DIGITAL CAMERA RAW CONVERTER COMPARISONS
with Canon 1Ds Mk II and 20D RAW images
Adobe's ACR
3, Bibble Pro 4.3, BreezeBrowser Pro 1.0.1, Capture One 3.7, Canon's Digital Photo Pro 1.5
and RawShooter Essentials 1.1.2
RawShooter Essentials 1.1.2 (RSE)
overview
| I decided to add RSE to my article because I think it has the
potential to be a real contender. This application is currently freeware
but I'm sure that the developers will go retail as soon as they feel the
program is robust enough. Hopefully a few more tools and features will
be added too. This application downloads as a 4.6mb executable. RSE's
programmers have put a lot of functionality into a relatively
small amount of code (Capture One Pro's install folder is nearly 45mb). RSE was designed solely to browse, edit and convert RAW files. RSE will only thumbnail RAW files. RSE is not a general purpose file browser. RSE has a nifty slide show feature that lets you view your folder of RAW files in slide show fashion and sort them by rank as you view them. This extra 'editing' feature is very useful to prioritize and sort out the images that you don't want to work with. There are three priority levels as well as a 'trash can'. The images in the trash folder are not deleted until you specifically ask to send them to the windows recycle bin. The layout of RSE's GUI (Graphical User Interface) is user configurable. RSE has slider adjustments for its well thought out selection of image adjustment tools. You can also manually input numeric values for all of the image adjustment tools. RSE does not have levels or curves adjustments. However by watching the live preview image and the RGB/CMYK color overlay histogram while doing the slider adjustments you can accomplish some very decent image adjustments. If you choose not to fine tune white balance with the color picker, you can set the white balance slider to read degrees Kelvin or as a warm/cool slider. RSE has 7 optional tone curves under the 'appearance' drop down menu. Sliding your cursor over these choices instantly changes the preview and the histogram to reflect the change that would be made if you select that particular tone curve. Note, RSE's sharpening and detail extraction sliders are set to the program's choice for default effect when they are set to zero. If you want to turn off sharpening, you must set each of these sliders to -50, (minus) 50. RSE has a 'snapshot' feature that allows you to view your image with different tool settings by taking a 'snapshot' of the image with current adjustments and then changing those adjustments and taking another snapshot. You can then toggle back and forth between any number of image adjustment combination snapshots. When you have decided which image adjustment set looks best, you just delete the other 'snapshots'. You can apply adjustment tool settings globally to any number of selected images. RSE has a 'fill light' tool that is marvelous for pulling detail out of shadow areas. RSE also has an edge sharpening tool called 'detail extraction'. The tools and workflow options in RSE have obviously been given a lot of careful consideration. RSE saves adjustment information along with the preview image. When you open a folder of previously edited RAW files the settings you last applied to each image are retained as the default or 'start up' adjustments for that image. You can actually save the adjustment setting file for each image to your memory card or other portable storage media. You can change the default adjustments any time you wish. All of the RAW converters discussed in this article save the adjustment settings without altering the original RAW file. RSE can output TIFF in 8 or 16 bit and JPEG with 5 different selectable quality choices. RSE preserves the basic EXIF tags like camera used, lens focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO and image and output resolution. You can also select to not save EXIF info. RSE supports ICC color management and individual file naming on output. RSE does background batch processing. You can work on preparing more images while RSE is converting your previous image set in the background. RSE is mid pack on conversion speed at about 20 seconds to convert and save a Canon 1Ds MK II RAW file to 16 bit TIFF. RSE only takes about 55 seconds to thumbnail, profile and cache a 50 image folder of 1Ds MK II RAW files. During preview/cache building time you may experience a little lag in program response if you try to open or work on one of the images. RSE has a very detailed and useful user guide in PDF format. Unfortunately, since it is a PDF document, it is not 'searchable'. Visit the RawShooter Essentials web site or download the product brochure. |
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RawShooter Essentials GUI (Graphical User Interface) Click here to see the 'Batch convert' tab |
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| To print this web page correctly you will need to set
your printer's page setup properties to 'landscape' paper orientation LINKS: Introduction, comments on RAW and features comparison chart Adobe ACR overview Bibble Pro overview BreezeBrowser Pro overview Canon Digital Photo Pro overview comparison examples - color renditions comparison examples - landscapes comparison examples - tungstun and florescent white balance at ISO 1600 comparison examples - studio lights and flesh tones EXIF and IPTC information |
WEB SITE LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING INFORMATION LEGACY* EQUIPMENT REVIEWS
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