Anyone else out there using Capture One image editing program?

[Bobby Henderson]

Unless someone is using some strange, off-beat brand and model of digital camera perhaps from a company that went out of business that person shouldn't have problems opening and editing RAW files created by the camera. There are free third party utilities, such as Adobe's Digital Negative Convertor app that can convert RAW files into the open source DNG format. Those utilities are routinely updated to include support for newer models of cameras and Camera RAW formats.

I shoot a lot of RAW photos with my old Canon DSLR. The .CR2 files my camera creates are in such a common format that the Windows OS itself gives image previews of the files. I usually open and adjust them in Adobe Bridge. The basic controls there are usually good enough that I don't have to open them in something like Lightroom.

Affinity Photo has largely replaced Photoshop for most workflows for us, except for those that require PSD file compatibility.

Serif's graphics applications (Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher) are interesting in terms of what you get for the relatively low price. I have no problem recommending them to casual/hobbyist users or people who need some basic, low-priced graphics software for office productivity use. Affinity's applications don't integrate as well into a professional graphics production environment, where those applications have to trade files with other kinds of production software. Adobe owns the high ground there.

I've experimented a good bit with Affinity Designer (Serif's vector drawing app rival to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, etc). This past Spring Serif had a 50% off price special, so I bought the Windows and iPadOS versions of Affinity Designer -mainly to have as a means of trouble-shooting such files if my sign company starts receiving .afdesign files from customers. Affinity Designer is kind of an odd vector "draw" program. The fills it creates on objects are not vector-based; they're raster-based fills that are clipped to the parent vector shape. That's not a bad thing if you're creating artwork meant only for display on computer screens or video. But it's a big problem for high resolution, large format printing output.

Vectornator for iPadOS and MacOS is an interesting application that's now free. It had a very low price before. Inkscape (open source) has a lot of creative capabilities even though it has a very dated looking interface. Inkscape is currently the only low-cost/free vector drawing application that supports the new OpenType Variable font format. Still, Inkscape has the very nagging limitation of only working in RGB color space.

I still rely on CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop for my main work-horse graphics applications. The integration between Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign for print work is unmatched by any other graphics suite. The level of integration between Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects is also pretty impressive. I'm starting to get nervous about the future of Corel. They've made some big mis-steps in recent years, trying to put on the appearance they're keeping up with Adobe. Perhaps the biggest mistake is them going to what is effectively a subscription-only setup. I think some of that garbage comes from the private equity companies that have owned Corel for some time (Vector Capital sold Corel to KKR last year). Meanwhile Adobe has been doing more to improve Illustrator lately to make it more useful in large format/outdoor graphic design (and give me less need to use CorelDRAW for full size sign design work). I still remember how the Freehand drawing application bit the dust (it was a Postscript-based drawing application that was superior to Illustrator in a few ways). Now I can see a possibility of CorelDRAW biting the dust too, which would be a shame. I've been using that application almost 30 years.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Unless someone is using some strange, off-beat brand and model of digital camera perhaps from a company that went out of business that person shouldn't have problems opening and editing RAW files created by the camera. There are free third party utilities, such as Adobe's Digital Negative Convertor app that can convert RAW files into the open source DNG format. Those utilities are routinely updated to include support for newer models of cameras and Camera RAW formats.

I shoot a lot of RAW photos with my old Canon DSLR. The .CR2 files my camera creates are in such a common format that the Windows OS itself gives image previews of the files. I usually open and adjust them in Adobe Bridge. The basic controls there are usually good enough that I don't have to open them in something like Lightroom.

Well, it depends on what information you want to get from your RAW files. CR2 files seem to be mostly open, but CR3 files (used by many of the mirror-less compact Canon cameras) are far more problematic for example.

But you'll have a hard time getting the white balance data from any Sony camera for example. Those tools that support their format are probably paying Sony for the file support. You know how that stuff goes: Once a format becomes rare but still costs money to license, you'll see how it will eventually get dropped. Sometimes political skirmishes between companies also end up with format support getting dropped. Remember the Dolby/Adobe "debacle", where Adobe dropped practically all out-of-the-box Dolby support for Premiere?

