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
DIGITAL NOISE CONTROL AT ISO 1600
| This ISO 1600 photo from my 1Ds Mark II was probably underexposed about 2/3 stop considering its content. It is a great image for checking out digital noise (digital noise looks just like multicolored film grain). I set each RAW converter's noise controls to about 50% of their available range. The screen captures below are from the right eye and left ear of the panda. I wanted to see how each of these RAW converters handled noise suppression and detail retention. I changed my usual alphabetical order presentation so you could see DPP first, which has NO built in noise suppression user controls. | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Digital Photo Pro |
Digital Photo Pro |
| Digital Photo Pro: DPP at 2.1 has added basic noise reduction under tools>preferences>general. This tool has none, low and high presets for both luminance and chrominance noise reduction. This is global setting and you must return to preferences if you wish to tune it between images. These sample were done with low noise suppression selected. High noise suppression yielded similar results. There's still quite a few random colored pixels in both examples. Granularity is average at best. | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bibble Pro |
Bibble Pro |
|
Bibble Pro: Using the licensed version of the Bibble 4.9 Noise Ninja plugin with the 'auto profile' feature and USM of 100 with a radius of 2 produced excellent results. |
|
|
|
|
|
BreezeBrowser Pro |
BreezeBrowser Pro |
|
BreezeBrowser Pro: The mid level of noise reduction did a very nice job with this photo. There is almost no color noise, no pattern noise and decent detail retention. |
|
|
|
|
|
Capture One |
Capture One |
|
Capture One Pro: At 33% of it's noise reduction did a fair job. There is almost no color noise. There is above average graininess but excellent detail retention. There may be a little pattern noise or lack of smooth tonal gradations in the eye capture. |
|
|
|
 |
|
ACR |
ACR |
|
Adobe Camera RAW: Color noise is all but gone. Excellent detail retention, no pattern noise. However, at 50% noise reduction there is still quite a bit of graininess in the photo. |
|
|
|
|
|
Silkypix Developer Studio |
Silkypix Developer Studio |
| Silkypix Developer Studio 2: A less than average job of removing color artifacts with 50% of noise reduction slider. However, Silkypix has more 'sub' tools in its noise reduction tool box that would help get this image cleaned up. Granularity is average or better. | |
|
|
|
|
SilverFast DC VLT |
SilverFast DC VLT |
| SilverFast DC VLT 6.4.4: Again an OK job but less effective than most of the other RAW converter's basic noise reduction tools. Removal of granularity is about average or slightly better | |
