Iridient Digital has released a new version of X-Transformer. The update, which was released last night has a number of improvements and new features, the most significant of which is a new plug-in for Lightroom which will make it easier to send files to the application. It also now has the ability to automatically embed which film simulation you used into the DNG as a corresponding colour profile.

With all the fuss recently about the Sony A9 and its electronic shutter, I thought I would try out the one on my X-Pro 2. I had dabbled with it before, but I always thought it was a bit of an odd experience, so I didn’t really do much with it. I had also read various reports of it introducing rolling shutter effects, so I hadn’t payed it much attention. However, I was out doing some street photography the other day, and so I thought that I might as well give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.

While I’ve talked about Affinity photo before at various times, and I’ve briefly covered the application for processing Fuji Raw files, I realised that I haven’t really looked at it in depth. In fact, a reader recently emailed me about it, and it was only then that I realised that I hadn’t explored the application’s RAW processing in detail. 

I was in Galway yesterday, which was the longest day of the year, and I wanted to capture the sunset over Galway bay looking out to the Atlantic. As it was the longest day, it was kind of a special sunset, marking the end of the lengthening evenings and the start of the long march back to winter. Unfortunately it was cloudy, but there was still some nice light, and the beach at Salthill in Galway is dramatic in and of itself.

In this video I take a look at using X-Transformer and Lightroom for Processing Fuji X-Trans files from an X-Pro 2. I walk through the process from the start to finish, and I demonstrate some of the techniques that I have in my eBook guide on using X-Transformer. 

When Capture One was recently updated to 10.1 they made some significant changes to the way X-Trans files are supported. I have been in a bit of a quandary as to what to do about my Capture One X-Trans guide. I originally wrote this quite some time ago now, and it was several versions ago. I have kept updating it, but it was getting a bit messy. I am planning to do a completely new version, for just 10.1, and structuring the guide differently. However, I didn’t want to leave existing readers hanging either. With that in mind I’ve created a supplement for 10.1 and it is included free with the existing guide.

I’ve been promising this for a little while now, and I’m happy to announce that my guide for Iridient X-Transformer is now available. It took me a bit longer to get it finalised that I had thought because I kept doing different tests and tweaking the results and I also kept tweaking the text till I was happy. Called “Processing Fuji X-Trans Files with Iridient X-Transformer and Lightroom”, This guide is designed to help you understand and get the best results from using Iridient’s X-Transformer Software in Conjunction with Lightroom to process Fuji X-Trans raw files. 

While exploring the German Town of Darmstadt, I came across an impressive sight. I was walking out through the town, when I wandered into a large open square with a very unique looking set of concrete structures and an imposing, but starkly beautiful building down the far end of it. I had read about it previously in the guide books, but it was something else to see it in person. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. It was the Darmstadt State Theatre.

Welcome to the first of a new series on the blog. This will be similar to my Street Photo Diary series, only for travel. I’m going to be travelling a good bit over the next little while, and so I thought I would keep a running diary of sorts of my photographic adventures along he way. At the moment I’m in the German city of Darmstadt, which is just outside of Frankfurt.

As spring is here once again, the Cherry Blossoms are blooming, and I just love the beauty of these fleeting flowers. On a beautiful sunny day I was in a local park here in Dublin and I was taking some images of the beautiful cherry trees there. I shot the photos using a Fuji X-Pro 2 and for post processing, I wanted to go with a nice film look, and so, after trying out a few different presets, I eventually settled on using my own FilmLUX set as my starting point.

It was a beautiful spring day in Dublin today, so I went for a walk through the park to shoot the cherry blossoms with my Fuji X-Pro 2. I also wanted to try out something new, (well, technically old), that I got, so I filmed the whole thing. I acquired an old GoPro (first generation) so I decided to do a kind of Vlog style (kind of) video and I so I set about recording my progress with a GoPro mounted on the Camera’s hot shoe.

It seems like only a short time ago that your choices for RAW conversion software, especially for Fuji shooters was somewhat limited. Now there seems to be a new release every month, and it’s great that there is a wealth of choice out there now. The latest piece of software to come across my desk is a new version of Picktorial. This new major update to version 3.0 brings full support for Fuji files, and it’s not using the Apple engine, but the company’s own. I’ve been using a beta for a little while and I’m intrigued, especially with the Fuji conversion.

I’ve written a few times now about using Iridient’s X-Transfomer to pre-process Fuji X-Trans files for use in Lightroom. As I have previously mentioned, there are lots of different combinations of settings that you can use, all of which will give you differing results. In my previous post, I thought that I had found the best combination, which was to apply a low level of sharpening in both X-Transformer and Lightroom, but since then, after more experimenting, I’ve come up with a different way of using it.

Now that Iridient X-Transformer has been out on the Mac for a little while I’ve had a chance to play around with it for a bit. After lots of testing and trying various combinations, I’ve come up with what I believe is the best approach to take if you prefer natural looking images. In this post, I’ll outline the settings that I’m now using and some other tips for using the software. As always, I based these on my preferences, and so, you may prefer a different approach. However, if you’re looking for somewhere to start, then have a look, try the recommendations, and judge for yourself.

I wanted to wrap up the street photography video series I’ve been sharing over the past few days with one final post, where you can see the finished images. These are some of the actual images the I edited in the second part of the video, as well as a few more that I didn’t cover. 

In this video, which is a follow on from my street photography vlog video, I discuss editing the shoot. I take you through the whole process from import, through rating and then processing the images to final output. I try to discuss why I like certain images, and why some things work and others don’t.

A while ago I wrote about Iridient’s new product, X-Transformer. It was only available for Windows at the time. I don’t have access to a Windows computer, but I did try it under parallels at the time, and I was impressed with the results. However, because it was just too clunky to work with under emulation, I didn’t do too much with it, as a mac version was promised.

For a while now there’s been something that I’ve been meaning to try in Capture One that I’ve never gotten around to, and that is to find some colour profiles for Fuji cameras. Unlike Lightroom, Capture One doesn’t include colour profiles for the Fuji film simulation modes. However, it does have a comprehensive colour matching engine, and many people have posted their own matching profiles.