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Sigma Photo Pro 6 Bugs
Comments on Sigma Photo Pro 6.0.3 for OS X, mid-July 2014.
This is a short list of bugs and performance and behavioral issues in Sigma Photo Pro 6. Windows users have written to describe similar difficulties.
- Color management is broken in SPP and in the cameras.
- Performance is glacially slow.
- Your author has never been able to use SPP 6 on a Mac Pro; edit windows appear in empty space somewhere off screen (SPP 5 works OK). Unplugging one of two displays does not solve the issue. Reinstall or preference-delete do not fix the issue (multiple attempts). The workaround has been to use a laptop with a display attached.
- SPP remains a 32-bit program many years after OS X became 64-bit. It is a huge risk (to one’s images) to invest in a Sigma camera when software development of the key software for it fails to support hardware and OS features in place for years, along with failure to fix many reported bugs over the course of years. Sigma camera users might consider shooting X3F+JPEG and archiving the JPEGs also, just in case. However, the JPEG embedded in the X3F is large and very good quality, so it could be extracted.
- If the Mac sleeps, SPP crashes and rainbow beachballs followed by numerous prompts to install developer tools. Sigma apparently ships release software with engineering debugging hooks left in.
- Various crashes and bugs with high frequency.
- Savings settings modifies the file, which alters the image (potential data loss if any error). The file change forces X3F files to be backed up again since they are changed/different.
- SPP does not support Retina displays or 4K displays, so an image rendered from X3F goes pixel-doubled blurry (the embedded JPEG preview shows at full resolution while the X3F is rendered, then the image goes pixel-doubled blurry after the X3F is rendered to screen).
- SPP does not display the active image settings until after the X3F is rendered (30 seconds or so), an intensely frustrating wait.
- No ability to choose a color temperature for white balance.
- Excessive noise reduction blurs details even at minimum settings with outstanding ETTR exposure.
- SPP workflow frequently overwrites desired settings because of inerently confusing and non-standard workflow decisions by Sigma. It is a modal thing, there is no “previous settings” option as with Adobe Camera Raw, one either has to forgo the “current” feature or start over again with each file.
- No command key shortcuts for fit-to-window or 50% or actual pixels or zoom in / zoom out. Zooming not possible while a render is in progress, so you have to wait for the render, then zoom, then wait again.
- Histogram graph is tiny and hard to view.
- Information window does not show color space or white balance or tint o similar that are currently in force nor provide an optional for 3X3 or 5X5 or 10X10 or similar sampling.
- Cannot eliminate some useless palettes such as Navigation. Cannot rearrange some palettes with others (enforced groupings).
- Highlight control has its own space-wasting mini palette instead of being properly grouped with the other tonal adjustments.
- When dragged, palettes rearrange themselves even while the mouse is held down (still dragging), snapping into place elsewhere, terribly frustrating when trying to arrange a workspace.
- No caching of rendered images, so that opening an image just to view it (no settings changes), say, 10 times incurs the glacially slow processing each and every time. No background rendering of images to save the user time.
- No smart rendering as in using 8 CPU cores for 4 or 8 images. CPU cores are used heavily but this is busy-waiting (wasted) CPU consumption. The processing engine really can only use 1-2 CPU cores even if it chews up 12 cores.
- SPP batch processing does not properly apply all settings, rendering it useless for consistent output.
- Default scaled size is not display friendly, e.g. 25.9% instead of 25%. It lesat to details that are not as clear as they should be.
- The Info window forgets its location, always popping up in the wrong place.
- Thumbnails with details wraps text with too-small thumbnails, even on a huge screen, thumbnails have too-small size limit.
- Language translation/terminology is odd. Example: “reboot SPP”, “Batch Setting” (not plural). Attention to details counts.
- Batch rename feature is extremely primitive and should simply be removed unless it can be properly implemented.
- Lens data update and software update are not automatic.
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