RAW Converter Comparison / Challenge

I forgot that I don't have a profile set up for the X-H1 and this resulted in the originals using the default sharpening and noise reduction of ACR. I've turned them both off for this post.

-1 OOC

Out Of Camera

-2 Photoshop ACR

Photoshop ACR no sharpening or noise reduction

-3 Photoshop ACR + Topaz Labs Denoise

Photoshop ACR + Topaz Labs Denoise with  ACR sharpening and noise reduction off

My mistake actually creates an interesting comparison.

Morris

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

I don't know this tool, ART, but it seems to me when looking at 100% that I see some spots that I didn't see in the results from other files, like dark halos around some of the sparks of the fireworks.

Do you see what I mean?

Yes, it's a side effect of the Defringe tool. It's probably better disabled, doesn't look too bad. ART is a fork of RawTherapee. I like it because it natively opens X-T3 files with the correct colors, in contrast to RT 5.8, and the Exposure tab has more useful tools for me.

I tried also RFC (Silkypix). It has more pink fringing which is reduced if I undo the DR400 setting from the camera. But I never get any color or detail. It's overexposed. You used ISO1250 and f/2.8...

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

William Loney wrote:

Interestingly enough, I have just finished doing some testing myself. A couple of my observations are fairly similar to yours, even though I chose a different method.

I didn't want to jack your thread, so I didn't post my images. I could, if you want.

I used Capture 1, ACDSee, X RAW Studio, and Affinity.

What I did differently, was I intentionally underexposed my test raw by a full stop so that I had a controlled example of being able to push my conversions one stop each. Other than that, I just added sharpening. No white balance adjustments; no highlight/shadow adjustments, etc.

To me, this gave me a better base for just RAW conversions, as opposed to conversion+ adjustments. I figured that any adjustments beyond what I did would be up to the users taste.

Comparing without making highlight/shadow adjustments etc. is really only comparing whoever came up with the different RAW processors' default import settings tastes. RAW files aren't images, and every RAW converter will apply it's own unique default processing with color profiles and tone curves which may produce a significantly different base conversion compared to other converters, but which can be easily changed to be similar to other converters (and more to your liking).

To get a good idea of which RAW editor will serve you best, you really ought to (IMO) compare them after you've tweaked each to get the best output.

My results?

Capture 1 and X RAW Studio were almost identical. ACDSee seemed a little 'flat,' compared to the first two, and Affinity was a little more saturated.

As far as I'm concerned, with a little effort, all could be made to appear almost identical with a little tweaking -but as I said, this would be editing, and not just converting.

I agree and you need to try the converters your self to get the experience as you may love or hate the interface.  Also one person may find it very easy to get a good conversion while another might find the same tool difficult to zero in.

Morris

Morris0 wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

William Loney wrote:

Interestingly enough, I have just finished doing some testing myself. A couple of my observations are fairly similar to yours, even though I chose a different method.

I didn't want to jack your thread, so I didn't post my images. I could, if you want.

I used Capture 1, ACDSee, X RAW Studio, and Affinity.

What I did differently, was I intentionally underexposed my test raw by a full stop so that I had a controlled example of being able to push my conversions one stop each. Other than that, I just added sharpening. No white balance adjustments; no highlight/shadow adjustments, etc.

To me, this gave me a better base for just RAW conversions, as opposed to conversion+ adjustments. I figured that any adjustments beyond what I did would be up to the users taste.

Comparing without making highlight/shadow adjustments etc. is really only comparing whoever came up with the different RAW processors' default import settings tastes. RAW files aren't images, and every RAW converter will apply it's own unique default processing with color profiles and tone curves which may produce a significantly different base conversion compared to other converters, but which can be easily changed to be similar to other converters (and more to your liking).

To get a good idea of which RAW editor will serve you best, you really ought to (IMO) compare them after you've tweaked each to get the best output.

My results?

Capture 1 and X RAW Studio were almost identical. ACDSee seemed a little 'flat,' compared to the first two, and Affinity was a little more saturated.

As far as I'm concerned, with a little effort, all could be made to appear almost identical with a little tweaking -but as I said, this would be editing, and not just converting.

I agree and you need to try the converters your self to get the experience as you may love or hate the interface. Also one person may find it very easy to get a good conversion while another might find the same tool difficult to zero in.

Morris

Indeed. I really think that these days, because competition is so fierce, and because technology has improved so dramatically, these programs have to be good. Just like modern cameras.

I choose software not only for the look, and options it gives me, but also for how intuitive -for me- it is.

oscarvdvelde wrote:

It's overexposed. You used ISO1250 and f/2.8...

I needed to work fast so I left a lot of settings on Auto and was shooting in burst.

The shots just one before and one after in the burst have different overall exposure  due to different intensity of the fireworks, but still showed a lot of fringing in various converters.