Serif's graphics applications (Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher) are interesting in terms of what you get for the relatively low price. I have no problem recommending them to casual/hobbyist users or people who need some basic, low-priced graphics software for office productivity use. Affinity's applications don't integrate as well into a professional graphics production environment, where those applications have to trade files with other kinds of production software. Adobe owns the high ground there.

I've experimented a good bit with Affinity Designer (Serif's vector drawing app rival to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, etc). This past Spring Serif had a 50% off price special, so I bought the Windows and iPadOS versions of Affinity Designer -mainly to have as a means of trouble-shooting such files if my sign company starts receiving .afdesign files from customers. Affinity Designer is kind of an odd vector "draw" program. The fills it creates on objects are not vector-based; they're raster-based fills that are clipped to the parent vector shape. That's not a bad thing if you're creating artwork meant only for display on computer screens or video. But it's a big problem for high resolution, large format printing output.

I guess it depends on how you export those fills too. Gradients, for example, are saved as vector-information in afdesign files, but if you copy/paste them into another program, they get rasterized, same when you save them to almost any other file format, although PDF should work fine with most simple gradients without too many transforms on them. There are also seemingly still some limitations to the iPadOS/IOS version.

Affinity Designer and Photo were only released back in 2016, for the time and price they've been on the market, I'd say that their progress is really remarkable. You certainly won't escape Adobe products when you're dependent on external workflows, but workflows that we can keep indoor usually work pretty well with Affinity Designer and Photo. The integration with third-party software is also on the rise, so we keep pushing them. My wife, who practically grew up with the "Adobe stack" of software, now produces most of her original artwork in Designer and Photo as opposed to Illustrator and Photoshop.

What we're most happy with though, is that we almost managed to ban Adobe Premiere and AfterFX from our workflows. Those were real time killers. The amount of crashes of those two pieces of software must have cost us thousands of hours over the years. Most of it now has been replaced by Avid Media Composer and Nuke for the more professional work and DaVinci Resolve Pro, which are all far more stable.

Now I can see a possibility of CorelDRAW biting the dust too, which would be a shame. I've been using that application almost 30 years.

I don't know why, but I've never really gotten the hang of CorelDRAW. It's the grand-daddy of vector graphics, at least in the PC environment, but it never really grew on me. I guess the difficult history of Corel and the lack of a pixel paint program counterpart like Photoshop to Illustrator (before they acquired Paint Shop Pro) that kept me largely away from it over the years.

I think it's good to have some real competition to Adobe though. For years, they were the holy grail for "creative productivity software" and unlike Word processors like MS Word, their relevance isn't going away in the foreseeable future.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Randy Stankey Said....

"This way, at least, I'll have half a chance to access those pictures in the future when I need them"

I am still accessing low rez (640X480) jpeg images I took way back in the mid 1990's with my Kodak DC-20 with no problem at all. Way back in the olden days... before the turn of the century, I stored all of them on a CD-ROM that I burned in my then brand new 1X HP CDR Writer.... I always thought these CD's would deteriorate over time, but they are 25 years old now and there are no issues. Yes, they are also stored in three other places just to be sure they don't get lost. The biggest problem with the HP CD Writer back then was.... is there actually going to be data on the CDR you just recorded. Half the time they came out with nothing on them.. But the ones that worked stood the test of time.

[Bobby Henderson]

Well, it depends on what information you want to get from your RAW files. CR2 files seem to be mostly open, but CR3 files (used by many of the mirror-less compact Canon cameras) are far more problematic for example.

Far more problematic for which RAW image editing applications? I don't use the Capture One application Mark uses. But I do know for a fact Adobe's support for new mirror-less cameras and CR3 files is rock solid. It seems like Adobe updates their Camera RAW software, Bridge, Photoshop and Lightroom at least once a month to add new camera models (along with other bug fixes, improvements, etc). If someone is using an older or discontinued RAW editor then the fall-back of converting the CR3 files to DNG format is available.

I guess it depends on how you export those fills too. Gradients, for example, are saved as vector-information in afdesign files, but if you copy/paste them into another program, they get rasterized, same when you save them to almost any other file format, although PDF should work fine with most simple gradients without too many transforms on them.

