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...

Full scene, downscaled to 1000px wide (links to full res below each image):

100% crops from the original images:

Thanks so much for doing this Dan. It's very interesting, and has a few surprises, notably how poorly DPP fared. It's awfully clunky but has a reputation for quality. I'd have thought DXO would have done better too.

I think every RAW converter has it's strengths and weaknesses. Some are better in low light, others might have better skin tones. I wish I had the time and patience to test all of them under a variety of conditions, but these were my findings for this image.

To make this test complete, Someone will need to do an indoor shot under tungsten lighting as well -

I am also evaluating C1 5 on windows 7 (64bits). I have workflow question. I have been using ACR several years and just start to try C1. what I find:

1. the workflow process is complicated in C1 compared to ACR. what do you think? How do you work with C1 and Photoshop CS4 together? when exporting tiff, it is big (120MB).
2. the Color is a little bit better in C1
3. some features (such as you can set negative clarity in ACR) is not available in C1 (maybe I did not find)
4. I used to use PNG with ACR. what is the better way for C1 - PNG or CR2?

thanks,

JJCPA

0jjcpa123 wrote:
I am also evaluating C1 5 on windows 7 (64bits). I have workflow question. I have been using ACR several years and just start to try C1. what I find:

1. the workflow process is complicated in C1 compared to ACR. what do you think? How do you work with C1 and Photoshop CS4 together? when exporting tiff, it is big (120MB).
2. the Color is a little bit better in C1
3. some features (such as you can set negative clarity in ACR) is not available in C1 (maybe I did not find)
4. I used to use PNG with ACR. what is the better way for C1 - PNG or CR2?

thanks,

JJCPA

1. C1 lets you export your processed files directly to Photoshop. There's an "open with" drop down list in the process module.
2. Yes, I think so too.
3. Never thought about it, but you're right, you can't do negative clarity in C1.
4. Why PNG? Just curious.

Cheers for taking the time to do the test Dan. I've always used ACR in the past but started shooting Phase backs so moved onto Capture one. After running some of my 5DMKII files through it I'm kicking myself for not using it sooner. I don't find the interface or general feel of the program as fast as ACR, but it's a small price to pay for the IQ increase IMO.

Wow...never seen anything like that sky using DxO with my 5D. I just upgraded to v6, I'll have to see if somehow that's to blame.

-Tim

Dan ... interesting ... thanks for taking the time. One thing that I have noticed is that a person's familiarity with a given piece of software is a big indicator of their likely results. Small tweaks can really affect images ... especially in the sharpening area. I would venture to guess that a little RGB sharpening would fundamentally change your DPP result for example (as would a tweak to the WB). In addition, my feeling is that a given converter will tend to work better or worst with a give camera body. So like Adrian said above C1 is very good with the 5DII (I've noticed that myself) ... whereas, it seems a little weak with the 7D right now.

I own these converters and would rank them with my 5DII in this order:

C1
ARC
DPP (this may produce the best conversions, so it is always worth trying on a critical image)
DXO

My 7D is just to new to be correctly supported so I have not formed any opinions on it yet. I have tended to use them in this order:

ARC
C1
DPP
DXO

I am considering using C1 Pro v5 more than I have been. I was a big user back in v3, than didn't rely on it as much under v4. But, now v5 looks very nice. The 7D is forcing me to look at DPP in more detail than I have in the past. I can see why some people rave about the conversions ... but, I just can not warm up to the product. One thing that I do know: try to limit yourself to one or two converts because four can become overwhelming.

By request, here is the same file processed with Lightroom 2.5.

UCSB wrote:
Dan ... interesting ... thanks for taking the time. One thing that I have noticed is that a person's familiarity with a given piece of software is a big indicator of their likely results. Small tweaks can really affect images ... especially in the sharpening area. I would venture to guess that a little RGB sharpening would fundamentally change your DPP result for example (as would a tweak to the WB). In addition, my feeling is that a given converter will tend to work better or worst with a give camera body. So like Adrian said above C1 is very good with the 5DII (I've noticed that myself) ... whereas, it seems a little weak with the 7D right now.

I own these converters and would rank them with my 5DII in this order:

C1
ARC
DPP (this may produce the best conversions, so it is always worth trying on a critical image)
DXO

My 7D is just to new to be correctly supported. I have tended to use them in this order:

ARC
C1
DPP
DXO

The 7D is forcing me to look at DPP in more detail than I have in the past. I can see why some people rave about the conversions ... but, I just can not warm up to the product.

Yes, I absolutely agree that everyone's experience may vary. Each camera needs it's own set of profiles and they're bound to vary between applications and different lighting conditions. Also, many sensors have different designs and that may affect how any given RAW engine behaves. Experience would also make a difference, and I'm certainly not a pro at DxO or C1.

Dan, thanks for the work. Your experience mirrors mine though I've never tried DxO (and by the looks of it I'm not going to).

I thought I was going to upgrade my C1 license to v5 seeing the excellent results I got from it, but it seems I have to pay the full bill + 25% taxes (don't know where they're situated but 25% is crazy...), which makes it about 375 euro or nearly 550 US$. No way I'm going to fork out that amount of cash. I'll put my eggs in Lightroom's basket and hope the best for v3...

Interesting - I've done some comparisons between C1 pro 5 and PS CS4 and the color response seems to be quite different but also the treatment of hightlights where C1 seems to be a little better. I'm not sure about 20 pct. increase in resolution though.

It would be interesting to see a sample with skintones.

Dan, thanks for sharing this. Your results mirror my experience with the converters. Though I don't need tethered shooting or the other funky stuff in C1 Pro, I shelled out the money for it and upgraded to C1 Pro v5 because it literally saves me 90-95% of the time I'd otherwise spend in photoshop tweaking and correcting the images.

V5's skin tone correction and focus / sharpness mask are superb tools I've come to love. As I play with the skin tone correction I am truly impressed with how subtle but real the corrections are. I could never get the absolute correct skin tones with ACR or worse, DPP.

I too think you could save time in Photoshop with the results you get from C1. I think people who shoot portraits more than I do would probably be able to justify the price tag because it would help a lot.

is it fair to say that it is worth to spend time and effort to learn C1 v5 pro if money is not an issue? I am quite experienced with ACR. There are some functions missing with C1 such negative clarity, local adjustment brush.. But I agree that the color and tone (especially for portrait) is better in C1.

Right now I convert CR2 to DNG and use ACR to do PP. if using C1, I don't need this step, do I? The reasons I use DNG are that the file size of DNG is a little smaller and all adjustments are embedded in DNG and there are no sidebar files such as xmp.

thanks,

JJCPA

An additional good test might be to try to match the output of the RAW converters, in other words, ... is it possible to get the same final image?

Using the same settings is not the best method, so my question is: have you tried different settings? For example, the WB is not the same.

Can you send me the original NEF file?

Thanks for adding the Lightroom comparison.
I find that Lightroom changes the colors when it actually gets imported to PS3 in ADP format.