I just chose this shot for I liked the way it looked overall, despite the over exposure -- those streaking sparks of fireworks were really white.

Anyway I'll have another good look at one of the other shots as well and see how that comes out, when I find a bit of time!

I also have identified another tricky shot with moon and clouds, moon overexposed and clouds surrounding the moon near-overexposed (but recoverable still to some degree depending on quality of tool and how much exposure is cranked up).

I'll post results of that shot soon, perhaps tomorrow, I have only processed it in 2 RAW converters up to now but for a fair comparison I should push it through a couple of more!

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

Setting the Scene

With the New Years celebrations I shot some nice photos of the fireworks and wanted to share some of them.

One of them needed a bit of straightening and perhaps cropping before sharing -- so I opened the RAW file in RAW Power (which uses Apples RAW converter that used to power Aperture).

I always shoot RAW + JPEG so I knew what the file should look like out-of-camera ... and I was unpleasantly surprised with the initial results of RAW conversion.

So I set out to compare different RAW converters in earnest. Most of them I had already toyed around with earlier, but not as serious as now. Now I had a file that could really show some weaknesses...

RawTherapee

I saved this one for the last. It's the first tool I tried after RAWPower disappointed me, and RawTherapee disappointed me even more. What should have been there amongst the best (according to various threads I've read in the past), was the worst: 3-pass Markesteijn demosaicing, in RawTherapee.

I tried all the different demosaicing engines, and found 1-pass (fast) to produce least unacceptable results.

Using 3-pass Markesteijn demosaicing. What the actual freak happened there?

1-pass fast. Looks better, still a lot of colour fringing.

So. There you have it.

My full comparison of RAW conversion tools for Fuji X-Trans cameras.

Here is my quick attempt with RawTherapee. I used 3-pass + fast demosaic, and capture sharpening. To get rid of the fringing, I used false color suppression, noise reduction, and defringe. White balance via the dropper on some of the fireworks.

PP3 via Google Drive

Thanks!

I'm only checking this on my mobile phone at the moment but at first blush it looks good!

Much better than what I was able to achieve with RawTherapee.

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

Here's a crop

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

That's interesting -- your results are indeed much better than mine. I assume that you did not change any of the defaults?

I wonder if they made any improvements in the 7 months between now and my test. I'll see if I can find some time to check this out!

Thanks for re-running this test.

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

That's interesting -- your results are indeed much better than mine. I assume that you did not change any of the defaults?

I wonder if they made any improvements in the 7 months between now and my test. I'll see if I can find some time to check this out!

Thanks for re-running this test.

You're welcome. I've been using ACDSee for many years and I'm quite pleased with the results, including noise reduction and sharpening. Like any program you need to get a feel for how it works best.

Why on earth would I not change any defaults. The program is there to get the best result from the RAW image by adjusting the sliders. If anyone wants a quick route to get a finished photo then they can just use an already finished jpg straight from the camera?

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

That's interesting -- your results are indeed much better than mine. I assume that you did not change any of the defaults?

I wonder if they made any improvements in the 7 months between now and my test. I'll see if I can find some time to check this out!

Thanks for re-running this test.

You're welcome. I've been using ACDSee for many years and I'm quite pleased with the results, including noise reduction and sharpening. Like any program you need to get a feel for how it works best.

Why on earth would I not change any defaults. The program is there to get the best result from the RAW image by adjusting the sliders. If anyone wants a quick route to get a finished photo then they can just use an already finished jpg straight from the camera?

Agreed, comparing RAW converters at default settings is pointless. Some people expect a finished jpeg-like result at import but that’s just not what RAW editing is about. The best result you can get from each editor is what should be compared. Default import settings can typically be customized to apply whatever initial processing that you prefer to start with, so the comparing editors at the original default settings really has very little to do with what each editor is ultimately capable of, only where the different software designers thought a good starting point would be. Capture One is typically more contrasty at import than Lightroom, for example, but either can be set to look much like the other at import if that’s your preference.

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

That's interesting -- your results are indeed much better than mine. I assume that you did not change any of the defaults?

I wonder if they made any improvements in the 7 months between now and my test. I'll see if I can find some time to check this out!

Thanks for re-running this test.

You're welcome. I've been using ACDSee for many years and I'm quite pleased with the results, including noise reduction and sharpening. Like any program you need to get a feel for how it works best.

Why on earth would I not change any defaults. The program is there to get the best result from the RAW image by adjusting the sliders. If anyone wants a quick route to get a finished photo then they can just use an already finished jpg straight from the camera?