I installed the latest update from version 1.8.4 to 1.8.5. That solved some of the problems with EPS and PDF files exported from Affinity Designer -at least in terms of objects being filled with raster-based fills via embedded/clipped pixel based objects. Previously one of the two formats wouldn't even include any vector data at all, just a bunch of masked, raster-based objects, even when carefully choosing desired settings (PDF or EPS for Print) under the application's "export persona." It would say "nothing will be rasterized," but nevertheless the fills were rasterized anyway. Now that seems to be fixed.

Still some glitches remain. CorelDRAW won't open the PDFs generated by Affinity Designer (a dialog box pops up saying "the file is corrupted"), but it will open Affinity's EPS files. Adobe Illustrator will open Affinity's PDF files, but if the objects contain complex fills such as gradients the fill is included as a separate object held in a clipping mask. The same goes for EPS files. What makes it even more annoying: normally I can select the objects and run a pass through Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid plug-in. It usually fixes things like that, but not in this case. If you want the primary object to contain the fill rather than some dopey rectangle clipped to it you have to fix it manually. That can be a giant pain if the artwork has lots of objects.

What we're most happy with though, is that we almost managed to ban Adobe Premiere and AfterFX from our workflows. Those were real time killers. The amount of crashes of those two pieces of software must have cost us thousands of hours over the years.

I haven't had many problems with After Effects (thank God), but I don't think it's nearly as demanding to create motion graphics for LED variable message signs. I do like After Effects for how easy it is to bring in artwork from Illustrator and Photoshop. I don't understand the issues with Premiere Pro lately, but Adobe can't afford to let those issues persist considering the rivals they have in the video production market. DaVinci Resolve is a pretty formidable adversary.

I don't know why, but I've never really gotten the hang of CorelDRAW. It's the grand-daddy of vector graphics, at least in the PC environment, but it never really grew on me. I guess the difficult history of Corel and the lack of a pixel paint program counterpart like Photoshop to Illustrator (before they acquired Paint Shop Pro) that kept me largely away from it over the years.

CorelDRAW is a mixed bag of an application. Its stock tool set is great for technical drawing tasks and its 1800" X 1800" max art board size allows for most things to be designed at full size. The application isn't so great in other areas. All of the other entries in Corel's "suite" have been also-ran applications, such as Corel PhotoPaint. Painter, which was originally Fractal Design Painter in the 1990's, is really their best pixel-based image editor. I've never been a big fan of PaintShop Pro.

CorelDRAW grew very common in niche graphics businesses like sign shops and screen printing companies because it had very little competition on the Windows platform. Early PC versions of Adobe Illustrator were too primitive. Versions 5, 5.5 and 6 were Mac-only (save for some odd SGI IRIX ports). Freehand (first made by Aldus, then Macromedia) was actually a better application and credible versions of it were available on the Windows platform earlier. By the time Adobe started treating Mac and Windows platforms equally CorelDRAW already had a pretty strong foot-hold.

CorelDRAW's lead in the sign industry really started to erode with the rise of large format digital printing. Adobe has always had a better handle on color control than Corel. All of the pro-level large format printing RIP applications on the market (Onyx, RasterLink Pro, Caldera, etc) are very steeped in Adobe. When Adobe introduces some new Illustrator feature, such as freeform gradients, those RIPs are usually quickly updated to be able to print those effects.

The thing that has Corel in trouble now is a couple buggy version releases and not having enough resources to properly support an annual product release cycle. In the past full versions of CorelDRAW were released about once every 2 years. They went to a yearly release cycle (to copy Adobe's CC product cycle), but charged just as much ($199) to upgrade. Not only were new releases very light on new features and improvements, but there were bugs too. CDR 2019 featured the first native MacOSX version in nearly 20 years. Unfortunately the application was slow and unstable. CDR 2020 has only one point-release update and one hot fix. I just have a very bad feeling where that company is headed. Yesterday Corel unveiled some new software bundles that throw in Painter and Pinnacle Studio along with CorelDRAW and other applications. I'm not sure what to think of the move.

