Tertulia.ro

RAW Developers Review – The setup and the prerequisites

Tags: Adobe Camera Raw, Bibble Pro, Capture One, CR2, Developer, DxO Optics, FastPictureViewer, IrfanView, Lightroom, NEF, Olympus, Photoshop, RAW, RawTherapee, Review, Scarab Darkroom, Silky Pix, Software

Driven by the fact that Adobe released the first beta of their photo cataloging and developing tool – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 – and by their claim that the whole developer engine is getting a full overhaul and one of the first results is a better noise reduction, I’ve decided to look around for the best software for me.

I’ve decided to run for the test only generally available tools for developing RAW files as the software from the camera makers is only good for their lineup.

All the software below is the latest (trial) version.

The contenders are:
- Bibble Pro 5.0
- Breeze Browser Pro 1.9.4.1
- Adobe Camera RAW 5.5 (ACR)
- Phase One Capture One 4.8.3
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta
- LightZone 3.8
- RAW Drop 1.11 – Free
- RAWTherapee 2.4.1 – Free
- Silky Pix 4.1.22.1
- SilverFast HDR 6.6.1r3a

As viewers, I’m using FastPictureViewer x64 and IrfanView 4.25. This post preview image is saved with IrfanView.

For file processing I use Adobe Photoshop CS4.

I tried to use also DxO Optics Pro 5.3.5 and Scarab Darkroom but DxO doesn’t support Olympus RAW files even when converted to DNG using ACR and Scarab is still detected as a potentially dangerous application by NOD32 even after announcing the developers more than 3 months ago.
(Due to the high response rate and by request, I’ll get some Nikon and RAW files and include also DxO in my review.)

The test platform is Windows 7 64bit, Intel Core2 Duo 6600, 4 GB DDR2 Dual Channel, dedicated HDDs for the OS (250 GB), photos (500 GB), pagefile (250 GB) and temporary files (160 GB) each one defragmented before the start of the test with Defraggler 1.14.159. The videocard is nVidia 6600 256 MB. Not the latest hardware bells and whistles but still working properly.

The first file processed is a real nightmare for any noise reduction engine. A night shot with Olympus E-500 firmware 1.3 at 1/10s, f4, ISO1600 with the Zuiko Digital 9-18 f:4-5.6 firmware 1.1 at 9 mm. You can see the preview in the post image.

First surprise:
As I tried to make identical crops from the unresized resulting TIFF files by using a predefined action, I realized that some of the crops were offset by more than a pixel. And so we come to the real surprise. The Olympus E-500 RAW image size should be as per specification of the manual: 2448 x 3264 px.
Five of the programs exported the files as per specification. The rest of them not:
- Bibble Pro: 2496 x 3328 px
- RawTherapee: 2496 x 3332 px
- Breeze Browser: 2502 x 3337 px
- SilverFast HDR: 2502 x 3338 px
- RAW Drop: 2504 x 3340 px
- LightZone: 2504 x 3340 px

As a curiosity I’ve looked at the EXIF data from IrfanView: 2504 x 3360 px …

At first I was thinking that somewhere in the export process I’ve scaled by mistake two of the files. But it wasn’t my error. The two files were really exported that way. I decided to investigate further and the result was unbelievable, not only the sizes were different, but also the relative margins of the file were really different as you can see in the image below (click for zoom). For the full size click here.

As reference for alignment between renderings I’ve used the name of the store “El Corte Ingles” and the top corner of the building.

As you can see, ACR and both versions of Lightroom rendered within the same borders, but all the products from the other vendors were off by at least 3 pixels in each direction. The good part is that the border of the Bibble Pro, RawTherapee and the other bigger files encompasses the area rendered by the other developers. I’ll try to get my hand on some RAW files from Nikon and Canon cameras to see if the “error” is consistent.

UPDATE:
I have got some NEF and CR2 files and it seems the story is repeating. RAW Drop and LightZone provided always the bigger files:
- Canon 400D CR2 File in ACR: 3888 x 2592 px versus 3906 x 2602 in RAW Drop and 3898 x 2594 px in LightZone;
- Nikon D300 NEF File in ACR: 4288 x 2848 px versus 4320 x 2868 in RAW Drop and 4312 x 2860 px in LightZone.

So, excluding RAW Drop and LightZone, all the other RAW developers had chosen different areas from the RAW file for rendering. If you have an object that just bites the edge in an unique photo, it’s worth trying another editor to see if that object is in fact complete or not.

On the next episode (November 2nd) I will post the noise reduction test results.

Related posts:

1. RAW Developers Review – Recover “lost” pixels As I’ve stated in the first part of my review,...
2. RAW Developers Review – Noise Reduction (3rd update) For the second part of my review I will look...
3. RAW Developers Review – Color Rendering (updated) Do you love the gay community? I’ve just found one...
4. RAW Developers Review – Color correction support in applications (part 1) First, an explanation on my previous article and the two...
5. New lens … new shoot to the moon Just a test: ...

---

No comments yet

The comments are closed.