesome piece of software - but the RAW demosaic is sadly far behind other solutions.

I’m a long-term Nitro user, picked up a new camera (Pana S5iix) a few weeks ago and found myself really disappointed with the quality on one specific shoot. Daylight, low ISO - technically super “clean” raw files, but Nitro was struggling with detail and weird artefacts in the shadows.

I never expect DeepPRIME or Topaz level processing from it - but something about the image seemed off. Fired up an alternate software and sure enough, even with 0 corrections applied, side-by-side Nitro looked noticeably worse.

I much prefer the local-first workflow, and I split my time editing roughly evenly between my M1 iPad and M4 Mac. Nitro was an absolute game-changer for my workflow as I could dump photos to my iPad right after a show, cull and get preliminary edits delivered in the cab home, then seamlessly switch to my “big” setup. Guess I need to buy a laptop now :(

[danhau]

I think the RAW philosophy is starting to show its age. RAWs were only ever intended for the manufacturer‘s first party software (AFAIK). But that software is usually junk and supports few platforms (none support mobile).

I think the sweet spot for both the camera manufacturers and photographers are JPEG XL and other newer, standardized formats. They allow the camera to „bake in“ the secret-sauce color science while retaining headroom for editing thanks to 16-bit channels and such.