Meanwhile, since November 2019, Adobe Illustrator 24 had 3 significant point release updates introducing new features and at least a dozen or more smaller bug fix updates. Illustrator 25 was introduced just a couple weeks ago and it has already had a couple maintenance updates (including an automatic update just yesterday). On top of that Illustrator has an active public beta program that users can access in the Creative Cloud panel and provide feedback in the Adobe beta forums. Adding to that, there is a slew of very powerful plug-ins available for Adobe's software. Astute Graphics makes some outstanding plug-ins for Illustrator. I recently found out about a font building/editing plug-in called FontSelf that looks really promising. It's not nearly as powerful as FontLab Studio, but it looks like it might be significantly easier to use.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes, Capture One supports all formats and all current and many older cameras that are out there. I much prefer it because it is like having Light Room and Photoshop all in one program, but with way more comprehensive color and image adjustments than either of the Adobe programs have. Plus, there are no monthly recurring fees with it. Although going monthly is an option if you wish to. I would much rather own the program than have to pay through the nose every month to keep it. I still own and use Adobe Photoshop CS4, Ver 11 and it's ok for quick fixes. If you want to try Capture One you can do a free 30 day trial. I think some of the older versions are also free from their archives.

https://www.captureone.com/en

[Marcel Birgelen]

Far more problematic for which RAW image editing applications? I don't use the Capture One application Mark uses. But I do know for a fact Adobe's support for new mirror-less cameras and CR3 files is rock solid. It seems like Adobe updates their Camera RAW software, Bridge, Photoshop and Lightroom at least once a month to add new camera models (along with other bug fixes, improvements, etc). If someone is using an older or discontinued RAW editor then the fall-back of converting the CR3 files to DNG format is available.

I'm pretty sure Cannon and Adobe have some kind of licensing deal for their RAW formats. The problem arises once you want to do something with Open Source for example. I remember one of our customers trying to implement a portal where people could upload RAW pictures and where they could do some pre-processing on-line. There were multiple reasons why this project didn't go ahead, but one of them was the lack of open software to be able to process those RAW files.

Another problem that might arise in the future is once those RAW formats start to become obsolete. You'll probably see Adobe & co. start to ditch them, to save on licensing and maintenance.

I installed the latest update from version 1.8.4 to 1.8.5. That solved some of the problems with EPS and PDF files exported from Affinity Designer -at least in terms of objects being filled with raster-based fills via embedded/clipped pixel based objects. Previously one of the two formats wouldn't even include any vector data at all, just a bunch of masked, raster-based objects, even when carefully choosing desired settings (PDF or EPS for Print) under the application's "export persona." It would say "nothing will be rasterized," but nevertheless the fills were rasterized anyway. Now that seems to be fixed.

Yes, early versions of Affinity Designer exported all fills that weren't strictly single-color as masked rasterized graphics. But the PDF and EPS export functionality of Affinity is constantly improving, as is the SVG exporter. We've had some compatibility problems with RIP software in the past involving gradients nd one of the problems we've seen was that layers would not be preserved. This was important for some stuff that needed to be cut by a plotter, as the cutting vectors are supplied on a different layer. But Sheriff actually still seems to care about bug reports, because in the version after we reported this, the problem was resolved. I guess that interoperability with other products is high on their list, because it's important for the viability of their software.

I haven't had many problems with After Effects (thank God), but I don't think it's nearly as demanding to create motion graphics for LED variable message signs. I do like After Effects for how easy it is to bring in artwork from Illustrator and Photoshop. I don't understand the issues with Premiere Pro lately, but Adobe can't afford to let those issues persist considering the rivals they have in the video production market. DaVinci Resolve is a pretty formidable adversary.

Well, the stability issues with After Effects primarily arise once you use the "neato" integration between Premiere and After Effects. All too often, the one crashing will take down the other with it. One of the biggest issues we've had was that Premiere would crash the Nvidia display drivers, like once per hour. In this case, only a reboot would fix it. Adobe's helpdesk in turn asked us to downgrade the drivers to a certain version, but this version then in turn lead to compatibility issues with the latest version of Autodesk Maya... Luckily, we were able to split the workflow between workstations, but we've bought a bunch of beefy workstations so they can act as all-rounder without people needing to hop around between them like it's 1995...

CorelDRAW is a mixed bag of an application. Its stock tool set is great for technical drawing tasks and its 1800" X 1800" max art board size allows for most things to be designed at full size. The application isn't so great in other areas. All of the other entries in Corel's "suite" have been also-ran applications, such as Corel PhotoPaint. Painter, which was originally Fractal Design Painter in the 1990's, is really their best pixel-based image editor. I've never been a big fan of PaintShop Pro.

