DxO PhotoLab vs Lightroom vs Capture One – which is best for RAW files?
This comparison is an update to one first published in 2013 and which has proved to be one of the most popular articles on Life after Photoshop, so here it is again, updated for 2020.
Many of the differences between DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom and Capture One are self-evident and to do with the organisational and cataloguing tools, cloud sync capabilities (or lack of them) and so on. I’ll get these out of the way pretty quickly.
• Read more: Lightroom vs Capture One: which is best all round – for organising, workflow, processing and editing?
• Download trial versions of DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom and Capture One here
What this comparison is mostly about is just how good each one of them is at processing RAW images, and to test this out I’m going to use compare the RAW image processing of files from a series different cameras, including a Canon EOS 6D Mark II, Sony A6000, Nikon Z 6 and Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II.
There are no Fujifilm cameras in this comparison. DxO’s RAW processing engine is not compatible with Fujifilm’s X-Trans sensor layout. If you have a Fujifilm camera, you probably have to cross PhotoLab off the list straight away – though it does support some non-X-Trans models, like the GFX 100 and X-T100.
There are two versions of Lightroom, but they both use the same Camera Raw processing engine with the same editing tools. I will use Lightroom Classic for this comparison, but Lightroom CC (or Adobe Camera Raw) will give exactly the same results.
Browsing and organising
This is not the main point of this comparison, but let’s get this out of the way first. Lightroom and Capture One are all-in-one cataloging and non-destructive editing tools, PhotoLab is not. PhotoLab does have basic search and album tools, but its main organisational system is folders. It is not a digital asset management system in the way that Lightroom and Capture One are, but should be thought of as a powerful non-destructive processor and editor with browsing tools.
• Capture One offers the greatest choice of workflows
Cloud sync
Lightroom is the only one of the three programs here that offers cloud synchronisation and a mobile editing/capture app that works seamlessly with your desktop software. Lightroom Classic can sync images up to a point, whereas Lightroom CC is built for cloud-based photography. It means paying extra for renting the online storage space needed, but there it is.
• Lightroom is the only one to offer cloud sync and editing
1. Dynamic range and highlight recovery
One of the big reasons for shooting RAW files over JPEGs is the ability to recover blown highlights and bring up dense shadow detail. All three of these programs offer shadow and highlight recovery tools, but Capture One’s High Dynamic Range tools are probably the simplest and most obvious to use, though Lightroom’s shadow and highlight recovery is straightforward and effective too. PhotoLab complicates things with Exposure Compensation and Smart Lighting tools which interact to automatically optimise the image’s tonal range, but it’s not always clear what the program is doing and how to affect it manually. There are also manual Selective Tone adjusters for manual control but it’s not clear either how these interact with the other two. PhotoLab’s shadow and highlight recover is effective, but feels very complicated compared to the others.
The results are interesting. Testing all three programs across a series of RAW files I found there was little difference in the amount of highlight detail each could recover, when pushed, but that images looked quite different afterwards.
Capture One was the most convincing. Its highlight roll-off isn’t always the best – the transition from blown detail to recoverable detail – in sky tones and clouds, for example, but it preserves midtone and shadow clarity brilliantly.
Lightroom has – perhaps – a slightly nicer highlight roll-off and does keep midtones and shadows contrasty even when you use the Highlights and Whites sliders at quite high settings, but it can’t quite match Capture One’s ‘bite’.
PhotoLab proves quite hard work. Capture One and Lightroom have Whites as well as Highlights sliders, but in PhotoLab you have an overlap between the (automatic) Smart Lighting options and the (manual) Selective Tone adjustments, but you might need both, but whichever you use, once you’ve recovered highlight detail it leaves midtones and shadows looking somewhat flattened. No doubt you could get to the kind of sparkling clarity offered by Capture One and Lightroom, but it’s going to take a little more work. PhotoLab does offer a nice highlight roll-off without the color shifts the others can create, but the cost to the rest of the image rendering is perhaps too high.
All three programs are equally effective, but Capture One is best at recovering highlights without compromising midtone ‘punch’ and contrast.
