Inspired by this.
What do you guys use for processing your RAW files?
I've found, for RAW files from my D700 on a PC running XP Pro, that Capture One Pro seems to do the best job.
So far I've only compared it to Capture NX2 and ACR (LR). ACR is clearly the worst of the three; Capture NX2 is a close second.
Even so, I process most of my images using ACR in Lightroom, simply because the difference at low ISOs (and for web-sized copies) isn't big enough to spend the extra time using NX2 or Capture One.
But for high ISO shots, the difference is easy to see. ACR does the worst job of chroma noise reduction, and even if I turn off NR in ACR and use Noise Ninja the results are sub-par.
NX2, even with NR turned off, still applies quite a bit of chroma NR to RAW files. The noise has a more pleasing finer grain than ACR, but also gives the files slightly less detail than Capture One.
I've found that Capture One has the tightest grain pattern, and the files it produces clean up the best with Noise Ninja. The workflow with Capture One is faster than NX2, but still lags behind Lightroom. Can't have everything, I guess.
I haven't tried Raw Therapee, PerfectRaw, Bibble, DCRaw, Raw Photo Processor, Silkypix, DxO or Raw Developer yet.
What do you guys use for processing your RAW files?
I've found, for RAW files from my D700 on a PC running XP Pro, that Capture One Pro seems to do the best job.
So far I've only compared it to Capture NX2 and ACR (LR). ACR is clearly the worst of the three; Capture NX2 is a close second.
Even so, I process most of my images using ACR in Lightroom, simply because the difference at low ISOs (and for web-sized copies) isn't big enough to spend the extra time using NX2 or Capture One.
But for high ISO shots, the difference is easy to see. ACR does the worst job of chroma noise reduction, and even if I turn off NR in ACR and use Noise Ninja the results are sub-par.
NX2, even with NR turned off, still applies quite a bit of chroma NR to RAW files. The noise has a more pleasing finer grain than ACR, but also gives the files slightly less detail than Capture One.
I've found that Capture One has the tightest grain pattern, and the files it produces clean up the best with Noise Ninja. The workflow with Capture One is faster than NX2, but still lags behind Lightroom. Can't have everything, I guess.
I haven't tried Raw Therapee, PerfectRaw, Bibble, DCRaw, Raw Photo Processor, Silkypix, DxO or Raw Developer yet.
