Dan Martin
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 p.1 #1 · RAW Converter Shootout 2009 | |
I took a couple days off work this week with no plans other than to kick my feet up and relax. So far, I've spent most of today testing out the latest offerings in the RAW converter market. Some might not think that's relaxing, but I'm weird that way. 
I decided to put together a little shootout with the same RAW file processed in each program. The converters used for this comparison were:
Adobe Camera RAW 5.5 (a.k.a. ACR) - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4578
Canon Digital Photo Professional v3.7 (a.k.a. DPP) - http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&tabact=DownloadDetailTabAct&fcategoryid=314&modelid=19356
Phase One Capture One 5 (a.k.a. C1) - http://phaseone.com/software.aspx
DxO Optics Pro v6 (a.k.a. DxO)- http://www.dxo.com/ca/photo
Disclaimer:
Any time you post a comparison of anything online, you can expect to be bombarded with questions and "why'd you do it that way" comments. That would be fine, but I'm not a scientist or an engineer, and this is my day off after all. That being said, this is not a scientific test, so your mileage can, and most likely will vary. And before you ask, no, I am not going to test "Bubba Joe's Wacky RAW Machine v8.0" for you, or any other crazy RAW converter out there that nobody uses. If you'd like to make your own test, I can email you the RAW file I used here.
If you're wondering why Lightroom isn't included in this comparison, it's because I don't really consider it a RAW converter. It's more than that. It's not as technical as any of the other 4 programs in this comparison, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's main strength is it's amazing workflow from cataloging to editing to printing. Although it uses some of the guts of ACR to do the RAW conversions, it can't be tweaked to the same degree. I use Lightroom for quite a bit of my processing, but when an image needs special treatment, I use a dedicated RAW converter and Photoshop to do the final adjustments.
Finally, the last disclaimer I need to make is Capture One destroyed my Vista machine. I downloaded the demo to test out last week and it corrupted my windows installation, requiring me to do a full rebuild of Windows. I'm now running it on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and things seem to be happy.
Notes About the Photo:
This image was captured by me in Gros Morne National Park, in Newfoundland, Canada last week. The sky was very clear and the temperature hovered around 4C (39F). There was a moderate breeze as there usually is down by the water, and I wasn't using a tripod, so overall sharpness won't be up to laboratory spec. Then again, I did say this wasn't a
scientific test, it's just a real-world photo. The park is gorgeous by the way. This was my first time visiting it, and I only had a day to look around, so I'll definitely be back again.
I used my Canon 50D with the trusty EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, zoomed to 35mm. Exposure was f/9.0, 1/320s, and ISO 100. No filters were used, just a lens hood.
General Observations:
Workflow:
I'm most familiar with the Adobe Camera RAW interface since I've used it for so long, but it doesn't take long to figure out the other programs if you take the time to read the tutorials. Capture One is probably the most unusual of the bunch, so it might take some extra reading and struggling on your part to get going.
ACR and C1 are the only two apps that can launch Photoshop automatically after converting your RAW files. If you want to get fancy, you could output from any program to a watched folder, then Photoshop would open any file that pops into that folder.
Speed of conversion:
In order from fastest to slowest:
1) ACR
2) C1
3) DPP
4) DxO
DxO's speed varies a lot depending on what modules you use and the adjustments you make, but you can almost always count on it being slow as molases. C1 and DPP are pretty close. ACR was the clear winner of the speed competition.
Resolution:
Capture One is doing something magical for resolution. It's not just a matter of them using higher sharpening by default, they do actually extract more detail from the same frame than the others. I wasn't shooting test charts, but you'll see the extra resolution in the screen crops below. The other converters were similar, but DxO might squeeze out a little more resolution than the remaining two.
Noise Reduction:
I didn't test high-ISO reduction, but I must point out that DxO has done a terrible job of rendering the blue sky of this ISO100 photo. Please see the blotches that look like heavy noise reduction in the crop below. The other converters did a pleasing job.
Colour Adjustments and Profiles:
- First off, I hate the standard profiles built into ACR for Canon gear. They do weird things to red and skin tones. ACR does give you a lot of ability to adjust individual colours, but I always find I spend more time tweaking things in ACR than I really should.
- DxO has a pretty unique way of adjusting individual colours which is similar to the Viviza plugin for Photoshop (if you've ever used it). You use an eye dropper on the colour you want to tweak, and immediately a wheel pops up that will let you adjust the hue and sat.
- DPP tends to push things towards yellow, but it would be pretty easy to adjust in Photoshop.
- C1 went a little overboard on the red in the grasses, but overall it has a very pleasing colour pallet and the profiles are good right out of the box. The dedicated skin tone adjustment is great for portraits.
Conclusions:
If money was no object, and I wasn't still bitter about Capture One killing my computer, I'd fork out the $399 for the software. The resolution and colour correction abilities are first rate, but $399 for a RAW converter is CRAZY!!! That's Photoshop CS4 territory and you can do a hell of a lot more with Photoshop than you can with C1. I guess if you consider the cost as a 20% resolution increase for your camera, and any camera you've ever shot with, then C1 doesn't seem like that bad of a deal.
DxO disappointed me in this test, but I keep hearing it's better at high ISOs. I'll try that another day. The lens correction module works well for vignetting, but I can't say that I really liked what it did for the distortion correction.
DPP continues to suck. I always have it installed but I never use it. It's clunky to use and the output quality isn't the best. It's arguably better than ACR at high ISO reduction and the colour profiles are pretty good, but that's about it. It's free and you get what you pay for.
Ok, that's enough blabber, on to the samples...
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