2. Detail rendition
All RAW converters are not the same. Some seem much better than others at demosaicing the sensor data, and there are definitely differences in the crispness of the fine detail, noise control and artefact suppression. A lot will depend on how you juggle the sharpening and noise reduction controls (see the next section on noise control). I have tested these programs with their default settings and then, where necessary, experimented with the sharpening and noise reduction to see if that makes a difference.
I used to see quite noticeable differences in the fine detail rendition of these three programs, but they seemed to have evened up. I would still put Capture One first for outright fine detail ‘bite’, with PhotoLab a close second – but it does depend on the camera, and PhotoLab looked a little softer than the others with Sony A6000 and Canon EOS 6D Mark II files. By ‘softer’ I mean it lacked a little micro contrast and definition. I suspect the detail and clarity is there, but not brought out by default.
There’s not much here to separate Capture One and Lightroom, except that Capture One use has more ‘bite’ and definition in the fine detail. You probably wouldn’t notice this unless you zoomed in to 100% or beyond, but if you’re using a high-resolution display you might sense it even when an image is filling the frame.
Is it just different levels of default sharpening? I don’t think it is. More sharpening brings more noise, so you would expect Capture One to have more noise for that argument to hold true. It doesn’t – see the next section.
All three programs are similar for detail rendition, but Capture One sometimes has a slight edge.
3. Noise control
When you shoot RAW you can control the trade-off between detail and noise reduction at high ISO settings – a choice you don’t get with in-camera JPEGs. But not all RAW processors are equal for noise reduction. In particular, DxO PhotoLab offers two modes: a regular ‘fast’ noise reduction process and, in the PhotoLab Elite edition, a slower more processor-intensive PRIME noise reduction option which takes a couple of minutes to complete when you export an image.
This is where differences between these programs start to become apparent. Even at low ISO settings, it’s possible to see a noticeable marble-like noise pattern in Lightroom’s images. It may be faint, but it becomes more prominent with heavy image manipulation.
Capture One is creamy-smooth by comparison, without sacrificing any fine, textural detail. PhotoLab’s default RAW processing produces very little noise, too.
At higher ISO settings, Capture One and Lightroom start to show similar levels of noise with some RAW files, and while both offer luminance noise reduction sliders, both start to compromise fine detail and produce a ‘watercolor’ effect if pushed too far.
PhotoLab produces a similar level of noise at high ISO setting with a crisp, tight noise pattern, but the much slower PRIME process produced a level of noise reduction that the others just can’t approach. It’s in a class of its own – but you only get it with the Elite edition and even then only when you process a TIFF or JPEG image.
• PhotoLab 4 introduces a new DeepPRIME processing tool even more sophisticated and effective than DxO PRIME. This comparison is based around DxO PRIME output. DeepPRIME’s results are better still.
Making comparisons across a number of RAW files, I’d say that PhotoLab’s PRIME mode is unequalled but that its regular noise reduction is no better than Capture One’s – and Capture One does offer a nice balance between detail and noise. With Lightroom you’re fighting a constant running battle between the sharpening controls and the luminance noise slider to try to control its very strong base noise level without losing too much fine, textural detail.
PhotoLab’s PRIME denoise is the best, but Capture One offers a fast and effective balance of noise and detail rendition. Lightroom’s baseline noise level is disappointing and can be difficult to manage.
4. White balance
Different RAW processors handle white balance in remarkably different ways. This article shows just how different they can be. All three can deliver any white balance you want, but if you want to turn it into a science and type in absolute temperature and tint values, they won’t all respond the same way.
All three programs produced very similar ‘As Shot’ white balance with three test RAW files, and similar ‘daylight’ renditions too, though all three looked a little warm to my eyes when using their own presets.
Of the three, only PhotoLab gives the rendering you would expect from typing in manual temperature and tint values. Capture One, in particular, displays some very odd figures for ‘correct’ white balance settings. The results are fine, but the numbers look as if they’re being used for in-software correction and don’t represent what you might expect to see in real life.
