RAW Converters Comparison
10. Conclusion
As I’ve stated all along there is so much subjectivity in making a RAW converters comparison that everything you read in this conclusion should be taken with a pinch of salt. Your mileage may vary with your images from your camera and the renditions you prefer will certainly differ from mine.
In order to rank them I have opted to order them according to my personal preference on each of my tests and score them from 8 down to 1 accordingly. The reality is that these rankings are based in many cases on such marginal judgements that the differences in image quality between one RAW converter and another ranked three or four places lower on a particular test may be barely discernible.
Nevertheless, it gives us something to go on, so here we go:
The Results
ALR | AP | C1P | CAP | DXO | ID | PN | RPP | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Defaults | 3 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 4 |
Details | 2 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 4 |
High ISO | 2 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 8 |
Shadow Recovery | 6 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 3 | 2 |
Highlight Recovery | 5 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 7 | 1 |
High Dynamic Range | 6 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
Low Dynamic Range | 2 | 3 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 |
TOTAL | 26 | 17 | 48 | 12 | 46 | 37 | 38 | 28 |
PLACE | 6 | 7 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 5 |
Discussion
BEST: Capture One Pro 7.2.2 (48) + DXO Optics Pro 9.5 (46)
There is really not a lot to choose between these two. If you want the ultimate in noise reduction and lens correction then DXO is probably the better choice; if you want superb tools, local adjustments and focus on colour then Capture One Pro would be my pick. This all explains why, traditionally, DXO is favoured by architectural photographers and Capture One Pro by fashion photographers.
The landscape photographer requires a bit of both, but for me, Capture One Pro delivers perfectly good lens correction and keystoning and I very rarely shoot at high ISO and hence have modest noise reduction requirements. Whilst it is necessary to keep an eye on its defaults, which supply overly aggressive luminance noise reduction and sharpening, it is such a pleasure to edit images in that it wins for me. DXO, for want of a better expression, ‘lacks soul’, and using it makes me feel like I’m engaged more in a science project than an artistic endeavour.
GOOD: Photo Ninja 1.2.2a (38) + Irident Developer 2.4 (37)
Next come two very technical RAW converters, though their approaches are very different; on a default conversion Photo Ninja probably does the most to an image; Irident Developer does very little. Given a well exposed image, shot at any ISO, with a lot of high frequency detail, I will now be reaching for Irident Developer on a regular basis (remember, I already own it, but haven’t used it much). It is the clear winner in this review when it comes to extracting the maximum amount of detail from an image.
I really want to like Photo Ninja but it does have a couple of problems for me, the lack of automatic lens profiling and its denoising algorithms, where the results are not to my taste. The latter is a strange result for a firm that built its business and reputation on noise reduction, and others may very well disagree with me here. My overall feeling with Photo Ninja is that the developers have gone the extra mile to try to provide tools that allow one to try to extract the best quality image possible; however, these tools are not always easy to use, can tax even a powerful computer to its limits and I have not, as yet, seen any evidence of markedly better results. I feel that this software is one to watch though and I predict that it will improve further.
OK: RAW Photo Processor 4.2.7 (28) + LightRoom 5.4 (24)
RAW Photo Processor does what it does; that is, it does a lot less than the rest of RAW Converters but what it does do it does very well. It certainly does enough that I will consider using it when I wish to pursue my existing workflow of doing almost all my editing in Photoshop.
Lightroom’s results are disappointing. I feel other RAW converters return better results in just about every scenario that I have employed them. To be fair this has been pretty marginal in most comparisons, and it is not that Lightroom’s results are bad or unusable, but a pattern has emerged across the tests. Lightroom performs just about as well as its competitors on undemanding images but as soon as any noise reduction is required then I struggle with it. I have the distinct feeling that Lightroom is destined to be the DAM where I manage my images, and little else.
POOR: Aperture 3.4.5 (17) + AfterShot Pro 2.0 (12)
Aperture, I feel, is simply suffering from neglect. I have little doubt that 3 or 4 years ago it was producing images of a similar quality to the rest of the RAW converters here but, now, they have all moved on and Aperture has been left behind.
