RAW converters compared

In the comparisons below the JPEG and RAW images were taken within seconds of each other. The labels beside each sample equate to:

• JPEG - JPEG straight from the camera (Large / Fine)
• DPP - Canon Digital Photo Professional 2.0 (default 'neutral' setting) [link]
• Adobe RAW - Adobe Camera RAW 3.3 beta (officially supported) [link]
• Bibble Pro - Bibble Pro 4.3a [link]

Sharpness and Detail

In the samples below the sharpness setting for each sample was set as follows:

• JPEG - Sharpness level 2
• DPP - Sharpness: 2 (RAW)
• Adobe RAW - Sharpness: 25 (default), Color Noise Reduction: 25 (default)
• Bibble Pro - Sharpening: 150 (where 100 is default)

It's pretty clear that the in camera sharpness level 2 is slightly stronger than DPP level 2, the other major difference is the visibility of sharpening halos from the in-camera image, DPP and Adobe Camera RAW exhibit almost no halos at all. Between the two third party converters it would be fair to say that Adobe Camera RAW achieves the best sharpness with the fewest artifacts.

J P E G
D P P
A d o b e R A W
B i b b l e P r o

Resolution (double distance chart)

The crops below are taken from shots of our resolution chart at double distance hence you need to multiply the shown figures by 200 for the LPH value. The best results were from DPP with a sharpness setting of 2 and Adobe Camera RAW (default sharpness 25). Both of these converters produced both the best resolution and cleanest looking image (fewer sharpening artifacts).

JPEG from camera (sharpness 0)	JPEG from camera (sharpness 2)
Canon DPP 2.0 (sharpness 0)	Canon DPP 2.0 (sharpness 2)
Adobe Camera RAW 3.3 (default)	Bibble Pro 4.30 (default)