RAW Converter Comparison / Challenge

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

Honestly, unless fireworks are your primary focus, this is really a poor choice for evaluating RAW converters. All three color channels are blown to some degree and there isn't really any fine detail or nuanced color to work with. This really only shows how well a converter might handle irretrievably blown highlights and fringing. Some of your examples that exhibit less attractive color here may actually reveal more nuanced color detail with a "normal' image.

Thanks for your insights!

It does indeed heavily judge them on fringing and highlights, that's true. And fireworks is not going to be my main focus of course.

But blown highlights will happen with some subjects.

Blown highlights won't happen if you expose correctly, not important highlights anyway.

To me it suddenly and unexpectedly highlighted how big differences can be between different converters, sometimes you need extreme situations to bring them out.

True, and none of the converters are always the best at everything, they all come up short in one respect or another. I don't have a lot of experience with with some of the lesser known players, but every time I try one, each will usually have some significant failing that I can't live with. To date, Capture One and Lightroom are the only two options that tick enough of the necessary boxes for me.