Current version: v2024.101 released: Dec 20, 2023
Qimage Ultimate innovations in digital imaging:

Qimage Ultimate opens new doors with cutting edge technology not found in any other software:

  "RIP-like" industry leading photo printing algorithms
  New Vanish tool removes distractions from photos
  New Deep Focus Sharpening: a Qimaqe Ultimate exclusive
  Fusion interpolation: a Qimaqe Ultimate exclusive
  Cutting Edge Color Management (ICC aware) Support
  Ability to optimize and properly format photos for online printing services
  Tone Targeted (Selective) Sharpening
>>> Comprehensive Raw Photo Support
  Single Raw HDR

Click here to see which cameras are supported for raw photography

When it comes to raw photos, isn't Qimage Ultimate just DCRAW?

Like most other third party raw photo tools, Qimage Ultimate uses LibRaw (replaces DCRAW) as it's base raw developing engine, but we've gone beyond the capabilities of LibRaw by adding features and improving performance.  The following are some of the differences between Qimage Ultimate and standard LibRaw raw processing:

  • Custom profiles: We've developed our own ICC profiles for many cameras to improve color accuracy/consistency.
  • Lens profiles: We have lens distortion correction profiles for a number of mirrorless cameras.
  • Black levels: Qimage Ultimate intelligently calculates black level for each camera.
  • DFS: Qimage Ultimate uses Deep Focus Sharpening to produce halo-free razor sharp results.
  • Smart color: Smart color is used to produce outstanding color without adversely affecting hues.
  • Multi-threaded: We use up to 8 CPU cores to develop 8 raw photos at once!
  • ODR: Optimal Dynamic Range tool: pick the areas where you want the most detail.

Qimage Ultimate 2018.101 - Support for Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ Raw Photos

With our newly developed color profile, you can produce beautiful photos from raw (DNG) images taken with your S10 and S10 Plus, like this example, processed entirely in Qimage Ultimate.


Older news (Archive)

Qimage Ultimate 2018.118 - Major raw photo update with hundreds of new camera models added

The new LibRaw based raw photo processing and new dual zone ODR tool offer the ability to easily achieve incredible quality.  Check out the video.

Qimage Ultimate 2014 - Sony A7/A7R support

Qimage Ultimate offers comprehensive support for A7 and A7R raw photos.  As of the time of this writing (Dec 6, 2013), Qimage Ultimate is the only third party raw developing tool that offers an accurate custom ICC profile and lens corrections for the 28-70 kit lens.  Get the most from your A7 and A7R raw photos by using Qimage Ultimate's built in raw photo support.  With smart exposure and color, you'll get amazing results.  Check out these examples of raw photos straight from a Sony A7 (no modifications or tweaking).

Original raws from A7 processed with Qimage Ultimate, default settings

 

Sony A7 w/28-70 kit lens: lens distortion correction profile
Lightroom 5.3 & ACR 8.3 Qimage Ultimate 2014.130

Qimage Ultimate 2014 - Smart Color

Smart color, new in Qimage Ultimate 2014, will revolutionize the way you develop raw photos.  Gone are the days when you had to evaluate each photo by eye, looking for dull areas that need help, manually deciding which corrections to apply.  Whether it's giving a little boost to those subtle yellow flowers in your landscape or bringing life to an entire photo that just looked "dead", smart color is just what the doctor ordered.  Smart color uses a sophisticated proprietary algorithm to examine each photo individually to generate outstanding color.  You'll be surprised how smart it really is.  Take a look at these before/after comparisons.

Smart Color
Smart color OFF Smart color ON

Qimage Ultimate 2013 - Compared to...

Qimage Ultimate uses a highly customized version of dcraw by David Coffin, ported by Davie Lee Reed, and backed up by our own custom ICC profiles for many of the hottest cameras.  Qimage Ultimate is designed to make the most of your raw files with no (or minimal) tweaking.  As a result, while you may have to "fight" your other raw tools to get acceptable results, you will likely find that Qimage Ultimate renders optimal exposure and color without the need for retouching in the majority of cases!

As shown in these examples, Qimage Ultimate automatically renders realistic lighting and accurate colors by examining each photo individually for exposure, fill light, and other image dynamics, leaving you with print-ready raw photos without ever touching a raw editing control!  In the majority of cases, Qimage Ultimate will produce results as good or better than careful (and time consuming) editing in other tools.  Even in rare cases when a touch of fill light or highlight recovery is needed, the raw refinement controls in Qimage Ultimate are much simpler to use and even more effective than the commonly used editing tools in other products.