Capture One also seems to show a bit of a shift towards green/cyan in blue skies which is quite subtle and which you might not notice or care about, but it is noticeable in some shots compared to the same images in the other programs.
PhotoLab’s white balance settings are the most reliable.
5. Color rendition
Color rendition is a very subjective thing. I haven’t run any calibration tests on these programs, and the level of color control each one offers makes this kind of comparison somewhat irrelevant, since you can arguably make the color what you like anyway. So I’ve started with the default color rendering you get ‘out of the box’ and how easy or difficult it is to tweak this to your own tastes.
PhotoLab’s default profile looks very neutral, but can also look a little ‘flat’. There are different presets to choose from and you might want to experiment with a few of them. Because of the way PhotoLab applies its Smart Lighting effect, these profiles also auto-adjust the dynamic range contrast and brightness, though you can change the settings later.
Lightroom’s color rendition became much richer and more natural when Adobe switched the default setting from the old, very flat Adobe Standard, to the newer Adobe Color. There are many more profiles to choose from to, both for black and white and color, and they can give you great results straight out of the box. You can use the Auto button to apply auto corrections too, and the transformations can be dramatic, though for my taste they often make images look over-light and over-saturated.
Capture One does not offer a choice of profiles like Adobes, though it does simulate Fujifilm’s Film Simulations for Fujifilm RAF files. Its auto corrections, however, are the best, giving good shadow and highlight recovery but retaining strong and punchy midtones and very crisp shadow detail – and without pushing the saturation too high.
All three programs produce similar results out of the box, but Capture One has a little more ‘punch’ especially after dynamic range adjustments. Lightroom offers a choice of profiles, PhotoLab can look a little flat without further editing.
6. Lens corrections
Lens corrections have now become a standard – and welcome – feature in RAW processing software. No lens is perfect, and the longer the zoom range and the more aggressive the pricing, the more aberrations you’re likely to see. A number of newer lenses I’ve seen and tested have clearly been designed for digital correction since they’re not really usable without it. So the question is, how well each of these programs corrects the three main lens bugbears: distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting. There is a fourth: edge softness. Only one of the programs tackles that too.
Capture One is potentially the weakest here, not because it’s corrections are less effective, but because it doesn’t support less common or ‘amateur’ lenses. I own a Sigma 8-16mm ultra-wide lens in Nikon fit but Capture One only has a correction profile for the Canon version, which is annoying. It can still apply it, but I have to do it manually, since the software won’t automatically apply it from the image EXIF data. However, Capture One does offer exceptional chromatic aberration removal. If the automatic lens correction profile doesn’t fix it, it has a manual chromatic aberration analysis tool which can fix even the worst fringing.
Lightroom supports a wider range of lenses, its corrections are just as good as Capture One’s, and its chromatic aberration removal option is almost as effective – and as simple as clicking a checkbox.
Lens corrections are DxO’s speciality, and PhotoLab goes further than the other two by including edge softness correction in its profiles. I take this to mean selective sharpening towards the edge of the frame that’s tuned for each lens, but it’s still very effective, and can make very average lenses look very good.
PhotoLab is king for lens corrections, but the margin is small and the others are good too.
7. Geometric/perspective corrections
Converging verticals are real nuisance in travel and architectural photography, and you can get horizontal convergence too and sometimes both. It’s really useful to be able to correct this in software these days, but how effective is it and how long does it take?
DxO specialises in optical corrections, so it’s a bit disappointing that you have to pay extra to get DxO ViewPoint to make any perspective corrections in PhotoLab. Once it’s installed, ViewPoint integrates seamlessly, however, and works extremely well – it can even fix wideangle volumetric distortion and create tilt-shift blur effects.
But for sheer speed, Lightroom can’t be beaten. It offers precise manual perspective corrections, but also a series of buttons (menu options in Lightroom CC) for automatically correcting vertical convergence, horizontal convergence or both, and nine times out of ten it does it perfectly.