AfterShot Pro is, in retrospect, an application that I shouldn’t have bothered testing. Whilst it has some decent tools it is simply unable to deliver images of similar quality to the other RAW converters.
Final Remarks
I started this RAW converters comparison because of my suspicion that using Lightroom was not delivering me the best possible results from my images. This has turned out to be the case. It remains very hard to imagine a world without Lightroom because I rely so much on its DAM capabilities.
Nevertheless, I now feel inclined to work out an alternative workflow for my images, because the RAW converters I lean towards most as the result of my testing are Capture One Pro, Irident Developer and RAW Photo Processor.
I am so impressed with Capture One Pro as a general workhorse RAW converter that I have now purchased it whilst it is available at half price (tip for UK or European purchasers: buy it from a US reseller rather than direct from Phase One for a further substantial discount). If I have a well exposed image for which I need to extract ultimate detail then I will be firing up Irident Developer in the future, which I own already, or RAW Photo Processor for which I will be making a donation, and combining it with my Photoshop workflow of Topaz Denoise and Focus Magic.
I’m a bit of a software junkie though and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on the development of Photo Ninja for the future. I do like DXO Optics Pro but I still can’t find any compelling reason to justify the very expensive upgrade from Version 6, which I own from way back, to the current Elite version to support my E-M1. Maybe Version 10 will bring something new to the table.
27 Comments
Wow, what an excellent article. This is the best RAW comparison that I have ever read. Extremely detailed and well explained. Thanks for your hard work!
Very detailed and through presentation. I to have used Lightroom since it was in the beta stages and it is now the raw processor of choice. However I have always been of the opinion that it is not the Gold standard of raw processing software, not the same way that Photoshop CS/ CC can claim to be as an image editor. For me there at least a half dozen other choices that can match or surpass Lightroom in this respect.
What keep me with Lightroom is the ease of use and the wide range of tools available.
Very interesting and comprehensive review. A couple of small points, some Capture one sliders such as noise reduction are calibrated in a relative manner rather than an absolute manner – thus even though the default setting is always the same it can represent quite different underlying settings.
When adjusting dark images such as your example I find it best, when using process 2012, to follow Adobe’s advice and make a mid tone adjustment using the exposure slider before making any darks and blacks adjustment.
Excellent comparison, lots of work. I started using LR early on, switched to A3 and recently bought C1P. I agree with your conclusion and I am very pleased with C1P. Most files (E-M1 and E-M5) require very little adjustment when using the auto adjust function. Now I only have to work out the DAM for which I still use A3.
I have found ACDSee Pro 7 to be the equal of CaptureOne in terms of raw development. I believe one would be hard pressed to tell the difference at all. Plus, I’ve found that I like the ACDSee user interface much better. If you like the CaptureOne output but don’t much care for the “experience”, ACDSee Pro is worth looking into.
ACDSee is not available for OSX, but I used it several years ago with a P&S
Well there is an ACDSee Pro 3 for Mac, though I’ve heard it is not the mature product that Pro 7 for Windows is. Being a Windows guy, I’m not too conversant on the Mac OS versions. I don’t know if it is available for OSX or not.
I agree. I used ACDSee Pro for years. I have also tried various iterations of DxO and CaptureOne. For the past year, I have been using Lightroom almost exclusively. Ultimately, I think ACDSee Pro, or Ultimate as they now dub it, probably offers the best balance of features and usability. I was disappointed with DxO for all but its lens correction features which are stellar. I found CaptureOne to be good but remarkably ungainly to use. Lightroom seemed a good alternative but frankly none of them offered the intuitive DAM functionality that ACDSee Pro did. I’m transitioning back to that product now.
Hello,
What a great comparison report!
Thank you for all the efforts and the pictures for the comparison.
Due to your result I checked CP1 as a long term LR and DXO user.
Since own several comparisons with LR and DXO and training with the new program CP1, LR is not used anymore and DXO very seldom.
I am completely satisfied with the possibilities and the results of CP1
CP1 is a great RAW converter but it needs more learning time than DXO an LR to discover the complete possibilities of CP1.
But afterwards it’s fast and quite easy to get perfect results.
