[toni-a]

Since I mostly shoot portraits, I am looking for a good RAW converter for the job, extracting the finest details isn't a priority however optimal colors is extremely important.

a B&W conversion tool would be a great plus but I can live with that.

Canon DPP is till now the best, but it needs perfectly lit and exposed pictures  its main weaknesses:

1- noise if you decide to push exposure +1 for high key effect for instance noise raises dramatically any RAW conerter can boost exposure without adding such an amount of noise ?

 

2-fill light, while DPP happily does it for pictures taken with my friend's 7D it refuses doing so for pictures I take with my 5D

 

3- keyboard shortcuts: dunno why till now I have to waste time with mouse to copy and paste settings from a picture to another

 

Any suggestions ?

[JJ_SO]

Capture One, but I don't know darktable, which would be free and also well spoken of. 

[Kodachrome 25]

darktable, which would be free and also well spoken of. 

but available only for Linux and Mac: http://www.darktable.org/2015/07/why-don...ows-build/

[JJ_SO]

Ah, didn't know that. Never tried it, though. Also, I'm not a professional portrait photog and for the kind of retouche I usually do (removing spots and pimples) Apple Aperture is sufficient. If I need more, I use Affinity Photo or Pixelmator for composings or other stuff.

 

Toni-A wanted a good BW-module and I think Capture One is pretty good, as far as I know. However, I can't compare it to Lightroom.

[toni-a]

Many thanks, I am not on mac nor Linux (windows 8.1 for the time being) will check if capture one has trial version. I am trying now DXO and silkypix.

The B&W module of DPP seems the winner till now since noise wouldn't be a problem

DXO seems good, but very slow. Silkypix is not bad at all however I am still experimenting.

[toni-a]

just tried Capture one only supports 64 bit systems I am on a 32 bit PC 

[JJ_SO]

Please don't feel offended, but with 32 bit a lot of apps run slow. I think I have somewhere a C1 6 version which was free giveaway in a magazine which could be 32 bit on Windows - but it's no fun. Also, those old versions are missing a couple of features, so I don't think it's worth to try.

[Rainer]

You might give "Rawtherapee" a try.

 

I personally do not use it often (as I find its GUI rather confusing),

nevertheless, it produces really nice output. Compared with my

"normal" workflow it takes me two to three times the usual time

per image, so I only use it when other things fail. Especially, the

highlight-recovery is quite good.

 

But be warned ... on a 32-bit machine, you should only process one

image at a time ... do not batchprocess, as this will crash the program

soon. There is a hint for some config-tweaks for 32-bit WIndows machines

that are equipped with 4GB ram ... you should follow them.

The programm runs way better on a 64-bit system with more than

4GB ram.

 

If you want to give it a try: http://rawtherapee.com/downloads

 

Regards .. Rainer

[toni-a]

Thanks Rainer. Rawtherapee Is soo slow.

Till now my preferences

1 Canon DPP best till now only if fill lighting was available for 5D and it didn't increase noise when pushing exposure. However shooting to the right solves a big part of the problem.


2 Silkypix just excellent however nothing as good as DPP skin tones but if you take your time understanding its interface and weird naming for its functions I am sure it has something interesting.


3 DXO good but terribly sloooooowwwwww and by default it applies tens of adjustment that make it even slower


4 capture one: Tried it yesterday offers same things as its competitors, maybe I should learn more about it. If everyone is raving about it, it should have something good to offer I might be missing with my old version of 2011

 

[Rainer]

A program that is also capable of producing goot output is Adobes Lightroom.

(I wonder why this hasn't been mentioned yet).

If you stick with one of the older versions is runs quite well on 32bit with 4GB ram

(I used it a while in this setup). I personally do not like the GUI ... I also do not like

Adobes way to import everything into its own "library" ... I always droped the

library after use and started with a new and empty one ... I never used

Lightroom as an image organiser ... a real pity one cannot properly get

rid of that part. ... Nevertheless ... the output is more than ok ... so,

regarding the relatively low price of lightroom, that might also be a way to go

for you. ... You can download a 30day trail from Adobes webpages.