The examples below show the default raw developing (untouched, unedited raw straight from camera) of Lightroom 4 compared to Qimage Ultimate 2013.

Default raw developing compared
Lightroom 4 raw - no editing Qimage Ultimate 2013 raw - no editing

 


New for 2012 - Salvage Hazy Shots with Auto Black Level

Ever notice how some photos just turn out hazy and lifeless?  Many times the haze (like that shown below/left) is caused by an improper black level.  Loosely translated as the inability of the camera to pick the proper color range based on shooting conditions, the problem is easily corrected with the simple "auto black level" algorithm applied automatically in Qimage Ultimate 2012.  With the ability to turn this feature on/off globally or for each individual photo via the new raw refine exposure/grid selection, you'll never again worry about hazy raw shots caused by shooting in sunlight without a lens hood, through windows, or other "adverse" conditions.


Auto Fill Light Takes Auto Developing to the Next Level

Whether you like to tweak each raw photo or you prefer good auto-developing, you'll appreciate the latest feature found in Qimage Ultimate.  The auto fill light feature is a new raw developing option found in raw format options.  This feature uses a sophisticated algorithm that can actually examine the content of your photo to make decisions about how best to expose the photo.  While prior versions already had "smart exposure", think of the new auto fill as "smart fill light".  It completes the equation of hands-free raw photo developing by balancing the highlights and shadows based on subject matter and even where that subject matter appears in the frame.  Give it a try and you'll see that auto fill light combined with Qimage Ultimate's already excellent exposure control will nearly eliminate the need to retouch your raw photos.


Custom Camera ICC Profiles for Many Camera Models Ensure Ultimate Raw Photo Color Accuracy

Each ICC profile is designed to be used with a particular model camera to optimize color accuracy when processing raw photos in Qimage Ultimate.  While Qimage Ultimate does an exceptional job of processing raw photos without an ICC profile (better than most raw tools in many cases), adding an ICC profile for your specific model camera is the icing on the cake as it actually ensures color accuracy and eliminates hue shifts found in many other raw tools. 

Available for a fee of only $17.95 each, these camera profiles take your Qimage Ultimate raw processing to the next level!  When you purchase, we send you a ZIP file that contains the profile (ICM file) for your camera and a readme.txt file with quick installation instructions.  Installation couldn't be simpler: just unzip the ICM file, save it in your Qimage profiles folder (usually \program files\qimage\profiles) and you're done!  Qimage Ultimate will automatically use the profile for raw photos from that particular camera from that point forward.


Qimage Ultimate - Lens Distortion Correction Info

Software lens distortion correction - background

Recently, some manufacturers have been building cameras (and lenses) that exhibit severe distortion, particularly at wide angle focal lengths.  This is not an indication of declining quality or cutting corners, however.  Actually, it is a new innovation that allows manufacturers to make smaller, less costly lenses.  By eliminating some of the lens elements that (historically) have corrected things like barrel and pincushion distortion on zoom lenses, manufacturers are able to focus on making high quality primary lens elements while at the same time reducing weight and cost to the customer.  Removing pieces of the lens that normally correct distortions, however, means we now have to do distortion correction in software: by taking the raw photo and applying a pixel remapping to reverse the distortion.

There is some debate as to whether or not doing this distortion correction optically or digitally gives better results, and there is no real consensus on which makes more sense.  Technically both do the job and both methods (optical and digital) of distortion correction will reduce lens resolution and sharpness slightly.  When done right, software distortion correction can be as effective or better than optical compensation.  If you'd like to read a little more about the concept of software distortion correction, please see this article.

Distortion correction WRT raw photography

Software distortion correction complicates raw developing because the raw data in your raw photo is actually quite distorted and such distortion must be corrected as part of the raw developing process.  Manufacturers are now embedding information in each raw file regarding how to apply barrel and pincushion distortion corrections to the raw data so that the final/developed images meet the manufacturers specs.  It works quite well: in fact, the processed results typically look as good or better than traditional lenses built to avoid the problem optically.  The issue is that not all programs can access this distortion correction data in raw photos in order to do the correction.  The publicly available solution, dcraw for example, doesn't read the embedded values and it displays the raw image just as it hits the sensor: distortion and all (see below).  That means that some third party programs that use dcraw to develop raw photos will likely render distorted raw photos when processing raw photos from cameras that need the software distortion correction.

