Comparison of almost all the raw conversion softwares

<p>I was talking to another guy on a forum about which raw converter I use and why, and being new here on Photo.net I realized that I haven't spoke to anyone yet of an old post of mine.</p>

<p>I think it can be useful to others, and that it's worth sharing so here we are:<br>

<a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/28/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-i" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/28/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-i</a> Part 1 - unsharpened crops<br /><a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/29/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-ii" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/29/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-ii</a> Part 2 - crops sharpened in the raw converter<br /><a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/30/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-iii/" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/30/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-iii/</a> Part 3 - crops sharpened by a Photoshop action<br /><a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/31/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-iv/" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/31/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-iv/</a> Part 4 - crops sharpened for the best possible result<br /><a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/31/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-v/" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/05/31/review-raw-converters-mega-test-part-v/</a> Part 5 - conclusions and ratings</p>

<p>it's a 5 parts post with 100% crops for each raw converter. I compared against each other almost all the raw converters available then.<br>

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They were: Apple Preview, Canon Digital Photo Professional, CaptureOne 6, Corel AfterShot, DCRaw, DXO Optics, Gimp, Lightroom 3, PerfectRaw, Photoshop 5, RawTherapee, Rawker, RawDeveloper, RawPhotoProcessor, UFRaw. <br /><br />And then I added another interesting one, free for Apple users with the Developers pack, some sort of Aperture little brother: <br /><br /><a href="http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/06/30/review-core-image-fun-house-aperture-little-free-brother/" target="_blank">http://www.addicted2light.com/2012/06/30/review-core-image-fun-house-aperture-little-free-brother/</a> Core Image Fun House<br /><br />Hope this helps!</p>

<p>Like all things, its a matter of opinion. I'm not a professional, but I use CaptureOne. Unlike the reviewer, I find the interface intuitive and the results excellent. I have compared CaptureOne's white balance with other RAW developers, and found it superior. Your mileage may vary.</p>

<p>Hi Benny, <br /> yes the "user experience" it's a matter of opinion. But the quality (read: sharpness) level of each software I think is not.</p>

<p>That CaptureOne 6, for example, was not able to extract all the detail in the files is a fact; I think it is not a coincidence that with the 7th release they are hammering on the claim that their software can extract more details that the competitors.</p>

<p>Anyway this is why I posted the crops, so everyone can make his own mind.</p>

<p>And in the end the more important thing is to find a workflow (and a software) that suits you; the more "transparent" the instrument become the better the pictures. Nobody will ever criticize a beautiful picture for being a tiny bit less sharp than the theoretical maximum - at least I hope so :) - but it's better to know pros and cons of each tool before committing to one.</p>

<p>FYI: I only have the APS size of the Fuji X100, and did not see a sharpness difference between CaptureOne 6 and 7. (But then again, I'm not a professional shooting thousands of images with a full frame camera on a tripod.) However, I do see improvement in color rendering/white balance, shadow detail, and highlight recovery.</p>

<p>Color rendering is as much as important as sharpness, IMHO, only much tough to test and more influenced by the user preferences.</p>

<p>I think the best route, or at least the one I follow myself, is to use different raw converters depending on the strength of each one. For example I use Lightroom for the bulk of my images, RawTherapee for the images shot with lenses that have a lot of ca like the 24/1,4 Canon, and Rawker or FunHouse when I have to extract the last bit of detail from a file.</p>

<p>BTW, I have a Fuji X100 too, and I found that Rawker (and the ones that use the Apple engine, like Preview or Aperture) are the one that gives you the most resembling look compared with the in-camera jpgs.</p>

<p>I was also impressed with Raw Therapee, especially for my older Nikon D2H NEFs (less so for my Ricoh DNGs). Overall I prefer Lightroom 4 for the versatility, but Raw Therapee is an excellent low cost alternative. It's a little resource intensive but offers a fairly efficient workflow for working on multiple raw files from a particular session.</p>

<p>Raw Therapee can be tricky to get the best results from since the default setting for Contrast By Detail Level was a little high and tended to produce some small artifacts. Setting CBDL to a neutral setting solves that problem. Sharpening and deconvolution tools are also a little twitchy and take some experimenting to get good results.</p>

<p>In RawTherapee I tend to use only the deconvolution method, leaving the actual sharpening to Photoshop. Like you said there is the risk of generating quite a bit of artifacts if you're not careful.</p>

<p>Instead I found the sharpening applied by Raw Photo Processor to be simply perfect - as long as one doesn't exaggerate, obviously. Rpp for this very reason is now my default raw processor for the file of the Sony Nex shot at high iso, being able to give me sharp results without amplifying the noise.</p>

<p>As always the reviews are a starting point, and everyone should test its own tools to see how can they perform the best.</p>

Adobe Camera Raw 6 in Photoshop CS 5 is now long out of date. The current version is ACR 7.3rc (and ACR 7.3rc is

also the raw development processor in Lightroom 4.3rc.

