Digital Camera RAW Converter Comparisons - Details - Artifacts

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DIGITAL CAMERA RAW CONVERTER COMPARISONS
with Canon 1Ds Mk II and 20D RAW images
Adobe's ACR (Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom), Bibble Pro, BreezeBrowser Pro, Capture One,
Canon's Digital Photo Pro, SilverFast DC Pro / DC VLT and Silkypix Developer Studio

Details - Artifacts - Sharpening

The examples on this page were shot with my Canon 1DS MK II using auto white balance. They were converted from RAW to TIFF using each RAW converter's default color and exposure choices. The TIFF files were then converted to sRGB. I converted these images to sRGB because the conversion to sRGB insures, as much as is possible, that the colors I saw in Photoshop will be the same colors the viewer will see in their web browser or imaging program. The RGB histograms under each image were from the original TIFF image. The screen capture image sections below were taken from the original TIFF images at 100% and 400% magnification. Default settings with NO sharpening were used for all RAW conversions. Even though we did not apply any sharpening, some of the RAW converters were a little too aggressive for my tastes when it came to color assignments for adjoining pixels of dark and light color. Assigning higher color numbers to pixels of lighter colors and lower color numbers to pixels with darker colors when these pixels are neighbors is, in fact, the same thing we do when sharpening an image with unsharp mask or any other image editing sharpening too. The color assignments for each pixel are influenced by the contrast curve applied by each RAW converter and the interpolation method used to extract color data from the Bayer pattern sensor. Almost all of these RAW converters allow you a great deal of control over the contrast range of your image.


Adobe Camera RAW: made one of the cleanest renditions of this image. Note the minimal amount of color artifacts in the white window sections. Very little, if any, behind the scenes sharpening was applied.


Bibble Pro: Default settings produced a little more than an average amount of color artifacts. Thankfully, Bibble has a good noise/smoothing tool set including, noise, luma and color. Bibble interpolates my 1Ds MK II RAW files to 5004X3336 pixels and these dimensions are larger than the manufacturer's stated native resolution of the camera (4992X3328). However, the length to width ratio is correct.


BreezeBrowser: Did a good job with this image. There is very little color noise and no excessive default sharpening.


Capture One Pro: Even though we have set no sharpening and we have "disable sharpening on output" selected in preferences, C1 is moderately aggressive on contrast between adjoining areas light and dark pixels. Also, there is a lack of smooth gradation in the pixels in the window frame cross bars. Color noise is average or less compared to the other converters in this article. C1 interpolates my 1Ds MK II RAW files to 4992X3320 pixels and these dimensions are not the same size or same length to width ratio as the manufacturer's stated resolution of the camera (4992X3328).


Digital Photo Pro: We have just a little sharpening in this image even though we have the sharpening tool set to ZERO. Color noise artifacts are average or less.


Silkypix Developer Studio: Quite a bit of extra color artifacts in the window areas. Sharpness was set to the default of 'average' so the results in that area are more than satisfactory.


SilverFast DC VLT: Color artifacts are noticeable and would probably be more noticeable with a more aggressive contrast curve. The sharpness was set to 'none' and the result reflects about what I would expect to see with no sharpening applied.

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LINKS: Introduction, comments on RAW and features comparison chart Adobe ACR 4 (Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom) overview Bibble Pro overview BreezeBrowser Pro overview Canon Digital Photo Pro overview Capture One Pro overview Silky Pix Developer Studio overview SilverFast DC Pro / DC VLT overview comparison examples - color renditions comparison examples - landscapes comparison examples - tungsten and florescent white balance at ISO 1600 comparison examples - studio lights and custom white balance comparison examples - studio lights with Kelvin white balance comparison examples - digital noise at ISO 1600 EXIF and IPTC information
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