Kuuvik Capture 2.1 Released

Version 2.1 of Kuuvik Capture is now available on the Mac App Store. This update brings a handful of new features and a few fixes. Let’s start with the new features.

kc21prefsFirst, a new preference is added to control whether the camera’s LCD is turned on when you start live view from within Kuuvik Capture.

If you turn this preference off, the camera’s LCD will remain turned off to conserve battery. But you can turn the LCD on any time with the live view button on the camera.

When you start live view directly on the camera, it’s LCD will turn on regardless of this preference (chances are that you engaged live view on the camera because you want to look at the LCD).

Upon user request, the number of focus bracketing steps had been increased from 30 to 100. And I’ve added hot keys to the Purge Unrated (Cmd-P) and Purge Unrated and Decrease Rating (Shift-Cmd-P) culling commands.

The bug fixes are the following:

  • Live view is now automatically stopped when changing lenses or when the camera is disconnected.
  • Live view navigator zoom labels now display “6x” and “16x” for the EOS 5DS and 5DS R. The navigator frame’s size is also corrected to reflect these zoom levels.
  • ISO 16000 now can be set from Kuuvik Capture on the EOS 7D Mark II, even if using full stop ISOs is set on the camera. This is in line with the camera’s behavior.

Version 2.1 is a free update for existing Kuuvik Capture 2 owners.

Kuuvik Capture 2 Available on the Mac App Store

kc2icon@2xI’m proud to announce that Kuuvik Capture 2 is now available on the Mac App Store!

I’ve added a few features since the Beta 2 (see my previous post about the Beta 2 feature list):

  • Open in Application command to directly open the CR2 files in your favorite RAW converter.
  • Ratings in the CR2 files (set in the camera) are now honored.
  • Added clipping display control menu items to the image area’s context menu.
  • Added ability to work with Canon EOS 5DS and 5DS R images on computers that lack the GPU resources needed to display these images. Images are now downsized to 24 megapixels for display in this case (RAW files remain in their full resolution).
  • Added support for Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS 750D / Rebel T6i / Kiss X8i, EOS 760D / Rebel T6s / 8000D and EOS 1200D / Rebel T5 / Kiss X70 cameras.

You can download Kuuvik Capture 2 from the Mac App Store for a discounted price until the end of August. This discount serves as an upgrade price for existing users as well as an introductory price.

For the complete list of compatible cameras and computers please visit the tech specs page.

Fixing Extremely Slow rsync on OS X

Last night I moved out my photo collection from my MacBook Pro’s internal SSD to a neat little Samsung T1 USB3 SSD. And since Time Machine still can’t handle backing up external drives correctly (it removes the external drive’s contents from the backup when it is not connected), I created a small script to do the backup using the good old rsync.

Backup of the T1 goes to a dedicated AFP share on my FreeBSD server (shared using Netatalk). An Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock provides gigabit Ethernet connectivity for the MacBook Pro. I usually see file transfer rates in the 60MB/s – 110 MB/s range from this setup. So the 3MB/s average what rsync produced here was a bit shocking.

And the transfer rate jumped up to the usual range when I downloaded something from the Internet! And went down to 3 megs when the download finished…

It seems that the nine year old version of rsync included in OS X Yosemite can’t handle the OS’s network power management features correctly. When another app wakes up the net to full speed, it works fine, but rsync alone can’t do that.

The solution is embarrassingly simple: install rsync from the ports collection. Did that, updated my script, and presto, I suddenly get transfer speeds in the 50MB/s – 80MB/s range…

  ☕ ☕ ☕

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Keeping OS X Display Brightness Unchanged

In the previous installment in my monitor calibration series, I mentioned the need to keep monitor brightness unchanged after calibration – as any change to it invalidates the profile.

But what if I press the brightness control buttons on the Retina MacBook Pro (or on any other MacBook)? Should I immediately re-calibrate and re-profile? Well, there’s a slick trick.

MacBookBrightnessControl2MacBook display brightness is changed by default in whole unit steps using the brightness keys. But holding down Shift + Option while pressing the keys will change it to 1/4 unit steps – the same amount ColorEyes Display Pro (and other software) uses when controlling the display.

What I usually do after calibration and profiling is: increase the brightness by 1/4 unit, take note of the (previous) value, and immediately decrease it back to where the software set it. This way I could return the display to the calibrated state even if I had to change, or accidentally changed its brightness.

Another enemy of keeping the calibration intact is the display dimming preference of OS X – which tells the machine to slightly dim the display while running off of batteries. It might be useful for users not requiring color accuracy and consistency, but turn it off for calibrated displays (by default it’s on).

DisplayDimming2

In the next installment I’ll examine the differences between hardware and software calibration.