In this section I will look at the converter’s individually and point out specific and unique characteristics of each. This will be a multi-part section as doing it all in one post will be too large. For the previous post, which compared all the converter’s basic capabilities, click here.
Photolemur
This is a totally unique tool in that it does what it does and gives you almost no control over what it can do. In all honesty, I would expect it to be next to useless, with good results being few and far between. Yet that is not the case.
Photolemur can do the following and this makes it even more useful:
- It can run stand alone
- It can integrate with other photo tools
- It has seamless integration with Lightroom
- It has seamless integration with Photoshop
- It can process a single image
- It can batch process an unlimited amount of images
- It can output TIF, PNG or JPEG images
- It can resize the image when saving it
- It can post direct to Facebook or Twitter
- It has presets for image output and you can add your own.
- It can process RAW, JPEG and TIF files. If it doesn’t support a specific RAW file it is happy with a DNG version of it.
Output settings
Photolemur’s results
Capabilities are all well and good. But it’s results that count. So how did it do with my test image? Here’s a before and after comparison:
[URISP id=278]
Two things standout to me: the results look natural and the recovery of the shadow details is excellent. Since using Photolemur I have run hundreds of images through it and have been consistently impressed with its results.
Photolemur plus DXO
Photolemur’s results can be enhanced by pre-processing the image in DXO first. DXO’s lens and camera corrections, plus lens specific sharpening and Prime Noise Reduction are class leaders. But Photolemur can then take DXO’s results and complete the job. The comparison’s below show that the difference DXO makes is small but the image is definitely of higher quality.
[URISP id=280]
Improvements?
Photolemur lacks the ability to set a sharpening option when saving a picture. As it can resize the image it would be possible to fully prepare it for screen or printing if this option were available. Maybe they will add it later. But for now, a little bit more processing would be needed for a professional, large print.
Recommendations
Given its low price, Photolemur is a tool that belongs in everyone’s toolkit. If you are preparing RAW files for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or email it is almost perfect. For truly professional results then some extra tweaking may be needed to the image after Photolemur has processed it. Nevertheless, Photolemur saves so much time and does such a good job that it’s worth always having to hand. I reckon for about 80% of images it produces a really decent result. I do use Photolemur as a step in my workflow rather than do everything in it, but if I were preparing a photo for an email or even posting online it may well be all I need.
Get Photolemur
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Photolemur – Automatic Photo Processing
In the next post in this series I’ll look at DXO, Lightroom, Exsposure X3 and Luminar in more detail…