 

Also you did not include Apple's Aperture raw processor.

<p>Hi Ellis, <br /> as I said the post is a few months old, so I tested what was available at the time.</p>

<p>From what I know, though, Aperture shares the processor engine with the other Apple/Mac apps (Core Image, Preview, iPhoto, Rakwer), the difference being the various additional functions but not the engine itself.</p>

<p>I've used most of these and my experience has been that Capture 1 gets the most out of a file in terms of exposure latitude. I've never been in love with the step through interface, but I've developed a decent workflow for it. Unfortunately it doesn't support retina screens yet so I haven't been using it as much. </p>

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<p>Adobe Camera Raw 6 in Photoshop CS 5 is now long out of date</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Absolutely, if you're <strong>not</strong> using PV2012, you're using an old, far less capable raw engine.</p>

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<p>Absolutely, if you're <strong>not</strong> using PV2012, you're using an old, far less capable raw engine.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Actually, given that I'm using CS6, I did for my own sake a comparison between CS5 and its successor with the same pictures used for the test. While the new engine is better in many ways I didn't see any improvement in the capacity to extract detail. Mind you that this can be even camera (model) specific.</p>

<p>Nikon ViewNX2 or Capture NX2. Gets the mostest from Nikon NEF files. Suck the files in, save as tifs and then use one of the "monster" picture editing programs mentioned above to do your post.</p>

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<p>"Nikon ViewNX2 or Capture NX2. Gets the mostest from Nikon NEF files."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Depends on the camera. I get better results from my older D2H NEFs using Raw Therapee and Lightroom than I did with Nikon's software.</p>

<p>Several years ago, sure, I found Nikon's software did a consistently better job with my D2H raw files than anything else then available on the market (2005-2007). And that may still be true for newer Nikon dSLRs. But now I'm getting better results with RT and LR4.</p>

<p>In particular, Nikon software noise reduction was pretty awful compared with standalone programs like Noise Ninja and Noiseware - which were necessary with many raw conversions back then because Nikon's dSLRs in general were noisy above ISO 400. The NR integrated into Raw Therapee and Lightroom 4 are very good, although Noise Ninja and Noiseware are still excellent.</p>

<p>Sad part is there are many situations where Canon's FREE software does the best job.</p>

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<p>Sad part is there are many situations where Canon's FREE software does the best job.</p>

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<p>I see that written on occasion, but personally I've yet to experience a single instance of it being true.</p>

<p>DPP has very poor highlight "recovery" - especially compared to the magic that Lightroom 4.x and Photo Ninja can perform - and its high ISO noise reduction is clumsy and costly to detail.</p>

<p>Its sharpening algorithms are basic and unrefined: the masking slider in Lr's sharpening function is in itself worth its weight in gold, as is the ability to invoke deconvolution sharpening for better fine detail without artefacts - something you get by default with Photo Ninja.</p>

<p>And frankly, DPP's colour rendition does nothing for me either, especially compared to, say, Capture One. Canon <em>doesn't</em> know best, as it turns out, and the absence of fine HSV/HSL control over colour in DPP is a big miss.</p>

<p>It's great for what it costs, but it's not in the same league, in like-for-like terms, as the better commercial converters.</p>

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<p>It's great for what it costs</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Actually not even for this, IMHO, because RawTherapee (one between many others) is a much better alternative with the choice among multiple better demosaicing algorithms, and still free.</p>

<p>Oh I'm <em>very</em> familiar with RT, Gianluca. I was using it back when Gabor was the sole developer, long before it went open source - I contributed to some early versions of the user manual and wrote some articles on RT-based workflows.</p>

<p>But in its current incarnation it has lost its focus, in my opinon - it isn't the quick, efficient, intuitive converter that RT 2.4.1 was.</p>

<p>I'm as big a fan as anyone of lots of options, but - in my opinion - they've gone too far with RT, and the sheer amount of functionality, along with a lack of logic to the interface, and the (painfully slow) speed of conversion, have reduced its appeal immensely for me.</p>

