Alan Greensill's RAW Processing Software Shootout

Over the last few years I've gathered a number of flavours of RAW processing software:

• C1LE: Capture One (originally DRebel Edition, then upgraded to LE)

• DPP: Canon Digital Photo Professional

• PSE: Adobe PhotoShop Elements

• RSP: RawShooter Premium

• LR: Adobe LightRoom
  
  

I love bits of all of them however no single one fully meets my needs so I typically use at least two of them during my RAW processing workflow. The only exception being when I just want to very quickly process some shots, then RSP is still my weapon of choice.

I've been getting a little frustrated with this situation so I decided that I needed to settle on one and concentrate on that. What I decided to do is to use each of them to process the same RAW image to allow me to compare the results. I deliberately chose a fairly mediocre image - shot in very flat light and that looked a little soft. My objective was to see which package allowed me to produce the most vibrant and sharp result from this unpromising starting point. I've ignored additional features such as crop, rotation etc., and focussed solely on colour and sharpness.

The method I followed was as follows:

1. Profiled my monitor using a ColorVision Spyder

2. Exported the image using DPP with no processing as a baseline

3. Using each package I then processed the RAW using Auto, or default, settings and saved as a TIFF

4. Using each package I re-processed the RAW using manual settings until it looked good to my eye, again saving as a TIFF

5. For each produced TIFF I saved a JPEG re-sized to 800 x 600, and a thumbnail at 400 x 300

6. For each TIFF I took two 100% crops, one thumbnail size the other larger, and saved both as JPEG

First of all here's the original image and it's histogram. It's a photograph of Anthony Davidson taken during the Friday practice at the F1 Santander British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July 2007. It was overcast so the colours are very flat, and although it's 'nearly' sharp it is definitely very soft. The picture below is effectively straight from the camera. If you want to try your own experiments on the same image you can click on the image to download the original RAW file - it's a Canon 20D CR2 file and is just over 7Mb in size.

Auto settings

Now on to the contest. What I did first was to use each package to process the image using auto/default settings plus a modest amount of USM if none was added by default. What this generally meant was some variation of terminology around Auto White Balance (WB) and Auto Exposure (Auto Smart Fix in the case of PSE).

Baseline - DPP No processing Very flat colours and noticeably soft.	100% crop Reasonable detail extraction but too soft.
PSE 5.0 + RAW 4.1 Much punchier colours, still very soft.	100% crop Noticeable artifacting but still soft.
RSP 2006 Slightly improved colours, improved sharpness.	100% crop Very noticeable artifacting, but definitely sharper.
LR 1.1 Similar to PSE (surprise!) but nicer colour balance.	100% crop Slightly sharper than PSE and whiter whites.
C1LE 3.7.7 Very dark and lacking contrast.	100% crop Artefacting less noticeable than Adobe and definitely sharper.

Manual settings

This is where it starts to get interesting. What I did here was to use each package to process the image using manual WB, custom curves, and USM - all to please my eye. Obviously this is very subjective and your mileage may vary.

Baseline - DPP No processing Very flat colours and noticeably soft.	100% crop Reasonable detail extraction but too soft.
PSE 5.0 + RAW 4.1 Much punchier colours, good contrast, decent sharpness.	100% crop Noticeable artifacting, text sharpness improved.
RSP 2006 Still a green bias, decent contrast, good sharpness	100% crop Very visible artefacting but definitely sharper than PSE.
LR 1.1 Nice well balanced colour, good contrast, decent sharpness	100% crop Again, similar to PSE but noticeable sharper. Less saturated.
C1LE 3.7.7 Again well balanced, but slightly green compared to the blue whiteness of LR. Good sharpness.	100% crop Extremely noticeable artifacting - looks oversharpened this close.

 

Conclusion

To my eye it looks like LR produced the nicest image, although the C1LE image definately looks sharper except at 100% crop when the artefacting becomes very appartent. For print or web use of course this is probably not an issue. PSE is also similar to LR but is not as well suited to processing large numbers of shots. RSP seems to trail behind on image quality - I've always felt it produced 'muddy' images and now I see it's down to a green bias.

So it looks like I can definately retire C1LE and PSE, however RSP will still firmly remain part of my workflow even though it is dead and unsupported simply because it's Alt-S full-screen slideshow mode is just the best way of quickly viewing and rating shots I've come across. I still just love it.

Perhaps with LR 2.0 I will finally be able to retire RSP, but until then...