Monito wrote:
Tight controls would not include "clicking on the shirt" to set the white balance. The shirt is patterned. Even if it were not, a pixel or two over will give you a different white balance. It is impossible to get consistency that way.

Agreed. Keep in mind I was going for what "looked" right to me - my next go will be a TEST and I will eliminate subjectivity such as clicking the shirt (btw I clicked on the white part). I will use a GM color check and click on the gray square.

Guy Mancuso wrote:
Joe I think we all want to say thanks for giving this a go. It is nice when someone runs a test that we can all benefit from. i do think you are right though and running this a little tighter this will give you and us a much better understanding of how and why converters do certain things and trying to run them at defaults and WB is really the only way to cut down on the variations that can happen. Looking forward to more

Thanks Guy. My initial thought was to see how quickly one could get a "good result" subjectively. After this great discussion I'm far more interested in an objective approach to see how the converters behave under exacting conditions.

Regards,

Joe

mateo_ wrote:
What curve did you use in Bibble? I find the default oversaturated look unuseable, but w/ the colorimetric curve it matches C1's and RSE's look, and becomes the best RAW converter for me to work with.


Matt,

I used "camera" curve (my default in camera is untouched from factory settings). I have used colorimetric before and find the "flat" contrast easier to deal with in PS where I can add contrast via curves.

Steve Tinetti wrote:
What would these files look like without all your tweeking and just convert them "as shot"?
Steve

Steve,

I added the untouched shot.

gervaise wrote:
Thanks, Joe, this is a good simple comparision. Although I have not used RAW Shooter, I tend to agree that the ACR is the best unprocessed beyond where you left it, and I agree that the sharpening and other stuff is best done in PS/CS2. Thanks for posting this.

My pleasure Gerry. Glad it was useful for you.

pchew wrote:
Would be interested to see a result from EVU. My own experience shows that EVU gives the best skin tone for RAW conversion.

Perry

Perry, what is EVU?

Guy Mancuso wrote:
Joe I would love it if you can throw C1 in the mix because it is a widely used converter. You can download a 30 day trial

Guy, I intended to use C1 but apparently I already had my 30 day trial (must have been well over a year ago - I vaguely remember trying it) and I don't know how to "clear" my machine (registry key?) to try it again. I might contact Phase One to unluck the trial for me.

This might be useful
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/rawconverters/rawconverters.htm

Ranger099 wrote:
pchew wrote:
Would be interested to see a result from EVU. My own experience shows that EVU gives the best skin tone for RAW conversion.

Perry

Perry, what is EVU?


Joe, that the previous RAW convertor Canon had before DPP. I believe it's called EOS Viewer Utility. I did some my own unscientific comparison with a bunch of RAW convertor (C1, ACR, DPP, RawEssential and EVU). In the end, I decide I like EVU for it's best skin tone and sharpness.

Perry

Canon 10D wrote:
OK, dumb dumb question here
+25 color noise means adding color noise by 25%?

No, the 'zero' setting is no color noise reduction, and the default of 25 I would say is moderate CNR, adequate for most of the shots that I need it for. Why it's "on" by default I have no idea. I don't think any programs allow you to add color noise, at least, not without more than one step.

When comparing RSE vs Bibble speed though, you have to take into account that Bibble is multithreaded. On dual processor machines, it's twice as fast...

pchew wrote:
Ranger099 wrote:
pchew wrote:
Would be interested to see a result from EVU. My own experience shows that EVU gives the best skin tone for RAW conversion.

Perry

Perry, what is EVU?


Joe, that the previous RAW convertor Canon had before DPP. I believe it's called EOS Viewer Utility. I did some my own unscientific comparison with a bunch of RAW convertor (C1, ACR, DPP, RawEssential and EVU). In the end, I decide I like EVU for it's best skin tone and sharpness.

Perry


I used to think the same way until I got my 1Ds some time ago. Yesterday I had a jewelry shoot on white background and I used a Gretagmacbeth color checker as a reference for colors. I did a click white balance on the second square from the bottom left (light grey) and it gave my background and awful green tinge while the same in DPP gave me a very neutral white background. I still prefer EVU for skin tones and for reds (too purple with DPP) while DPP gives the best blues and greens.

As I'm currently using C1 3.7, I'd be interested in a comparison there. I have tried other RAW converters, but I always go back to C1...it just produces great things in an intuitive, easy to manage interface, and it batch processes so easily. ACR drives me crazy, but produces good images.

Canon 10D wrote:
Jeff wrote:
Ranger099 wrote:
My pleasure Tim. Note that I didn't use any noise reduction - I wanted to see how the converters RENDERED noise and ACR rendered the least color noise of the bunch.


Are you sure you weren't using the default settings in ACR, which is +25 for Color Noise? If this is a Canon CMOS sensor, I doubt that CNR wasn't on, looking at the ACR example...

OK, dumb dumb question here
+25 color noise means adding color noise by 25%?

Nope--it means that color noise reduction was set to +25. As I commented, that looked very apparent in looking at the shadow areas when compared to the other three conversions.

I've done comparisons between ACR and C1 Pro 3.6 with my 20D.
When I used a DRebel, and older versions of ACR (prior to v2.2) and C1 Pro (from last year), C1 was much better.

But, now with my 20D, and the newer ACR, and C1 Pro, I find the results much nice with ACR. I also like the workflow much better. Now with Photoshop CS2, ACR 3.1 has alot of the best features of C1 too. Plus ACR is much faster at conversion, about 4x faster in my experience. For me ACR produced more accurate colours, and less noise with better detail.

I know that ACR really improved alot since v2.0, but I would swear that C1 Pro's quality dropped a notch, atleast with the 20D images vs what it used to do with the 300D (great colour, great detail, low noise).

That's great. Thanks a bunch!

Jman13 wrote:
As I'm currently using C1 3.7, I'd be interested in a comparison there. I have tried other RAW converters, but I always go back to C1...it just produces great things in an intuitive, easy to manage interface, and it batch processes so easily. ACR drives me crazy, but produces good images.

Jordan:
Take a look at:
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/rawconverters/rawconverters.htm

It might be useful

What happened to the collar in the Bibble shot? Notice the very prominent banded, apparently blown, white area.

EDIT: Y'all wonder what the heck I'm talking about. On the LCD monitor I was looking at these on earlier today, the highest-key strip of the collar in the 100% crop Bibble shot was very noticeably blown/banded, in contrast to the other three shots which were not. On the two monitors I'm looking at it on this evening, that effect is not apparent at all on one (also an LCD), and just barely discernable on the other (a calibrated CRT). Weird.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Edited by Nill Toulme on May 18, 2005 at 07:11 PM GMT

m3rocket wrote:
it seems fairly clear to me that ACR is doing some color noise reduction--turning off NR there probably simply turns off luminance noise reduction.
Color noise reduction and luminance smoothing are set separately in ACR, though it's not out of the question that "0" color noise reduction doesn't actually mean "0".