X-series: RAW file processing in Lightroom

Ryan Williams wrote:

I don't know what's going on here because I've not been able to yield results this bad with any of the photos I've processed in Lightroom, and that's with more or less default processing (apart from pulling the exposure down as I often ETTR).

While I'll endeavour to take a photo with similar conditions to above so I can see for myself, in the meantime here's a portrait I've just been working on in Lightroom. You might be surprised by the results considering the common hysteria on this forum.

SOOC Provia JPEG:

RAW from SilkyPix 3.2:

RAW from Lightroom 4.3:

It's important to view these at full size, as these are large 100% (1:1) crops of a much bigger image. You can do that here if DPR's interface is troubling you:

• SOOC JPEG: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/granddad-jpeg.jpg
  
• SilkyPix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/granddad-silkypix.jpg
  
• Lightroom: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37346336/granddad-lightroom.jpg
  

Note that both RAWs had the exposure pulled down a bit and the contrast increased by roughly the same amount — no other adjustments, so obviously I'm sure the end result could be improved but this shows a good baseline of what both RAW processors output.

For those yet to own an X-series camera, Provia is the standard/default colour mode when shooting JPEGs only; RAWs show the tonality as the sensor/camera interprets it prior to any treatment. When shooting JPEGs I use +1 shadows and no other adjustments.

My opinion? The Lightroom RAW looks the best out of all three. I'd say that the JPEG exhibits greater smearing than the Lightroom RAW, almost certainly a result of the default noise processing. SilkyPix doesn't really have any more detail, but instead of smearing it just looks blurry instead (arguably more akin to the human eye but this can be approximated by adjusting sharpness in Lightroom).

Another thing that stood out to me is that SilkyPix exhibits green/purple chromatic aberration in his hair, so some work is probably required to get satisfactory photos out of it whereas Lightroom delivers the above good results out of the box.