RAW Converters Comparison
3. Details
Having looked at the default conversions in our RAW converters comparison we can now evaluate the ability of each application to resolve small, high frequency, details in an image.
The photograph chosen here is of Hoyd Tamir Gol in central Mongolia. This is about as far as it is possible to get from the sea on our planet, which leads to very low humidity and negligible atmospheric distortion. The Nikon D80 and 18-200, equipment of very average capabilities, manage to produce a very detailed capture in these conditions. The image was taken at ISO100, 1/80s, f/11 with an exposure bias of -2/3 eV.
The original image (rendered at Lightroom defaults):
In the first instance, what I am interested in here is to discover if there are any differences due to the demosaicing algorithm used in each RAW converter. To this end in the first set of 1:1 image crops all sharpening, noise reduction, micro contrast and lens corrections have been disabled in each RAW converter (this doesn’t prove that the RAW converter is not surreptitiously doing any of these things of course).
Secondly, I am interested in finding the maximum possible detail that each RAW converter can extract from the image, using its sharpening and micro contrast enhancement tools (where available). In processing the RAW files I am looking to produce a capture sharpened image, not an image for final output, so I want to avoid, as far as possible, the creation of artefacts, obvious halos and general ‘crunchiness’. Where deconvolution sharpening is used by a RAW converter it is hard to completely avoid any tiny artefacts, especially where specular highlights are involved, and when unsharp mask (USM) sharpening is used there will always be some haloing as this is what this process relies on. Nevertheless, I will try to minimise these things and produce files that would be suitable for further processing without amplification of introduced problems. This is necessarily a subjective judgement and I am sure others would do things differently.
The Conversions
I have placed the second set of 1:1 image crops illustrating this directly under the first set to facilitate comparison.
[Click on each image to bring up a larger version in a new tab; make sure you do this if you are a retina display user.]
The Unprocessed RAWs
At the outset I think we can lay to bed the notion that any of the RAW converters has a demosaicing algorithm that is notably superior or inferior to the others. The level of detail rendered in the files is almost identical. If I had to pick a winner I could just about convince myself that RAW Photo Processor produces marginally more detail in this particular image. Just about.
Processed Raws: Settings & Notes
Adobe Lightroom
Clarity: 35
Sharpening – Amount: 45; Radius: 0.6; Detail: 70; Masking: 0
Notes: A small increase from the defaults. The details is very fine in the image hence the low radius. Raising the detail amount increases the balance towards deconvolution sharpening, rather than USM, if I understand how the slider works correctly.
Aperture
Edge Sharpening – Intensity: 0.55; Edges: 0.8; Falloff: 0.5
Notes: RAW Fine Tuning, which includes some capture sharpening, was reenabled to defaults. The Definition tool in the Enhance panel had too large a radius to help with the detail in this image.
Capture One Pro
Clarity – Algorithm: Neutral; Clarity: 10; Structure: 70
Sharpening – Amount: 60; Radius: 0.6; Threshold: 1.0
Notes: As noted in the previous section, C1P’s defaults are very aggressive; the sharpening applied here is around a third as strong as the defaults.
AfterShot Pro
Local Contrast – Strength: 20; Sensitivity: 5
Sharpening – Amount: 120; Sensitivity: 6
Notes: It’s good to see a local/microcontrast adjustment with the a radius adjustment. It is unfortunate that it doesn’t really help the level of detail in the image very much.
DXO Optics Pro
Lens Softness – Global: 0.4; Details: 90; Bokeh: 50
Notes: It is very hard to see much of a change when moving the global slider. Adding even small amounts of USM dramatically increased the deconvolution artefacts produced by the lens softness tool, so it was not enabled. The microcontrast slider applied too large a radius to help with this image.
Irident Developer
Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution – Radius: 0.6; Iterations: 25
Notes: Irident Developer provides 4 sharpening algorithms. Richardson Lucy deconvolution was the best on this image. Unfortunately there is no micro contrast tool at the current time.
Photo Ninja
Detail: 9
Sharpening – Strength: 80; Sensitivity: 0.6
Notes: Photo Ninja’s detail slider appears to raise both microcontrast and midtone contrast. It works well at low values. The sharpening tool offers very fine control.
RAW Photo Processor
Focus Magic: 2 Pixels, faded to 80%
Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor – Amount: 20%; Contrast: 6%; Saturation: 6%
Notes: Focus Magic creates a few artefacts and had to be faded back. A little more detail can be extracted in Color Efex Pro without causing any additional damage.
Comments
As with the unsharpened images the differences between the second set of files are minor with this image. For me, the winner by the tiniest margin is Irident Developer, but it is so closely followed by Photo Ninja, Capture One Pro, RAW Photo Processor and DXO, that it would make no difference to anybody in practical usage. Others would doubtlessly call it differently. Irident Developer manages, to my eye, to just bring out a little more detail in the central band of trees. RAW Photo Processor and Capture One Pro appear to bring out a little more in the foreground stones, and Photo Ninja and DXO do a very good job on the dead tree. Irident Developer and DXO are both using deconvolution algorithms but DXO introduces more artefacts into the image and borders on being too crunchy in places in the trees. Irident Developer lacks any microcontrast adjustment at the current time; if it had it then it might produce a slightly punchier image. Nevertheless, the differences really are tiny between these five and one’s preference is probably driven as much by aesthetic appeal as judgement of absolute high frequency details resolution.
Of the other three RAW converters, AfterShot Pro is very obviously the weakest. Lightroom also appears very slightly more blurry than the leading five and Aperture’s sharpening algorithm is a little crude and introduces haloes and general crunchiness.
On this image, shot at low ISO, with very little noise and with no noise reduction necessary, there is not a great deal to choose between the RAW converters. Not all images are shot in such ideal conditions however, so we will turn next to seeing how well noise can be controlled and details retained in High ISO images.
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?