[Reinier]

Hi all,

Just wondering what is your preferred Raw-converter and why? Most people I know use LightRoom. Why? Because it is quite good, but most of the time because Adobe is the most famous manufacturer.

But I like to hear what you use and why and perhaps if you use more than one converter depending on your ‘needs’?

Kind regards,

Reinier

[exuvia]

People like LR because it's easy to find on the net for "free" That said, it's a good software, but a little "wanna-do-it-all", which leads to some stiffness.

 

I used to use Silkypix: best color rendition out there, smooth details in color-saturated areas, lot of well done and "out of the box" controls; in the last years, however, it has been left behind in resolution and ISO noise by most of the other main players. Pity.

 

In the last couple of years I'm using Capture One Pro, the best to me. It is made by people who understand how photographers work, and you can easily see it. Noise treatment and resolution at the highest level; complete, logic and customizable interface. I just hope it won't follow the LR philosophy to try to do it all, from slide-shows to web publishing (well, it already do those things, but in a discreet way) and so on: I think there is the right tool for every different task, somewhere else.

 

However, a RAW converter could be only evaluated as a whole: if we are talking about single features, some are always better than others. RAW Therapee, for example, is still the king of the hill when it comes to "resolution": very good software, and free.

Just my 2 cents.

[Rainer]

I personally like software that does not need to be "installed" ... SW that you can just copy onto a

memory-stick and run from there. If it needs an installation, I install, then copy, then uninstall.

It should still run.

 

I still use old Rawshooter-Essentials ... it originally needed to be installed,

but with a small trick, the installation can be copied onto a stick and can be run from there.

 

I also use RawTherapee (for the same reasons) for a few images which RSE does not

handle properly.

 

Same applies for Gimp and for IrfanView.

 

With these 4 I can do most of what I need.

 

But I also have Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop-Elements (5).

In the long run, I will likely use Lightroom as the main Raw-Converter ...

it is a direct successor of old RSE (which I like), unfortunately, it has all this

image-library-stuff combined to it, which I don't need, and which I would

prefer not to have. PSE5 is just for some special functions (as Gimp).

 

Along with the Fuji x100, I use SilkyPix (in the version that comes with the

camera). When I move to Lightroom (which will happen when my old

EOS 5D fails) I will also use Lightroom for the x100 images ... and thereby get

rid of SilkyPix.

 

Rainer

[bryan conner]

I use Lightroom 4.4.  I used to be an ACR-Bridge user, but have been fully converted to the Light side.  I have tried several raw converters (RawTherapee, Silkypix, Canon DPP, DXO, Capture One 7, etc) and I also own Capture One 6.  I have not been able create better output images from my Canon 7d, or my 40d, than I get from Lightroom 4.  I did not like Lightroom so much in the beginning since I came from years of using ACR and Bridge.  But, a little over a year later, I am used to Lightroom and enjoy working with it and enjoy the images I can produce with it.

[popo]

I also went through a phase of trying all the raw converters. In terms of interface I like the old(er) style ACR best, but I hate its noise rendering. I never got along with Lr at all. RawTherapee just made no sense at all. Capture One whatever version they're on last year also didn't do anything for me. DPP output looks ok but the interface is a mess.

Right now I use DxO mostly. Its noise rendering is what swung me most. Definitely not one if you want absolute pixel sharpness. Note I find myself using raw converters as the rough adjustment. I almost always tweak and find tune in PSE afterwards.

[soLong]

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">not that this might mean much to anyone else except me -  but i have in the computer and use at various times (depending on how i like each ones' rendering of the picture): C1/7; DXO8; RPP64; ACR(in Ps5)

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;"> 

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">...C1/7 is clean; sharp(but be careful); likes plenty of colour; is very tweak-able; polite(tries to render everything available); has nice clarity and structure (again be careful) - but, with a predominance of one colour (eg. yellow) it shoves the opposite colour (i.e. blue) off the waveform - not something i like so much

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">...DXO8 is easy; good in retrieving the impossible from an underexposed scene; and i find makes interesting looking pictures in that they are what i thought the scene should look like even thought not as complete as C1;+ the levels are nice and unclipped and where they should be

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">...RPP64 makes nice clean pictures; gets the levels right; is actually sharp and really quite nice - but it brick walls the peak whites at clipping, so easiest and best fix for this(imo) is to combine this file with another converter here

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">...ACR does nice(for some:-)over the top anti-clarity for effect into another convertors scene(but add nr) - unfortunately it also does the same with levels as after the but for C!/7 above

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;"> 

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">why have and use all these? …well why not… buy the $$ ones when on discount and the prices are not too bad - there is of course a free one in here(if you don't give a donation) and with care it is good

[JJ_SO]

Once upon a time a famous mobile-phone designing brand from California came up with a real nice program - that were the things before everything else became an app. They called it Aperture and two or three persons still like it because of it's fantastic user interface. The mobile-phone brand changed it a couple of months (or years? who knows...) before to some dull, grey, boring looking interface everybody else has, too. But I guess after they found out their mobile-phone still is not powerful enough to run that app, they gave it up.


No updates, even new cameras are not longer supported and iPhones are not storing RAW anyway, so who the hell would care? The interesting things were not much it's RAW conversions - others did better, I was told - but the way to organize the pictures. Others did copy it, but sadly badly and even worse. Which is great, because the late CEO of this mobile phone company once complained about another app-factory these are lazy guys because they couldn't close the safety breaches of their shitty software as fast as others programmed viruses and trojans to make a use of it. But it turns out, as he passed away, the mobile-phone company became likewise a bunch of lazy guys when it comes to software made for bigger screens than only 10 inches.


Anyway, these days a decent RAW converter is what it has to be - not understandable, time-consuming, confusing, with gazillions of parameters to play around with and the organization in file folders worked 30 years ago and that's the way it has to be! Basta. Forever!


Oh, and now I'm forced to look after things like DxO and C1 and Capture NX2 just because a camera manufacturer released a model a full week to early which came as a shock or a real unpleasant surprise to them RAW converter makers.


And the memories of that nice Aperture thing are still vivid...

[Guest]

Did anybody try Corel AfterShot Pro? So far I cannot say it's my favorite converter, I'm just learning to use it. And by no way it matches DRO capabilities of the Sony converter I usually use.

But there is something special about the  AfterShot Pro - it doesn't requre much computer power. Runs easily on 600 MHz/1Gb-RAM Windows Vista laptop; will probably work well on most Win8-Pro tablets.