The Qimage Ultimate solution

After reviewing the software solutions being used to perform lens distortion corrections on cameras that need it, we've found that the manufacturers are doing a decent job of "hiding" the distortion but they seem never to go quite far enough.  As a result, the wide angle end of most zooms still shows visible distortion even after the distortion correction is applied: this is the case with all other raw developing tools and even JPEG's produced by the camera.  So rather than just match the manufacturer specs with our own software, we've gone a step further.  We believe that if you are going to make a lens that requires software distortion correction, you might as well do it right and correct it completely!  So we've begun our process of beating the manufacturers (and the other raw tools) at raw photo lens distortion correction.  Below is an example (now available in Qimage Ultimate v2011.111):

GH1 raw photo: 14-140 lens at 14mm focal length:

 

Currently, Qimage Ultimate performs lens distortion correction on the following cameras.

Canon  
  PowerShot S90
  PowerShot S95
  PowerShot S100
   
Olympus PEN E-P1*
  PEN E-P2*
  PEN E-P3*
  PEN E-PL1*
  PEN E-PL2*
  PEN E-PL3*
  PEN E-PM1*
  * 14-42 lens only
   
Panasonic  
  DMC-G1
  DMC-G2
  DMC-G3
  DMC-GF1
  DMC-GF2
  DMC-GF3
  DMC-GH1
  DMC-GH2
  DMC-GH3
  DMC-GX1
  DMC-LX3
  DMC-LX5
   
Sony  
  a6000 (kit lens)
  A7/A7R (kit lens)
  RX100

Qimage Ultimate currently supports the following cameras for raw photo support:

We no longer list individual camera models as there are just too many to list (over a thousand now) and with recent updates, nearly every model including the very latest models are supported.  The only cameras that are not supported are cameras with Foveon sensors (a few Foveon based Sigma models).  Other than those few models, your camera is almost certainly supported for raw photo support.


Qimage Ultimate includes custom raw profiles for the following cameras:

Note: If your camera is listed, our custom profile will provide accurate and consistent color across different brands/models.  If your camera is not listed, you will still achieve good color (as specified by the manufacturer).

1 V3
1 J5
D1H
D200
D2H
D2X
D2Xs
D3
D300
D3300
D3400
D40
D5300
D5500
D7200
D70
D500
D700
D750
D850
D80
D800
D810
D90
DiMAGE A2
DMC-FZ1000
DMC-G1
DMC-GH1
DMC-GH2
DMC-GH3
DMC-GH4
DMC-LX3
DMC-LX5
DSC-RX100M3
DSLR-A100
DSLR-A350
DSLR-A700
DSLR-A900
DYNAX 7D
E-1
E-3
E-300
E-410
E-500
E-510
E-520
E-M1
E-M10
E-M5
E-M5 Mark II
EOS 10D
EOS 20D
EOS 300D Digital
EOS 30D
EOS 350D Digital
EOS 400D Digital
EOS 40D
EOS 450D
EOS 500D
EOS 50D
EOS 5D Mark II
EOS 5D Mark III
EOS 5D Mark IV
EOS 5D
EOS 5DS
EOD 5DS R
EOS 600D
EOS 6D
EOS 77D
EOS 700D
EOS 750D
EOS 760D
EOS 7D
EOS 7D Mark II
EOS D60
EOS DIGITAL REBEL T1i
EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi
EOS DIGITAL REBEL
EOS Kiss X3
EOS M3
EOS REBEL T3i
EOS REBEL T5i
EOS REBEL T6
EOS REBEL T6i
EOS REBEL T6s
EOS-1D Mark II
EOS-1D Mark III
EOS-1D Mark IV
EOS-1Ds Mark II
FinePix S5Pro
GX10
GXR A12
GXR P10
ILCE-6000
ILCE-7 (A7)
ILCE-7M2 (A7 II)
ILCE-7M3 (A7 III)
ILCE-7R (A7R)
ILCE-7S (A7S)
ILCE-9 (A9)
K-5
K-7
K100D
K10D
NX30
PowerShot G1 X Mark II
PowerShot G10
PowerShot G3
PowerShot G6
PowerShot G9
PowerShot Pro1
PowerShot S100
PowerShot S70
SD14
X-T1

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