RAW Converter Test

[Kansas Ron]

I am going to be shooting the Aspen in Colorado in a week. I am planning on taking one or two photos and processing via CS PS2, Studio, Capture1 LE, SILKYPIX, and RSE. Will do 100% crop and put into one JPEG file for direct viewing. First intention is to just do minimal adjusting. Will keep you posted.

[Bojan Volcansek]

and being quite jelous to your trip!
Have a great one with great photos!

Sincerely yours
Bojan

[Kansas Ron]

I am just hoping the weather cooperates. The aspen need to be in sunlight for them to really glow. I have relatives there I am visiting, and previous trips have been at other times so we tried to plan this one around the fall colors.

[totetuti]

Yeah, I like to see the differences b/w the raw converters. Thanks in advance...

[First Light]

Kansas Ron wrote:
...First intention is to just do minimal adjusting. ...
I\'ve compared many of these RAW developers before I settled on Olympus. I use the Olympus RAW plug-in for Photoshop most of the time and Studio when batch processing is possible (many similar images).

I\'d dearly prefer to use the ACR in Photoshop CS2 for all of my RAW development but it (and previous versions of ACR) has never equalled the fidelity of the Olympus converters.

But here\'s the main reason for my message: In my testing I discovered that it is unfair to compare the various developers using their \"minimal\" or default settings. Using the default settings with the Olympus software is fine—Olympus has the upper hand because they designed their cameras and, as far as I know, they have never shared their RAW algorithms with anyone else.

However, the default settings for the other developers will seldom produce the best results. A better comparison would be to independently optimize the settings of each developer the best you can and then compare. One thing that might help is to include a color calibration chart (like a Macbeth ColorChecker) in the corner of one of your RAW test shots. Then you\'ll have a known reference to use when tweaking the settings of each developer. At the least, use a gray calibration chart. Scott Kelby includes a free on in the back of his book \"The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers\" (my most highly recommended PS book).

Lasty, have a great trip. I love Colorado and have enjoyed backpacking in the Rockies. Get some great shots and have fun!!!