Iridient Developer is a powerful RAW image conversion application designed and optimized specifically for Mac OS X. Iridient Developer gives advanced photographers total control over their digital photographs, yet still provides easy drag and drop batch conversion and access to basic adjustments for the casual user. Thanks in part to Dave Coffin's work on the open source RAW decoding program dcraw, Iridient Developer supports RAW image formats from over 620 digital camera models!! Note that although I use some portions of dcraw for the initial loading and decoding of some RAW image data formats, the entire image processing pipeline is completely unique to Iridient Developer including the core RAW processing (demosaicing) algorithms used, all color management, all other exposure, color and monochrome processing adjustments, sharpening, noise reduction, lens corrections and final file format conversion.

Some recent reviews and online articles on Iridient Developer include:

Iridient Developer 3 was named Software of the Year 2014 by David Hughes at the SOUNDIMAGEPLUS blog!

Many blog postings have appeared recently regarding Iridient Developer's great Fujifilm X-Trans processing, here's a few:
Mark Soon's blog
F Stop Lounge
VKPhoto blog
Olaf Sztaba's blog
SoundImagePlus blog
High Sierra Photo Workshops
Outdoor Fine Art Images blog
Gray Smith's blog

An article on using Iridient Developer in combination with Photo Mechanic for photo asset management.

A two part review focused on Fuji X-Trans support at The Visual Experience web site Part 1 and Part 2.

A review and follow up articles on Couleur-ICC.com (in French) version 2.0 review, folow up article on 2.0.1 and article on version 2.1. An article on Iridient Developer 2.1 and its support for Sigma Merrill models at www.sigmauser.co.uk.

Reviews of previous versions of Iridient (RAW) Developer have appeared in magazines including the October, 2006 issue of MACup, the July, 2006 issue of Professional Photographer and the February/March 2006 issue of Leica Fotographie International.

RAW Developer 1.4 was given a "Highly Recommended" rating from Digital Outback Photo. Read the full review here.

RAW Developer 1.4 was also reviewed by photographer Alain Briot who concludes, "Raw Developer is a Raw converter with several unique features not found in other raw converters, an affordable price point, and the ability to deliver high quality raw conversions." Read the full review here.

RAW Developer has also received much praise for the high quality of its RAW image conversions on many internet forums, here are just a couple examples:

From a thread on the Photo District News (PDN) Online forums (original forum page can be found here):

-->Just compare the conversions with "RAW Developer" a underrated, smart RC, which produces "filmlike" tiffs.

Indeed. I just tried it and it's pretty darn nice and the developer is on top of his game in providing support. With all the color scientists and engineers at Apple, this one man band kicks Aperture 1.0.1's butt in quality conversions and it's pretty darn fast to boot.

Andrew Rodney, Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/

From a MacUpdate user review by photographer Richard Peterson:

I've managed to pull better looking and more detailed images than I have from any other Raw converter, and I've tried them all. I've done side-by-side comparisons with ACR, and I can't tell you how much better Raw Developer files look, the difference is astonishing. I'm very pleased with my purchase, and love the fact that I am supporting a small "developer" who makes such great apps.

And, no, I don't work with or know this developer; I just love this stuff!

Iridient Developer Feature Highlights:

High Quality, High Bit Depth (16 and 32 bits/channel) Image Processing for RAW and non-RAW Image Formats.

Originally developed as a RAW image processing tool, Iridient Developer now supports high quality color editing, monochrome conversions, sharpening and noise reduction on regular images as well! You can now process most any normal image format (JPEG, TIFF, PNG and more) plus a couple high dynamic range (HDR) formats (OpenEXR and Radiance) too.

The high quality RAW image processing (demosaicing) alogorithms unique to Iridient Developer give excellent detail with minimal demosaicing artifacts. Iridient Developer is often noted for its exceptional rendering of micro-detail while retaining a pleasing, natural, "film like" output with minimal digital artifacts and smooth color gradations. All image processing operations are performed at 16 bits per channel or greater. Most RAW image formats support 3 different RAW processing (demosaic) options including a high detail method (generally the default), plus a smoother, lower artifact "Soft Look" option and finally support for RAW conversion based on Apple's Mac OS X RAW image libraries.

