RAW processors

It's also very easy to send an image from Lightroom to an external program of your choice ( including photoshop of course ) to make those complicated edits in the rare occasion that Lightroom can't handle.

It's misleading to claim the above when you haven't even tried the program.

Not a good comparison Smeggy. Gimp is (deliberately) very much a Photoshop style tool and a competitor for that but really nothing like Lightroom at all.

If you want an o/s competitor for Lightroom you should look at the (perhaps more technical) darktable or the (very much simpler) LightZone. Neither of these are intended as LR clones but are more similar.

No, we don't want that ! Well, you don't seem to want that. I don't know what motivates it really - certainly there's no need to defend LR, as it has plenty of vocal support here.

But rather than just discredit me, lets stick with the argument (if there's actually any argument) and tell me what I have saying about LR that is so wrong, miss-informed and that needs qualification before I say it. You can quote anything I've said - you'll hardly find any criticism of LR - I can assure you that I am more than happy to be corrected on anything I have been saying.

I find the real thing - Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 5 - very intuitive. All that it lacks are lens presets. I use it most of the time. DxO is very good especially if you are after near automated conversion. Being a disorganised sort of a person, I could never see the point of Lightroom, but ACR itself is also not bad, except it is a bit too fiddly for my liking. RawTherapee is a tweakers dream

John, I'm not sure that just 'having a look' would qualify you to pass comment on LR.

Its good to see a range of options being laid out. I don't really understand the apparent resentment expressed here of the various comments I have made about LR. No, I'm not speaking as a LR user, and have never claimed to be. But I speak as someone with an interest in the process of RAW conversion and image management generally.

What I feel needs some balancing is the often heard crys we get like .. 'do it all in LR!' - 'click here, click there in LR - Job Done' -'easy in LR'.... etc etc.

Now, I'm not trying to say these comments are not accurate in the experience of those people - but when its part of a wider comparison and suggestions of what to try, I think its worth mentioning that LR is a complex, multi-leveled and technically sophisticated product. Thats why there are so many huge books on it as opposed to 'mini-guides'.

Thats' all I'm saying, as well as defining its scope in terms of what it does - thats clear to see, and I think needs to be pointed out when considering comparisons with other options.

It depends what I meant by "having a look", which wasn't just a casual glance looking at the box.....

I wasn't making any comparisons - I was saying Lightroom is far more than just "a RAW converter with cataloguing added"

Silkypix gives truer colours than ACR8 in CS6 but ACR isn't far off the mark and it's MUCH superior to anything else for highlight recovery, by at least a stop and I value that a lot in a RAW converter. By anything else, I mean the ones I've tried - Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 5, Dxo Optics Pro 8, all recent versions of ACR. I briefly tried Capture One but that was a complete joke with the K-30, colours totally out of whack - all green on one image, purple on another, a shame as it was good on my K100D.

I tried Lightroom 4 a while back but hated it, dog slow and tried to organise me - fat chance.

That, of course is true. Although I sometimes wonder how it does it when RawDigger shows that a particular RAW file highlights are well and truly clipped

Both Silkypix and RawTherapee are very strong in their Highlight correction abilities in my experience (don't panic - I have used both of them quite a bit) In fact quite a number of the Silkypix Highlight correction sliders are provided in PDCU which is a nice free bonus.

In RawTherapee I recently had a shot of a person that had strong side-lighting burning out the left arm and left leg and shoe - a glaring white - totally gone. Activating RawTherapee's 'High Quality' Highlight Correction tab , I chose 'Colour Propagation' from the dropdown as the processing method, and after it did its stuff (which can take up to 15 seconds to complete all the processing steps and redraw the preview), there I had it - fantasically reconstructed texture and colour in the clothing where none apparently existed beore! You wouldn't know it had been blown at all.

I've been able to acheve similar things in PDCU using the 'Saturation or Brightness' slider on the Highlight Tab. Admittedly its probably not as effective as what I've seen in RawTherapee, but it makes a very good stab at recovering colour on these hotspots.

Hi Nigel, just think you should be upfront, for those who are unaware you aren't an authority on lightroom. Your confidently expressed opinions could give the impression that you have a more than vague understanding of its pros and cons

I'm not after any argument at all so I'll not post what I had originally written, and I'll leave it at that

Oh come on, lets have it! This forum's been dull over the summer and needs some spicing up

But be fair - I've never claimed to be an 'authority' on LR, and have never hidden my actual experience. What I have done is try and offer some balance to the discussions. I'm very glad that this thread has offered up a range of good quality 'opinion' and knowledge on what's available.

I ask you again - why don't you quote those things I've said about LR that you consider wrong or misleading? I'll gladly retract anything I've said that is misleading or not factual.

I remember that you recommended in another thread that I should look at Rawdigger. I did and discovered that some image highlights were indeed clipped in the RAW, even though ACR seemed to have recovered them unclipped.

I "think" that Rawdigger shows the truth. ACR seems to be able to model levels in a clipped channel from data in an unclipped channel and appear to recover unclipped highlights. While this seemingly works well, I "think" it could result in a colour shift in the recovered highlight - though it might not be noticeable.

Andrew

A good test is tree branches against blown or nearly blown sky. Many RAW processors fail here, as in this 1:1 crop.




ACR copes with this situation admirably.