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
SilverFast DC Pro and DC VLT 6.4.4
overview
| I have quite a bit of experience with SilverFast as a scanning
application. SilverFast has been a dominant aftermarket scanning
application for years, particularly for high end scanning devices.
LaserSoft Imaging, the German company that developed SilverFast has
recently entered the camera RAW market. They are using the same GUI
and imaging engine that helped SilverFast dominate the aftermarket high
end scanner software market. Like many other RAW converters, SilverFast
is available at two different levels. DC Pro and DC VLT. Both use the
same GUI with a thumbnail browser and separate editing GUI. Also
included in both versions of DC is a new printing application called PrinTao. The two iterations of this application are nearly identical. The difference is the 'advanced' features that are only available in DC Pro. The following are only available in DC Pro: 16 bit color support, batch processing, auto adaptive color restoration, IT8 calibration, clone tool and software based dust mark removal. Personally, I don't think 16 bit color support and simple batch processing should be considered as advanced features. Every other RAW converter in this article, even in its 'lite' configuration supports 16 bit output and has some level of batch processing available. DC comes with a lot of documentation, including Quick Time film clips and a PDF help file. The editor GUI has a superlative set of image editing tools. The basic RAW adjustments of exposure compensation, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation and noise control are available in a tabbed set of slider or numeric input tools. The following are also available as floating (one at a time) tool sets: Levels, curves, global color correction, selective color correction and 'expert dialog' (primarily a press proofing tool). DC and DC VLT have a very cool densitometer. This 'always available' floating tool shows RGB numbers both input (input = before editing input) and output (output = after editing tool use). If you have a good mouse and steady hand you can read at single pixel level because the tool uses single pixel level sampling and there is a window showing the area the cursor is over at pixel level. In fact many of the tools and options were originally designed to support preparing images for printing from offset press. If you are in that business, SilverFast DC will be a very intuitive tool and will certainly expedite getting your camera images ready for press. SilverFast DC is also very appropriate for a professional photographer or home digital darkroom enthusiast. The image adjustment tool set provides excellent control over every aspect of tuning up your images before converting them to a portable format. The thumbnail GUI is called VLT for 'Virtual Light Table'. DC will thumbnail RAW, JPEG and TIFF (8bit TIFF only in DC VLT). The top half of the VLT GUI shows thumbnails of image folder contents and the bottom half can be used to sort, rename, make collections of images called 'albums' and send batches of images to Job Manager for batch processing in DC Pro. Both DC VLT and DC Pro have a download manager that will detect your camera or card reader when they are connected to your PC. The DC RAW conversion engine with default settings makes very low key images (low contrast tone curve and maybe a 1/3 stop underexposed). There's an argument to be made that this is very appropriate because the chance of highlight blowout with this sort of low contrast initial curve is negligible. However, I'd rather see a slightly broader range of contrast in the default image. I don't think there is any way you can load a bunch of images and get usable output out of all of them with default conversions. You'll have to adjust the contrast curve on most images. This would have to be done for each individual image manually or using SilverFast's 'auto adjust' tool. There is no way to apply global edits to a series of images. DC Pro and DC VLT use a dual approach to RAW processing. It looks as though as soon as you open an image into the editor it is converted to a full bitmapped image. SilverFast DC and DC VLT then use their very fine tools to work on the image at high bit level (16 bit color). In DC VLT you must save at 8 bit. DC Pro and DC VLT are mid pack when it comes to speed of processing. Both applications run flawlessly on my PC platform. Visit the SilverFast DC home page here or see a list of supported cameras here |
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SilverFast VLT GUI (Graphical User Interface)
Virtual Light Table |
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SilverFast VLT GUI (Graphical User Interface)
Editor |
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SilverFast VLT GUI (Graphical User Interface) PrintTao |
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B&H is the best online dealer - click the banner above if you need to do some shopping 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 comparison examples - color renditions comparison examples - landscapes comparison examples - artifacts & sharpening 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 |
WEB SITE LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING INFORMATION LEGACY* EQUIPMENT REVIEWS
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