Greetings
Thomas
Thanks for the RAW file processor comparison! That’s quite an effort and really appreciated!! Cheers, Jeff
I think you have completely dropped the ball with Aperture by claiming it has “no localised adjustments”. You can brush in and out practically EVERY single adjustment there is on the adjustment panel of Aperture and for a long time now.
Otherwise it is a nicely done comparison but you have to realise, that you would have to do this kind of work with every single camera out there to give a complete picture. Some are great with Canon/Nikon and very poor with Sony, Fuji etc. and vice versa.
I hope the next time you do a comparison that you’ll take a look at SILKYPIX at silkypix.us.
Hi Nik,
maybe, just maybe – in case you’ll do something similar in future – you could include DT http://www.darktable.org/ . It would be nice to see where it stands among these ‘Goliashes’.
Or maybe you can check separately and referred this article – e.g. “my rating among the rest would be ~5th place” – thank you! – and maybe you can thank me 😉
I thought for sure you’d include RawTherapee in the shootout. Do you have any experience with it and how do you think it would slot into your rankings?
very helpful article. thank you !
I was wondering what raw developer you use for the Merrill’s. I have a DP2S and love it except for one thing and that is the color noise. Even ISO 100 I get red and green noise in shadow and also can be in a bright sky. I process them in SPP which I actually like unlike most people however it does not have any way to edit color noise. I would love to invest in a Merrill if I knew how to cut down the red and green noise. Thanks.
That was helpful. Thank you!
What a fantastic comparison! This must have taken a long time to do. Thank you for this!
Many thanks. Any chance of an update?
Nice, detailed test. It’s interesting that while I agree with your general ranking in conclusion, when I look at many of the individual comparisons I quite disagree with your judgements. Which I think just goes to show how subjective it all is, especially once you start editing. e.g. several times you preferred renditions which I thought were overly noisy.
Had I known about this post earlier, I might not have done my own (much more limited) comparison (http://blog.wadetregaskis.com/raw-converter-comparison/). Though I’m glad I did, because now between the two of us we’ve provided more data. And it’s nice that our data leads to consistent conclusions.
when i was buying my 1st dslr i used Lightroom as a raw converter. Then I discovered DXO was there.
Well dxo is just superamazing. I can highly recommend it.
It can do a lot automaticly.
In the beginning I thought: automatic? can this be any good?
the answer is you bet!!
Thanks to the enormous data-base they have build during dxo-mark benchmarks testing dxo-optics pro knows every little bad thing about your camera and lens and can correct it automaticly(but you can do manual too).
I did testing and comparing lightroom and DXO.
DXO really is amazing and it beats lightroom everytime.
All my photos look so much more amazing when i use DXO.
and I don’t talk about a little better then lightroom. I am talking about a LOT better.
I have not tried capture one yet but i am very impressed with dxo. even when you just use the dxo standard automatic settings it already beat lightroom hands down.
I really don’t understand the whole uzz about lightroom.
Lightroom is not really good to be honest. but sometimes i get the impression the entire world uses lightroom.
Such a wealth of information here. Think you! I am testing the Picturecode Photo Ninja as aiming for batch converting RAW into TIF for 3D scanning purposes.
Excellent review. Actually, we’ve been on Capture One for years now, but for the first time ever we’re considering abandoning it due to Phase One playing software politics by deliberately disabling support for the Pentax 645Z, which in our view is entirely unacceptable for paid software. This makes users direct victims of boardroom politics, and benefits no one. True, some canny workarounds exist, but sadly these are not acceptable in a professional environment.
GREAT JOB!
thank you!
I am interesting if Serif labs company which makes Affinity Photo
if they build non-destructive photo editing sw and for windows
– maybe first step is here –
Affinity Designer for Windows is here 🙂
http://photo-typ.blogspot.de/2016/07/affinity-designer-for-windows-is-here.html
I’ve done a raw converter comparison here: http://sjp.id.au/digital-darkroom/raw-converter-comparison/
It includes the newly released ON1 Photo RAW, and the results are interesting. For me Photo Ninja is probably the most unique in terms of rendering quality, but it doesn’t have the bells and whistles that Lightroom does.
Thank you for sharing the results of your likely considerable time and effort.
Thanks for a brilliant review, but any chance of an update with so many changes having taken place since you wrote it?