I've not seen anything which I considered a problem at iso 200, not under reasonable lighting conditions at least. If you posted up a shot or 3 of what you are seeing we might be able to comment on if this is as expected or if there is an obvious issue with your camera or the settings etc.

Fair enough Peter, in my inital post I made some points about the PCU4 program and made favourable comparisons to the most commonly used alternative. Smeggy doesn't believe I know what I'm talking about and wants to correct these things. I think this is useful if it opens up points made and expands the information about the functionality and workflow processes of the different options.

I have said what I think is reasonable in relation to the output possibilities of the progams, and others can consider that and judge on their own.

I don't believe we judge potential for a 'finished output' purely on range of functions and features alone. In this respect my main point was that ACR acts as the RAW conversion part of the process, and the user then has the option to 'open' the image into PS or Lightroom, or 'save' the adjusted RAW parameters in order to reopen in ACR and continue where you left off in future.

Considering that PCU4 does offer the option of outputting a JPEG or 16bit TIFF as well as providing computer implementation of the in camera custom parameters (which are designed to allow the output of a high quality JPEG from the camera, ie a 'finished output'), then my claim that PCU4 can produce a more finished output than ACR hardly appears unreasonable, and I think I could claim to know at least something of what I am talking about.

I'm not sure sure what features in ACR, Smeggy, you believe are more refined or advanced or extensive for the shadow or highlight adjustments, or specific colour control, but to look at the highlights alone, in PCU4 unider the Highlight Adjustment tab we find sliders to adjust the emphasis placed on restoring either saturation, hue or brightness details, and any mixture of these to differing degrees, depending on the requirements of the subject (eg you might want to retain brightness detail primarily in cloud highlights, but prefer Saturation details on highlighs in foliage or a flower petal).

I've referred to the Colour Fine Tune wheel before, but it very versatile and can either increase or decrease any colour individually or pull a colour towards it neighbouring tones to any fine degree, and the combinations or adjacent sliders on the wheel wheel provides fine tuning to any part of the colour spectrum in between.

I have a K7 and I'm aware that's its certainly not first choice for shooting at high ISOs, but I have always understood its low iso performance to be absolutely fine.

Just some extra info would be helpful :

What iso setting are you referring to specifically.

Is the noise the grain type, or colour patchy type (blue or yellow)

Is it confined to the darkest shadow areas, or in a fuller range of brightness ares?

Are you looking at a JPEG or RAW from the camera?

It is interesting David that you refer to the RAW file from the shootout as the 'original'. I made this point in the shootout thread to another poster who also referred to the 'original image', although this was actually referring to your own processed output from the RAW.

As I see it, it is misleading (confusing) to consider the RAW as an 'original'. This is to imply that it somehow represents a pure or unaltered protrayal of the scene as the eye saw it, or that it (on its own) reflects the vision and intention of the photographer. It is not either of these things, not at all! We both started the shootout with the exact same RAW file - so I would have equal claim to the 'original'.

Really, the RAW is simply the starting point, a collection of all the colour & detail data that the sensor was capable of recording. Any specific camera set parameters, such as WB, are not significant at all, as they are altered at the click of a mouse or pull on a slider at the converting stage, with no loss of quality. It doesn't matter what settings were made at the shooting stage.

It may be worth explaining that the WB setting of your image did create a dilemna, at least for someone who wasn't there. Your RAW setting for WB was in fact manual. Now how to interpret this? If it had been daylight I would have seen the blue as an obvious cast, and 'corrected' it. With the manual setting I made the judgement that you must have dialed in extra blue for creative effect, and therefore I also 'corrected it' !

And its worth remembering that the aim of the shootout was not to try and show which software could depict the scene as accurately in colour terms as the photographer says he saw it. Now that would have been pointless!!

Put it this way - I don't see the WB settings, or indeed any of the colour tones that are prevalent in the JPEG preview of a RAW file as being siginficant in influencing choices made during processing.

When processing and looking for quality colour tones in the image, the clouds nearest the horizon, illuminated by the sun off to the left, released plenty of warm tones under Sagelights vibrance sliders, more readily than blue, so I was satisfied that the sun had a degree of warm refection which had been suppressed by your WB setting.

I'm not sure of the value of an exact listing type approach of features, as each has different degrees of control and additional expanding options once you get into them. Lets not get into point scoring - I am happy for my claims to be put under the spotlight in the interests of greater awareness and helpfulness, about both alternatives.

