RAW Converters 2014

This is an interesting read.

link

What do you use?

Best regards

I use pretty basic stuff, I never use noise reduction because I don't shoot over ISO400 and I very rarely apply sharpening, just occasionally local tone mapping. If at work I use the Microsoft Camera Codec with Microsoft Office 2010 Picture Manager (believe it or not!). It's actually pretty good for B&W conversions. At home I use Painshop Pro X3 or recently, Perfect Effects Pemium 8, which has a surprising number of tools under the hood. Below is an image converted with just the MS combination.

Although I shoot JPEG almost all the time, I do use DNG as well. Adobe Camera Raw seems to do the job, nestled comfortably within Photoshop CS5.

I've been through a lot of converters, and occasionally test them against each other.
My experience is there's a constant leap-frogging of one package over another (in terms of IQ). Consequently, I've stuck with Lightroom (standalone) as it has the best overall range of tools for me, and better quality output than most.

That said, at times it does help the creative juices to try something different... but when I've done that I've always come back to LR

Matt

Same here - so using the one in the K-5 II most of the time! The images OOC are then edited in PaintShop Pro X6. For the odd Raw image file (DNG), I use the simplified ACR that comes with Elements 10, which I find better than the Raw converter in PSP.

Cheers.
Philip

Sagelight 48bit Image Editor for me ... www.sagelight.com .....

It has a very powerful and intuitive interface and adjustment strategies, using hidden layers and auto mask features that you activate with single clicks.

Yes I use Sagelight too, but also RawTherapee, which I find has superior highlight recovery options for when I've ETFTTR (exposed too far to the right!)

Great, we can form a most select and elite subgroup here! Anything to counter the constant barrage of the Lightroom Brigade

Hi Nigel - the link doesn't work... (for me anyway)

Apologies, I'm sorry ... the correct website is ... www.sagelighteditor.com ...

Thanks - will have a look

All overcomplicated bloatware. I use Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 6 which does all that I need, fast and in a way that I like even on an ancient Win XP machine.

Aye. Darktable every time here.