Shooting RAW offers many advantages over using your camera’s JPEG processing, including the ability to increase the dynamic range of the original photo. It also means finding the right software to process the files into a format suitable for prints, and uploading to the web. I’ve been using Capture One 4 for over a year now, and been very happy with it.
I made the following notes when I was evaluating RAW converters, looking specifically at:
- the level of detail extracted
- ability to assign comparative ratings
- customizable sharpening
- noise removal
- batch processing
- color rendition for my Canon 400D files (.CR2)
Pluses
- great workflow with Bridge
- excellent viewing and editing performance
- sidecar files (ie. the ability to save your edits in a file external to the RAW file)
- DNG format support (a standard for RAW files that is gaining wider support)
Minuses
- doesn’t display red correctly for CR2 files, even worse when it’s converted to DNG
- conversion is slow
Pluses
- extremely slick, impressive interface
- sidecar files
Minuses
- has the same color problems with my Canon files as ACR
- slow
Pluses
- a one-stop shop with lots of control, meaning you may not need to go to Photoshop for most shots
- sidecar files
Minuses
- more resource hungry than ACR, meaning I can’t use it on my Dell X1 laptop (with its measly 512MB RAM)
- not as detailed image as C1 or ACR/Lightroom
Pluses
- excellent colors and detail from my 400D files
- best sharpening algorithms to my eye
- lowest resource usage, making it possible to run on my Dell X1
Minuses
- have to manually export (archive) its own side car files
Pluses
- best colors of the lot, even better than C1
- sidecar files automatically saved
Minuses
- sharpening not as good as C1, but on par with others
- more resource hungry than C1, but less so than the others
Pluses
- more detail than C1, good colors too (see outback photo’s article)
- sidecar files
Minuses
- only for the Mac
Pluses
- unique zone mapping feature (a la Ansel Adams), Photoshop not needed for most applications
- sidecar files
Minuses
- still an early edition
- runs on Java, which means slow and occasional crashes on my laptop
Pluses
- writes sidecar files
Minuses
- not as full-featured as the others, will need to go to photoshop