When converting an image with highlight recovery (without blending) and automatic white balance with libraw 0.13.5, we see major artifacts being introduced in areas.
Testing with the same version of dcraw shows no problem; it sounds like highlight recovery incorrectly occurs at the wrong position in the pipeline.
Testcase:
$ wget http://quora.org/2011/highlight-testcase.nef
$ dcraw_emu -w -H 2 highlight-testcase.nef
$ eog highlight-test.nef.ppm
$ dcraw -w -H 2 highlight-test.nef
$ eog highlight-test.ppm
Thanks for report, to be
Thanks for report, to be tested.
Sorry for delayed answer, summer is vacation time.
-- Alex Tutubalin @LibRaw LLC
Unfortunately, I'm unable to
Unfortunately, I'm unable to download your sample, file not found.
-- Alex Tutubalin @LibRaw LLC
For -H 2 and -H 9 the results
For -H 2 and -H 9 the results are bitwise the same for dcraw and dcraw_emu (from 0.13.5) and my sample image (something with blown clouds)
The difference may be in auto-maximum feature in LibRaw (very useful for some cameras). To turn this feature off use -c 0 switch when running dcraw_emu:
dcraw_emu -c 0 -H 2
-- Alex Tutubalin @LibRaw LLC