CorelDRAW grew very common in niche graphics businesses like sign shops and screen printing companies because it had very little competition on the Windows platform. Early PC versions of Adobe Illustrator were too primitive. Versions 5, 5.5 and 6 were Mac-only (save for some odd SGI IRIX ports). Freehand (first made by Aldus, then Macromedia) was actually a better application and credible versions of it were available on the Windows platform earlier. By the time Adobe started treating Mac and Windows platforms equally CorelDRAW already had a pretty strong foot-hold.

CorelDRAW's lead in the sign industry really started to erode with the rise of large format digital printing. Adobe has always had a better handle on color control than Corel. All of the pro-level large format printing RIP applications on the market (Onyx, RasterLink Pro, Caldera, etc) are very steeped in Adobe. When Adobe introduces some new Illustrator feature, such as freeform gradients, those RIPs are usually quickly updated to be able to print those effects.

Despite people often scolding at Adobe, they also did a few things right. Illustrator quickly grew from a primitive tool to the de-facto standard 2D vector tool in the market, even with the likes of Corel having years of head-start.

The same also happened to desktop publishing. While their Pagemaker tool wasn't up to the task for the bigger publishing houses, newspapers, etc., with InDesign they managed to almost completely eradicate QuarkXpress from the market in just a few short years, primarily Quark completely missed the upgrade from MacOS "Classic" to X...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

!50 megapixels anyone????

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't think there are many applications for such a resolution for normal still photography or even video, but those super-high-pixel sensors can be used for other neat stuff like creating the next-generation light-field cameras.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I don't think there are many applications for such a resolution for normal still photography or even video, but those super-high-pixel sensors can be used for other neat stuff like creating the next-generation light-field cameras.

Making large murals would be one application. I am quite sure there are editing programs, and you would need at least an 8K monitor and one hell of a GPU.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm pretty sure Cannon and Adobe have some kind of licensing deal for their RAW formats. The problem arises once you want to do something with Open Source for example. I remember one of our customers trying to implement a portal where people could upload RAW pictures and where they could do some pre-processing on-line. There were multiple reasons why this project didn't go ahead, but one of them was the lack of open software to be able to process those RAW files.

Adobe's DNG Converter software is available for free. And, IIRC, Adobe isn't the only game in town for RAW to DNG conversion utilities either.

Another problem that might arise in the future is once those RAW formats start to become obsolete. You'll probably see Adobe & co. start to ditch them, to save on licensing and maintenance.

No digital-based file format is totally future-proof from having its support discontinued from use. On the other hand, as processing power and storage capacity (and storage speed) continues to improve that actually works as an insurance policy to keep old formats still usable. The digital photography market is currently hitting a far more serious, immediate concern: the possible impending death of the DSLR platform. DSLR product lines and their expensive (and lucrative) lens systems are falling victim to the new breed of mirror-less cameras. I am personally far more concerned about the future of DSLR camera bodies and lens systems than I am over the continued support from Adobe for CR2 RAW files.

Yes, early versions of Affinity Designer exported all fills that weren't strictly single-color as masked rasterized graphics. But the PDF and EPS export functionality of Affinity is constantly improving, as is the SVG exporter. We've had some compatibility problems with RIP software in the past involving gradients nd one of the problems we've seen was that layers would not be preserved. This was important for some stuff that needed to be cut by a plotter, as the cutting vectors are supplied on a different layer. But Sheriff actually still seems to care about bug reports, because in the version after we reported this, the problem was resolved. I guess that interoperability with other products is high on their list, because it's important for the viability of their software.

Interoperability with other graphics software is a very critical thing, but one that few vendors take seriously at all. I use the latest versions of CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator in part because those two applications have issues trading art files between each other. Affinity Designer is very good for its affordable price and it's something I would recommend to anyone wanting to experiment with graphics software (and I would recommend they check out Vectornator and Inkscape as well). But both CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator are on entire different levels due to features they have over Affinity Designer. And when you add in the 3rd party plug-ins available to Illustrator (particularly from Astute Graphics) Illustrator just gets even more impressive with its capabilities.