Advanced Sharpening and Noise Reduction Algorithms

Iridient Developer offers SIX advanced sharpening methods, including "Iridient Reveal", a "super" sharpener utilizing aspects of both state of the art edge enhancement techniques and deconvolution, traditional unsharp masking, high pass, difference of gaussians, a unique "hybrid" sharpening algorithm and an advanced Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution based method. All are processed in a special 32 bits/channel floating point color space to avoid color artifacts and provide amazing detail. Powerful hot/dead pixel filters and new, state of the art noise reduction methods help eliminate noise, especially from images taken with long exposures or high ISO settings.

All sharpening methods also now support advanced edge masking for limiting the sharpening effect to just edge regions while leaving "flat" or low contrast areas of the image unchanged.

High Quality Image Resizing

Whether down sizing for the web or producing massive prints for gallery display, Iridient Developer offers a wide range of resizing methods that allow you fine tune the level of output to best suit your own preferences from incedibly high levels of sharpness and detail to smooth, artifact free output.

Fabulously Flexible Camera Color Specification

Iridient Developer includes support for just about any camera color specification imaginable from industry standard ICC color profiles to DNG color matrix values to the latest DNG v1.4 camera profile (DCP) specification to camera manufacturer specific color metadata. Iridient Developer provides incedible control over establishing the ideal color starting point for your photos whether you want to use custom camera profiling solutions or simply to match a color look provided by the camera manufacturer or just about any other RAW processing software.

Extensive Image Adjustment Options

You're in total control of every step of the conversion process, fully editable tone curves in RAW, RGB and LAB color spaces, advanced highlight recovery, white balancing, noise reduction, sharpening, exposure compensation, brightness, contrast, saturation and more.

Super Monochrome (Black And White) Conversion Options

High quality black and white conversion options including direct access to RAW image color planes, standard RGB channel mixers, perceptual LAB lightness based conversion, luma, desaturation, intensity, custom duotones and other toning options including curves.

Fast, High Quality Image Previews

RAW developer allows you to view and make all image adjustments while viewing a full resolution, fully color managed, 16 bit per channel preview.

Advanced Histogram View

Supports 256, 512 or an extra wide 1024 levels of detail. Viewing modes include RGB, individual R, G, B channels, all three colors at once, CIE Lightness, CIE Luminance, CIE Chroma (ab), luminosity, hue and saturation.

Fully Configurable Color Management

Support for two high quality color management engine options including Apple's ColorSync and LittleCMS 2.13.1 which includes full support for the latest ICC v4.3 standard.

Ability to specify camera or image specific input profiles, RGB working space profiles for image adjustments and final image output profiles. Automatic support for LAB and chroma color space curves without any manual color space changes.

Unlimited batch processing

You can continue making image adjustments while other images are converted in the background. Supports, easy drag and drop image conversion with flexible file naming options and support for multiple file formats including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, JPEG2000 and more.

Multithreaded and vector processor (SSE3+) optimized

Iridient Developer takes full advantage of multi-core and multi processor systems and the advanced vector processing capabilities of Intel processors. Highly optimized for all the latest and greatest Mac OS X technologies including Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), 64-bit processing, Core Image, Quartz Extreme and more. All image processing is handled by secondary threads so your real time editing work is never blocked waiting for export processing to complete.

Support for IPTC, XMP and EXIF v2.3 metadata

EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata is supported when exporting to TIFF, PNG or JPEG image formats.

"Processing Disabled" Output Mode

Ability to bypass all image adjustments and all color matching operations for fast, high quality export of linear files intended for further processing with other image processing programs or RAW workflows. Also useful for creating non-color matched output for use in generating custom camera or scene profiles with ICC camera profiling software.