Does Aperture Correct Lens Distortion with Panasonic Raw Files?

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Level 1

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Does Aperture Correct Lens Distortion with Panasonic Raw Files?

I have a Panasonic GF1. When shooting in JPEG I know that the camera adjust for barrel distortion on the saved image. However It does not for RAW images as far as I know.

I am aware that Adobe reluctantly added the software correction to Adobe Camera Raw for Panasonic cameras that need this for their RAW files to look correct, even though technically the file is no longer RAW after this adjustment. The information needed to do these corrections is encoded in the RAW file. So! I am wondering if Aperture does this correction to imported RAW files now that it supports The GF1?

Heres a more in depth look at the distortion issue: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicGF1/page19.asp

macbook, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Apr 14, 2010 7:03 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 15, 2010 8:13 AM in response to bigwhig

The Short Answer, No. Allan

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Answer 2

Gary

Level 2

189 points

Apr 15, 2010 4:43 PM in response to bigwhig

As a DMC-G1 owner, I thought that RAW conversions were fully supported now. Turns out that my perception seems to have been only partly true.

I fired up SilkyPix again (thought I'd seen that for the last time!) and checked what corrections it offers. In the 'Lens aberration controller', there are three controls: Shading (angle and amount), Distortion (distortion rate and centre) and Chromatic Aberration (R rate and B rate).

Aperture only exposes controls for the [Chromatic Aberration|http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/index.html#cha pter=17%26section=11|Working with the Chromatic Aberration Controls] (red/cyan and blue/yellow) - this can be applied globally or brushed in selectively.

There doesn't appear to be any access to shading or distortion as there is in SiklyPix, though - at a quick glance and I could be wrong - Aperture's [Devignette|http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/index.html#ch apter=17%26section=4|Working with the Devignette Controls] tool appears to provide a similar function to the description of the Shading tool in SiklyPix.

If there's distortion correction automatically going on behind the scenes - you did mention the embedded correction information in the RAW file - then it's not obvious. There's certainly no user control that I have seen.

Hope this helps...

Regards,
Gary

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Answer 3

bigwhig Author

Level 1

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Apr 15, 2010 4:52 PM in response to Gary

I would be happy if Aperture just took care of the barrel distortion at least I can do something with the abberations etc, but the barrel distortion is pretty pronounced. I guess to get a definitive answer since apple hasn't jumped in with answers would be to conduct a test. From what I've read silky pix takes care of the distortion etc right when you import it, getting the calculations from the info embedded in the file. Maybe I'll just have to make it a 2 step process.Thanks for the input!

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