Capture One has perspective correction tools built in, but they have to be applied manually – and sometimes strongly converging ‘verticals’ still don’t come out vertical even after adjustments. For most purposes, though, it’s as good as the others.
Capture One does have another interesting property. It will respect the camera crop of an image, but with wideangle shots it can often ‘see’ more image outside of this, and you can extend the crop borders to use it. I’ve never quite got to the bottom of this technically, but it does mean that some wideangle lenses are even wider than you thought, and that your camera captures more megapixels than it technically has. Very odd.
Lightroom is fastest for perspective corrections. PhotoLab is more precise but you have to buy the DxO ViewPoint add-on.
8. Local adjustments
Now that today’s non-destructive RAW processing tools also offer local adjustments, we need programs like Photoshop less and less. Lightroom, Capture One and PhotoLab all offer local adjustment tools, but they work in very different ways. This comparison is partly about the results, and partly about the whole editing workflow and how efficient and effective it is.
Lightroom is, perhaps surprisingly, the most primitive. You can make local adjustments using linear and radial gradients and a brush tool and eraser – and the latter have a useful Auto Mask mode. But Lightroom’s local adjustment tools offer only a subset of the full toolset – it’s enough, but you can’t use curves, for example, or absolute white balance settings (only relative values). The Auto Masking is effective but can often leave visible edge artefacts, and while the linear and radial filters offer color and luminance masking, it’s less useful than you might expect because it depends very much on having the ‘right’ subject – it’s an issue with the basic principle, not with Lightroom.
Capture One is much more powerful. It uses an internal adjustment layer system to make each adjustment easily identifiable – you can also name the layers. Each layer has its own editable mask. Capture One offers the same linear, radial and brush masking tools as Lightroom and the same auto masking and luminosity/color range masking. Capture One’s auto masking is equally effective and there is a Refine Mask panel for improving edge masking, which delivers much better results. The real clincher is that Capture One’s adjustment layers all offer the full range of editing adjustments (barring the basic color rendering profile).
PhotoLab runs Capture One very close. The local adjustment tools are quite different, based around the same trio of linear, radial and manual brush masks, but adding in the powerful control point adjustments first seen in the Nik plug-ins. These take a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve become fluent in how they work, the offer a level of masking and editing control – and speed – that the others don’t quite have.
The joint winners here are Capture One and PhotoLab. It’s going to come down to the one you prefer and which gels most effectively with the way you see and edit images.
Conclusions
Annoyingly, none of these programs is perfect, and it’s not easy to say which one is best even if they are being compared solely as RAW processing and editing tools.
For me, the winner is Capture One, for its combination of fine detail, low noise, its ability to recover shadows and highlights without ‘flattening’ the image and its all-round clarity and vibrance. On top of that, its layer-based system for local adjustments is powerful and intuitive and backed up with sophisticated and controllable masking tools.
PhotoLab is a close second, but let down for me by its somewhat flat tonal rendering – images often seem to need a little work to bring them to life – and the overlap of its Smart Lighting and Selective Tone tools, which still tend to squash the midtones if you do any serious highlight recovery. The local adjustment tools are really good, though, even if the adjustments are presented separately to the regular ‘global’ tools.
- DxO PhotoLab 9 review
- More DxO PhotoLab articles
- DxO Nik Collection review
- DxO FilmPack review
- DxO PureRAW review
Lightroom wins on value and the efficiency of its interface, but it’s let down by its distinctly coarse underlying noise pattern. That’s not a problem at low ISO settings but proves increasingly difficult to combat at higher ISOs. And while Lightroom’s local adjustments do get incremental improvements now and again, you only get a subset of the full range of tools, and its system of masks and ‘pins’ is less intuitive than Capture One’s layers.
- More Lightroom articles
- How to get the Lightroom/Adobe Photography Plans
- Should you swap from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom?
Comparing all these factors, I would say that for RAW processing alone, Capture One comes out on top. PhotoLab offers the best optical corrections, but brings a more painstaking approach. Lightroom is fast and efficient, but disappointingly noisy and a notch below the other two.
Would love to see the same comparison with Aperture Raw conversion.
