RAW converters make a difference

After talking with Mike Gurley, our local Canon rep, about my image quality problems (he got right on the case) I tried, at his suggestion, the dreaded Canon RAW processing software that comes in that disk with the camera that none of us has ever loaded. Here's a badly underexposed shot (there's correcting for highlights, and then there's just blowing it) and what the various RAW converters have to say about my ineptitude.

The Canon conversion is a good salvage job. The Adobe conversion looks just dreadful. The problem, however, with leaving an Adobe pathway is that, as far as I know, every other conversion workflow leads to a tif or jpg output. In Adobe there's no need to convert files after correction, though I archive in dng format so I don't have to keep tabs on that little xml sidecar. It would be a big disruption to my archive pattern to have a second conversion path.

I'm open to other ideas. One problem I had was finding a converter that works with Mac OS 10.4 (I've resisted the upgrade to Leopard, as I don't know what all will stop working if I do). I'd love suggestions on what else to try.

 

 

Comments

[Dave Kosiur]

Take a look at RPP (Raw Photo Processor) at http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html. Maybe not the most intuitive or prettiest UI, but a powerful raw converter. (Since it's a 16-bit processor from the get-go, it may be a little slow on older Macs, but does work well even under Tiger.)

[Daniel]

Have you tried making your own Profile with Adobe's DNG Profile Editor, Doug? You need a Colorchecker chart but it is very easy to use for a basic profile. You can use either one or two shots (one daylight and one incandescent, for example) to make the profile. I found it works wonders for color accuracy using ACR. It works with Lightroom, too.

Here is the link:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles:Editor

[Doug Plummer]

I wish it were merely a profile issue. I have custom profiles for my camera bodies that get applied automatically in ACR, so that's not it. I can fix the problem a little bit by choosing a milder profile, like Camera Faithful, and altering the shadow tint to the green side.

I've been running the wedding shoot through Canon's massively irritating raw converter. I looked at RPP, and it is one heck of an intimidating interface that my mind isn't going to wrap around without an engineering degree. It reminds me of another wonderful piece of software with an impossible UI, Dave Dunthorn's ColorNeg.

[Art Kuntz]

Try SilkyPix That is the raw processor I use the majority of the time. Ocassionally I will use DXO when I have a lot of reds in my shot.

[David Mantripp]

I'm amazed Lasersoft is so good... Must have improved a lot since I last tried it.

Have you tried Iridient RAW Developer ? Should work fine on top of 10.4, and it is arguably the best RAW converter on the planet. Arguably...