DIGITAL CAMERA RAW CONVERTER COMPARISONS
with Canon 1Ds Mk II and 20D RAW images
Adobe's ACR
3, Bibble Pro 4.9, BreezeBrowser Pro 1.3, Capture One 3.7, Canon's Digital
Photo Pro 2.1,
RawShooter premium 2006, SilverFast DC Pro
/ DC VLT and Silkypix Developer Studio
RawShooter premium 2006 (RSP)
overview
| 6/26/06: Adobe has purchased the rights to the RawShooter Raw
conversion engine. Initial reports indicate that Adobe will integrate
RawShooter's RAW conversion engine into future Adobe products. Adobe
will not be marketing RawShooter as a standalone application. RSP -
RIP...The big fish are eating the small ones much to the detriment of
the photographic public. This application downloads as a 7mb executable. RSP's programmers have put a lot of functionality into a relatively small amount of code (Capture One Pro's install folder is nearly 45mb). RSP was designed solely to browse, edit and convert RAW files. RSP will only thumbnail RAW files. RSP is not a general purpose file browser. RSP 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 you put in the trash folder are not deleted until you specifically ask to delete them. Images from RSP's trash folder are permanently deleted when you ask to delete them. Curiously, there is no option to put deleted images into the Window's Recycle Bin. Use RSP's trash folder with care. The layout of RSP's GUI (Graphical User Interface) is configurable. RSP 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. You can watch the live preview image and the RGB color overlay histogram while doing your 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. RSP has optional tool pre-sets under the 'appearance' drop down menu. Sliding your cursor over these choices instantly changes the preview and the histogram to reflect the changes that particular tool pre-set would apply to your image. You can save as many of your own tool pre-sets as you like and they will be available for future use in this menu. RSP 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. You can name each snapshot. When you have decided which image snapshot looks best, make sure it is the currently selected tab and add the image to the batch queue. If you want to turn off all sharpening, you can set the sharpening slider to -50, (minus) 50. Or you can just uncheck the 'enable sharpening' box in the batch convert tool tab. The detail extraction slider tool is related to blur control during the Bayer interpolation. It has the effect of increasing contrast on some pixels so it adds or subtracts from the 'apparent' sharpness of your image. Turn it down to -50 if you want to do all of your sharpening in post processing. RSP's fill light tool works nicely and keeps a reasonably accurate color balance throughout its range. The new 'vibrance' tool included in the color tool set is very interesting. The vibrance tool seems to work like the saturation tool but in a more aggressive and slightly different way. Moving the vibrance tool to the right seems to expand the histogram and separate the color channels. Moving it to the left does approximately the opposite. This tool may be your best bet for getting the 'Velvia look' using a RAW converter...;^) Michael Tapes, Executive Consultant: Pixmantec ApS, has this to say about the vibrance tool. "The vibrance control uses patent pending Scene Adaptive Technology to only affect those color[s] and sections of the file that will benefit from the addition or subtraction of Vibrance." I wish Webster's dictionary had a definition for 'vibrance' because you do see this term applied to digital imaging technology now and then. You can apply adjustment tool settings globally to any number of selected images. The tools and workflow options in RSP have obviously been given a lot of careful consideration. I would have preferred to see a 3 channel levels and curves tool instead of the provided RGB combo levels/curves tool. The noise reduction and new color control tool sets are excellent. RSP 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. RSP can output TIFF in 8 or 16 bit and JPEG with 5 different selectable quality choices. RSP 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. RSP supports ICC color management and individual file naming on output. RSP has a built in memory card downloader. This application allows you to download images from your memory card straight into RSP. You can batch rename as you download and the previews are built while you download so after the download you can get right to work. RSP does background batch processing. You can work on preparing more images while RSP is converting your previous image set in the background. RSP is above the average in the speed race at about 8 (20D) and 21 (1Ds Mark II) seconds to convert and save a RAW file to a 16 bit TIFF file. RSP only takes about 55 seconds to thumbnail, profile and cache a 50 image folder of 1Ds MK II RAW files. You can pause or turn off preview building if you need to work on just a couple of images in a multi-image folder. 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. RSP has been extremely stable on my PC platform. RSP has a VERY intuitive workflow with a well thought out GUI and tool set that will allow you to adjust your images to suite your needs in a minimum amount of time. The slide show/sorting and snapshot features are extremely useful in my workflow. RSP needs a little work on its color profiles for some cameras. Michael Tapes, Executive Consultant to Pixmantec, assures me that Pixmantec is committed to tuning the existing RSP internal camera profiles to be the best that they can be. NEW - 11/18/05 - Pixmantec now offers "Color Engine" plugin. Color engine uses profiles generated by Magne Nilsen of Etcetera Color (ETC). The profiles are wrapped into RSP by the Color Engine plugin so that they appear just under the RSP default camera profile in the camera profile drop down list. This makes it easy to go back and forth and see the current image with either of the two profiles. The Color Engine profiles are nice. However, there were only subtle differences between the RSP default profile and Color Engine profile in the 1Ds Mark II and 20D RAW images that I examined. RSP's default profiles will be more than adequate for most users and Pixmantec is committed to making RSP's internal profiles better. Nonetheless, if you are real picky about color, you may want to try out Color Engine and see if the new profiles give you the look that you want. Color Engine installs profiles for a bunch of DSLR cameras. You will not be able to buy ETC/RSP profiles for just one camera. ETC and Pixmantec have signed an exclusive marketing agreement. This is an advantage if you have more than one DSLR or have supported legacy DSLR RAW files on your hard drive that you'd like to try to improve. If you only own one DSLR, this 'all in one' aftermarket profile approach may be less desirable from a cost standpoint. RSP has a very detailed and useful user guide in PDF format. Visit the RawShooter web site or download the Pixmantec's Raw workflow Guide. |
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RawShooter premium 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 Capture One Pro overview Silky Pix Developer Studio overview SilverFast DC Pro / DC VLT overview comparison examples - color renditions comparison examples - landscapes comparison examples - artifacts & sharpening comparison examples - tungstun 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 |
WEB SITE LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING INFORMATION LEGACY* EQUIPMENT REVIEWS
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