<p>DPP is as least quick and straightforward to use, which I would suggest is a good thing from an engagement point of view: a lot (and I mean a <em>lot</em>) of people I've talked to are completely put off my how confusing and unintuitive RT is. A converter isn't much good to users who are immediately confused and alienated by a perceived lack of usability.</p>

<p>Oh - and on an objective level (interface and usability issues are subjective things to discuss, I acknowledge) - RT's highlight recovery capabilities are really not as good, in my experience, as they were before it went open source - too much uncontrolled, untested fiddling-about with the source code by devs with different objectives, tastes and priorities.</p>

<p>I'll still fire up RT on odd occasions, but I'm not a <em>user</em> any more - and back in the day I was one of its biggest advocates. But now its just a testbed "playground" for the devs' algorithm ideas, really.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...the sheer amount of functionality, along with a lack of logic to the interface, and the (painfully slow) speed of conversion, have reduced its appeal immensely for me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You got a <em>huge</em> point here. The "too many options" problem is THE problem with open source software, at least for me.</p>

<p>I still remember, before the Mac days, when I used to be an almost - Photoshop excluded - Linux user. Just to find a decent text editing program was an immense hassle, because of too much choices every one of them lacking something essential.</p>

<p>The slow speed though doesn't bother me too much, mostly because I use it for specific images - not for the bulk of them - and because I'm using a version I compiled myself from source eliminating some bells and whistles, that's quite a bit faster that the downloadable one.</p>

<p>Still if I had to choice between RT and DPP I'd avoid the second without a thought, more because of its interface that of its results. I guess as everything else it is a matter of taste.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The "too many options" problem is THE problem with open source software, at least for me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Indeed. And on that point, have a look at <a href="http://photivo.org/photivo/start?redirect=1">Photivo</a> some time, Gianluca - great conversions, but its complexity will make your ears bleed.</p>

<p>At the other end of the spectrum there's a little (commercial) converter called <a href="https://nama5.com/en/">Nama5</a> which is a <em>model</em> of efficient minimalist interface design. Not the <em>best</em> converter in IQ terms, but not at all bad, and it's OK as a lightweight "travel" solution. If it had better highlight recovery (yeah, I know I bang on about that - it matters immensely for what/how I shoot) it'd be a pretty handy solution.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>And on that point, have a look at <a href="http://photivo.org/photivo/start?redirect=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Photivo</a> some time, Gianluca - great conversions, but its complexity will make your ears bleed.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>O my, I followed your suggestion and tried Photivo. The developers made a nice effort indeed, but after 10 minutes I was on the verge of smashing the iMac on the wall! And here I thought CaptureOne was needlessly complex.</p>

<p>Funnily enough, I actually really like Capture One's interface - it's probably my favourite, in UI terms, of all the commercially available converters.</p>

<p>Well, to be fair my main problem with Capture One is the fact that it litters the file system with a lot of configuration folders and files, more than the interface that is a matter of habitude. I barely can stand the fact that the camera makers never agreed to a raw standard format, so now we have to mess around with the xmp files.</p>

<p>Having to cope also with other configuration files from the software I use makes me nuts. I think it's just poor programming; put them in a unified hidden/library folder instead of the middle of the one I keep the images in and I will not care so much (but I know, this is my problem, not everyone)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>my main problem with Capture One is the fact that it litters the file system with a lot of configuration folders and files</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yep, a royal pain in the butt: that, and the fact that (pre release 7), you couldn't process a single file until the program had built "proxies" for all of the images in the session - a joy when you've just come back from a day in the field with something like a thousand images...</p>

<p>Release 7 is an awful lot better in that regard and in several important IQ respects (most notably high ISO noise and - again - highlight recovery, both longstanding and significant weaknesses prior to 7), but the fact that without any prior "end of life" indication or current explanation Phase One seems silently to have withdrawn the "Express" version of the software (which I've always preferred to the Pro version - I don't need any of Pro's "extras") means that I'm finished with Phase One and Capture One - you don't just <em>drop </em>a product with a significant user base without so much as a "<em>tough luck, we're done...</em>"</p>

<p>I'm pretty angry about that, I have to say.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...you don't just <em>drop </em>a product with a significant user base without so much as a "<em>tough luck, we're done...</em>"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Absolutely right, more so because it's not the 2003 anymore. I found the commercial "pure" raw converters - i.e. the ones without the organizing and mass development functions of Lightroom and the likes or the power of Photoshop - basically way overpriced for what they do. It was maybe justifiable ten years ago, when they were still in their infancy and the manufacturers were still <em>cracking</em> the technology, but not now.<br>

<br>

So it is even more unforgivable that they drop the one product they had that was a bit more fair priced.</p>