Agreed, comparing RAW converters at default settings is pointless. Some people expect a finished jpeg-like result at import but that’s just not what RAW editing is about. The best result you can get from each editor is what should be compared. Default import settings can typically be customized to apply whatever initial processing that you prefer to start with, so the comparing editors at the original default settings really has very little to do with what each editor is ultimately capable of, only where the different software designers thought a good starting point would be. Capture One is typically more contrasty at import than Lightroom, for example, but either can be set to look much like the other at import if that’s your preference.

I assumed that not too many defaults were changed because,

1. I had no idea about your degree of experience with ACDSee

2. I would expect a RAW converter to reproduce a result of similar quality as out-of-camera without having to tweak sliders.

You start tweaking sliders to get a result _better_ than what you can get out of camera, or to achieve a degree of creative vision that you can't get directly out of camera.

Since I was not able to achieve results out of ACDSee that were acceptable to me, or at least on comparable level as the straight out of camera results, I'm curious, what settings did you use to develop this image, Fireplace33?

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

fireplace33 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

...

Interesting observations!

I could not get acceptable results out of ACDSee, nor out of RawTherapee (although I had previously tried them with different images and they performed OK on those easier images).

So I wouldn't say that they all can be made to appear almost identical!

Here's my result from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 from your RAW image.

It seems to be OK to me?

That's interesting -- your results are indeed much better than mine. I assume that you did not change any of the defaults?

I wonder if they made any improvements in the 7 months between now and my test. I'll see if I can find some time to check this out!

Thanks for re-running this test.

You're welcome. I've been using ACDSee for many years and I'm quite pleased with the results, including noise reduction and sharpening. Like any program you need to get a feel for how it works best.

Why on earth would I not change any defaults. The program is there to get the best result from the RAW image by adjusting the sliders. If anyone wants a quick route to get a finished photo then they can just use an already finished jpg straight from the camera?

Agreed, comparing RAW converters at default settings is pointless. Some people expect a finished jpeg-like result at import but that’s just not what RAW editing is about. The best result you can get from each editor is what should be compared. Default import settings can typically be customized to apply whatever initial processing that you prefer to start with, so the comparing editors at the original default settings really has very little to do with what each editor is ultimately capable of, only where the different software designers thought a good starting point would be. Capture One is typically more contrasty at import than Lightroom, for example, but either can be set to look much like the other at import if that’s your preference.

I assumed that not too many defaults were changed because,

1. I had no idea about your degree of experience with ACDSee

2. I would expect a RAW converter to reproduce a result of similar quality as out-of-camera without having to tweak sliders.

You start tweaking sliders to get a result _better_ than what you can get out of camera, or to achieve a degree of creative vision that you can't get directly out of camera.

Since I was not able to achieve results out of ACDSee that were acceptable to me, or at least on comparable level as the straight out of camera results, I'm curious, what settings did you use to develop this image, Fireplace33?

Hi Tim

maybe the easiest way to show the settings is for me to post a dropbox link to your original RAF file including ACDSee's .xmp file that has all the settings I used.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cjeexyv9r81j5go/AACdyfS4W5BSeXHqVGIIuBn0a?dl=0

If you copy those 2 files and the extra folder called [Developed] to your drive and open the RAF file with ACDSee ultimate 2021 then it should hopefully work fine.

I have never processed a RAF file before, I've noticed all RAWs are different and you need to use different settings for each type,... and anyway each photo is done separately according to needs.

The original image was quite blown out, so the first step is to recover some of those highlights, then applied the specific lens correction and adjusted the chromatic aberration. Then tweaked the LIGHT-EQ settings and saturation somewhat. Also added some sharpening but no noise reduction.

If you want to see some more of my images, all here have been processed with ACDSee

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

2. I would expect a RAW converter to reproduce a result of similar quality as out-of-camera without having to tweak sliders.

That is not my experience or expectation . I see it like this,...

The jpg made by the camera runs through a specific jpg engine that is programed by the camera developers to work in some special way.
If you allow me to try a thought experiment,...first imagine just one parameter, lets say "sharpness". You can see in the EXIF what value was used for the jpg,... "+1", "+2" , etc. But what does that value mean? Only the camera developer would know exactly how the jpg image is sharpened with a setting of "+1" or "+2" . How should a program like ACDSee or any other (3rd party) software know what that particular camera sharpening logic actually does with that setting? (even it it were to use the EXIF values) It also is quite likely that the sharpening logic works differently in each camera type.
ACDsee has it's own sharpening logic controlled by some sliders. When a RAW image is opened into the develop mode, the specific ACDSee sharpening logic is used to sharpen it, using first some default setting that you can set. This sharpening effect will not be the same as performed by the camera!

The same is true of course with all the many other parameters that control an image.

You start tweaking sliders to get a result _better_ than what you can get out of camera, or to achieve a degree of creative vision that you can't get directly out of camera.

I start from scratch with my RAW's and adjust each image to taste. Usually trying to make an image that I took closer to the "reality" that I experienced when taking the shot.