Linear Laundry

Linear Laundry is a two-part application designed to accurately and easily develop RAW photos. One part develops the RAW into a linear PSD file, and the a set of Photoshop actions can be used to create a true-color image. The final result is dramatically increased image quality, without the hightlight blow-outs typical of built-in processors.

Linear Laundry is:

Raw to Linear PSD.app

• Mac OS X native application that converts Canon CRW photos to a linear PSD
• Built using dcraw and Platypus. You don't need to install or compile dcraw, an OS X binary is included inside the program.

• This is a set of photoshop actions to easily develop Linear PSDs into bright, correctly colored photos.
• The actions are non-destructive. Each of the actions uses effect layers to 'develop' the photo, so the original PSD is on the bottom layer, untouched.
• All of the actions can be used in batch processing as desired.
• The actions include: (pictures can be found on the product page)
  • Gentle Cycle - Preserves all highlights. Takes about 30 seconds per image, but for high-saturation photos, it's worth the wait.
  • Quick Rinse - Develops about the same as Gentle Cycle, but can blow some highlights. Much Faster, ~2 sec/image.
  • Bleach 'an a Bucket - Sometimes beautiful, sometimes a train wreck. Almost always an interesting effect. Some have described it as "Holga-like"
  • Ansel Adams - High-contrast Black and White, with a slight channel skew
  • Tumble Dry Low - Light sharpening routines
  • High Heat - Heavy sharpening. May cause slight pixelation.
  • Gimme a JPEG - convert from 16-bit to 8-bit mode, change the color profile for a web-based JPEG

• Processes an entire set of photos using RAW to Linear PSD and LinearLaundry.atn
• Creates a set of full-res, JPEG images, and imports them into iPhoto
• Cleans up after itself.
• Uses jhead to re-add the camera EXIF information after processing.
• Assumes a very particular directory structure to work! Specifically:
  • You are using Image Capture to download both CRW and THM files to the "Pictures" folder
  • You have folders called "RAW Darkroom" and "RAW Negatives" made in your Pictures folder. "RAW Darkroom" will be used for temporary processing, and "RAW Negatives" will be used as long-term storage for your CRW and THM files
• Since Photoshop doesn't like it when people touch the keyboard in batch mode, you may want to run "Process Raw Darkroom.app" when you're going to step away from the computer for a bit.

What is new in this release:

1.1.1 - Fixed jhead bug in "Process Raw Darkroom.app", so EXIF is now added on again successfully.

Requirements:

Tested on Mac OS X 10.4.x with Adobe Photoshop CS. It might work on other versions. If so, let me know!