The one thing missing from Adobe's Creative Cloud package is a full blown 3D modeling/animation application. You do get access to a basic "lite" version Cinema 4D in Adobe After Effects. Adobe Dimension is a basic rendering application where the user mostly works with pre-existing 3D models. They still don't have a stand-alone application where a user can design/build and animate 3D objects from scratch. To be fair, competition in that space is very fierce. If Adobe were to introduce a 3D modeling/animation application it would have to be pretty good from the outset to avoid sheer ridicule.

Despite people often scolding at Adobe, they also did a few things right. Illustrator quickly grew from a primitive tool to the de-facto standard 2D vector tool in the market, even with the likes of Corel having years of head-start.

Actually Adobe Illustrator was first introduced two or three years before the first version of CorelDRAW. Very early on, one of the things that made Adobe Illustrator very powerful was its integration with Adobe Photoshop. The first version of Illustrator I personally purchased was version 4 for Windows in a bundle with Photoshop 2.5. This was before Photoshop could put artwork on separate layers. You had to use alpha channels and even save alpha channel masks as separate grayscale files. One thing it could do was bring in vector paths from Adobe Illustrator and turn those paths into selections. That was a pretty big deal. Funny thing: with Freehand being a Postscript-based drawing program it could do the same thing with Photoshop.

The same also happened to desktop publishing. While their Pagemaker tool wasn't up to the task for the bigger publishing houses, newspapers, etc., with InDesign they managed to almost completely eradicate QuarkXpress from the market in just a few short years, primarily Quark completely missed the upgrade from MacOS "Classic" to X...

Adobe acquired PageMaker from Aldus. And the Aldus Freehand application went over to Macromedia, along with Aldus' Fontographer application, which they acquired from Altsys. Fontographer languished at Macromedia, never getting a proper update until Adobe acquired Macromedia and spun-off Fontographer to FontLab Ltd.

Anyway, PageMaker was really not up to pro-level standards. Yet Quark Xpress was a pro-level page layout application many users loved to hate. Quark's big mistake was getting a big ego and getting very complacent. Letting bugs and laggy performance issues persist. They did this because they figured their user base had no alternative. Adobe developed InDesign from the ground up as they developed their PDF technology. And Adobe changed the foundation of Adobe Illustrator from Postscript to PDF. Adding to that Adobe spear-headed the development of the OpenType font format. Illustrator and InDesign were among the first to make full use of OpenType capabilities. InDesign was made as a plug-in friendly application. And it didn't take long for the magazine and newspaper publishing industry to hop on board, and leave Quark Xpress in the dust.

!50 megapixels anyone????

The image sensor might be able to capture 151 megapixels. But how many camera lenses can focus that much detail on an image sensor? I'm guessing very few, if any, if we get down into measuring line pairs and that kind of thing.

With that being said, I personally could 150+ megapixel imagery (if there was really that much native detail in the image). Vehicle wraps, signs and other kinds of large format graphics displays can definitely use that kind of imagery, if not imagery much higher in resolution.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The image sensor might be able to capture 151 megapixels. But how many camera lenses can focus that much detail on an image sensor? I'm guessing very few, if any, if we get down into measuring line pairs and that kind of thing.

With that being said, I personally could 150+ megapixel imagery (if there was really that much native detail in the image). Vehicle wraps, signs and other kinds of large format graphics displays can definitely use that kind of imagery, if not imagery much higher in resolution.

When you stop to think the average 1980's Canon SLR lens could almost do 80 line pairs that's pretty amazing. And those were relatively inexpensive lenses then and today. The typical Red or Blue Schneider or ISCO projection lens can also do 80+ line pairs. There are many medium and large format lenses that could easily surpass 100 line pairs all day long and likely reach 150. The biggest problem is that the lenses for digital photography have to focus on the perfectly flat surface of the sensor.. So not just any lens can be used. BUt I get great results with the 6X4.5 Phase One digital back on my Hasselblad. It's about 60 mp in size and the images has square pixels rather than rectangular. I have never photographed a resolution chart with it but the images it produces off the Standard Zeiss lenses are pin sharp. Getting back to the 150mp camera... Its meant to be bought as a system and it's stupid expensive.

Here is an interesting review of the 50K dollar system... The imager dimensions are a staggering 14,204 x 10,652 pixels