There is one addtional key thing to understand - there are 2 (current)versions of ACR that people will have access to : 1 is for the full photoshop, and the other is for Photoshop Elements.

Smeggy is right to point out that there is some selective editing capability in ACR (such as the Grad filters and brushes) but this is mostly implemeted in the full PS version I understand. Elements users don't have the same range of this type of thing, its important to make that distinction.

That said, ACR is designed to carry out the initial RAW conversion and and key adjustments and then open the image into PS (or Lightroom, as I understand LR used ACR also?) for additional editing towards the 'finished output' in my words.

PCU4 is designed differently. It combines the purely RAW adjustment functions (Peter has listed a number above) with the software implementation of Pentax's 'in camera' edit parameters - eg: shadow / highlight corrections, Lens distortion / abberation / marginal lumination corrections, colour fine tuning (the wheel), and the Custom Image Parameters. These incluse all the presets (landscape / portrait / natural / vibrant etc etc, fine contrast controls, satutration etc.)

Now, these in camera controls are designed to produce a quality JPEG from the camera - not something that we would want to continue editing on a lot. Thay are designed to produce a more 'finished' output from the camera than a RAW, with user controlled edits applied to the image.

When implementing these controls through PCU4 we are therefore simply producing this more finished product on the computer - so my claim of it being able to produce a more finished output is related to this difference in the kind of features the between ACR and PCU4, and how the programs are set up to operate - ACR is designed primarily to convert a RAW and open into PS, PCU4 can be used for this alone, or with the additional 'in camera' features (which are designed to output a finished JPEG).

I think the key is in there above - however you have chosen to tone the image, in order to look natural, that is 'how nature could have rendered it', then there must be consistency in how the tones are spread across picture, and any colour cast as such much look like it has arisen from the principal source of light.

My feelings exactly How many times have you read yet another one of those articles you see in photography magazines - you know the ones I mean, like 'When the weather's packed in for yet another week on end, don't despair, you can always find great photo opportunities right on your own doorstep - what about some macro shots of that giant slug on your doorstep!'

Of course, its easy to think, yep, if only I could have been there, at time time of day with all my gear ready to go, I could have some great shots too. And you'd be right mostly!

Thanks for these new ideas on how to put software to the test. Well, I started all this (maybe more accurately 'it was all my fault'!), so I think its a good time to round it off.

I think we can mostly agree that in order to get any conclusive result on all the compared aspects of a photo, we need a more scientific, clearly defined and controlled test - I think more than we can achieve here.

There's been quite a polarization of opinion - one stream saying that mostly you could replicate the looks and qualities of a shot on any of the main professional editing tools we have.

The other stream saying that no, there will be certain aspects of an images toning, definition and other technical aspects that could only be achieved in a specific program or combination of programs. (I myself clearly fall into this camp).

What we can all agree on I think, is that this forum is probably not going to be the place to definitively demonstrate either. Thats not to say we shouldn't try and work through images on different software and see what is possible. Matthew from the PU team gave me an idea that has been used on ephotozine, where RAW files are put up for members to try their hand and compare results - this would be fun and informative here I'm sure, so I will look at launching something like this, and I hope to see some of you there as well.

I can say (and I'm sure David Storm would echo) that I very much appreciate the intense and detailed discussions, debates and critiques, both about the images and of the ideas behind the experiment. I hope that there has been at least some new thoughts or information on PP that has been useful to everyone who got involved.

Finally, my thanks to David for bravely putting his cracking image into the lions den, and thanks to all who voted and made critical comments on the processings. And of course, thanks for all those votes....now how many so far, what? only 48? oh come on people!..........

No 1! Never seen anything quite like it, really dramatic. I'm guessing you must have been on a bridge? I think its perfect composition-wise, shows there was real puff in all directions. Just need to try and reduce the blue colour noise.

No 4's next for me - really beautiful colours.

100% absolutely! I can agree wholeheartedly with this evaluation. It has been said that I have not been listening to what people have been saying, but I have I promise. I have learned (speaking for myself now only :wink that we need these definitions and specific limitations for a measurable comparison. An EV setting test might be taking it too far - artifacts generated by this would surely be picked up when evaluating the image as a whole.

But these are the sort of things that should be done in a laboratory. this is a photographers forum, populated with human beings (and the odd Royal), and we want to have fun as well! The human factor is critical in my view.

We should allow some creative input to flow through, or else there won't be any real love or nurturing of the image. But I believe that by asking people to factor out those more subjective areas we can enjoy the image, the process, and get results!