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9 December 2015
With The Complete Recordings 1957-1962 of Mose Allison on the CD changer, we're digging into Alien Skin's new Exposure X image editor. We probably should have stacked the vinyl version on the Dual's spindle to really capture the mood. But when you're settling in for a long testing session, any obsolete device will do.
Obsolescence is in the mind of the buyer, though. We can hear Mose just fine on the CD changer. From the other end of the building. Earplug free.
One of the first things we wondered about Exposure X was how it would handle our existing images. You know, the obsolete ones.
If it can't read them, Exposure X becomes more a plug-in alternate image editor than a standalone control center.
But we're happy to report we haven't had a problem opening JPEGs, NEFs from a Nikon D300 or DNG files. The DNG support greatly cheers us because the first thing we'll do (the only thing we'll do) if we run into an older and unsupported Raw format will be to convert it to DNG to see if Exposure X can handle that.
We're also comparing the browsing features with Photo Mechanic, our image browser of choice. One immediate difference is an intriguing one. Rotate an image in Photo Mechanic and the Exif data is edited so the rotation sticks. But in Exposure X the original file is never touched so the rotation because a non-destructive edit in the side car file.
More on all this later. And probably in a multi-part review. We haven't worked with Exposure X very long but as the image above illustrates, it's an important release worth an in-depth look.