Good point, Dick. I’ll have a look at this.
Excuse my English, it’s not my native language.. I Hope you understand some of the text under 🙂
First example: I disagree. I’m using LAB color space, so I’m sorry if they are hard to understand. Clouds in LR is A0 and B0, they are therefore neutral in the white area. I do agree it’s too cyan in rest of the sky. It’s possible a draw at that point, but; greenery are more realistic (A-15 B30) in Lightroom, C1 probably got too much yellow vs green. C1 have more options to tune WB, so I guess it wins in the end.
Second example: I somewhat agree with you. Although LR have apparent “depth” in cloud, it can’t compare with C1 and DxO in this case. Look at C1s details and color separation in the bricks. DxO managed to get more details than any other of competitors did out of the RAW file, but not “wildly” more than C1. Guess I perfer image from C1 in this example as well.
Third example. I disagree that “gutless” is bad after import, if thats what you mean. If it’s after edit and export, I would put my money in C1, without a doubt. I tried this once; Export .tiff 8 bit aRGB and re-import before edit. Edit RAW and the .tiff with same values before export to .jpeg sRGB 8 bit. Ensure you’re sitting before comparing, in all of my tests, .tiff’s do better than the RAWs in LR. This is certainly strange since LR’s colorspace is linear (ProPhotoRGB). Nevertheless, in ex.3 – C1 did beat the competitors by a mile in terms of colors and contrast.
I currently have all CC applications and take advantage of LR instead of Bridge. I’ve bought, aquired and made over 1000 presets for LR, so it’s though to throw those away now. LR do have a more appealing interface and easier workflow than other competitors – and it actually import from Photoshop when I’m done editing there. OTOH, I don’t suggest people should stick with “one” because the “second” might cost some work and grunts. Go with the best option to make workflow easier and faster with greater results.
Because you posted these images – I might actually consider changing RAW processor. I’m having color issues with LR and do most of my work in PS, that slows down my workflow – and I don’t like that.
Regards,
Aleksander
Thanks, Aleksander. I will go back and look at those results again. Don’t forget that all these programs can be downloaded as fully working trial versions to help you decide.
No problem. I’m already trying C1 vs LR5. The separation of colors and the good contrast is just amazing in C1, but I still can’t decide since LR works great with PS and with all of my presets/plugins. C1 also seem to apply a heavy-handed noise reduction even when NR is off. (300-500% magnification, smudging)
In the process of leaving Adobe as my sole photo platform, I am busily going through the learning curve with Optics Pro 9 for my RAW processing (I have gotten into the habit of shooting only in RAW). There are some features in the Adobe RAW platform I miss, but I am liking the results I am getting with the Optics Pro 9 – more so as I get used to how it works.
I switched from Lightroom to Aperture after wrestling with massive Lightroom performance issues (and Adobe refusing to diagnose/fix the issue). The raw conversion is noticeably better in Aperture but still not as good as DxO. So I use Aperture to catalogue, keyword and bulk process but jump to DxO when I really need the quality. Now loving that my processing tools can keep up with me!
My feelings exactly, Simon. Aperture runs so much quicker than Lightroom when you’re managing/viewing files in bulk, and I prefer the RAW conversions too.
Have you taken a look at PhotoNinja? I’m finding that it does a very good job processing my raw files from Nikon, Olympus and Sony cameras. Does some special things with highlights that show up particularly well with landscape photos.
Thanks, I’ll take a look when I get the chance.
If you want to make a few raw files available (via DropBox?), I’d be happy to help with a first-run analysis.
Thanks, Dave. Following your tip, though, I downloaded it myself to try it out. It does look interesting, and I’ll email PictureCode for a trial code.
Es cierto que algunos softwares destrozan a Lightroom en el procesamiento de Raws o en la nitidez… Lo dificil es adoptarlos, hacerlos parte de nuestro workflow, ya que lightroom y Aperture realmente golean en facilidad de uso y catalogado…
Un saludo! Gracias por el análisis y por la profundidad.
Thanks for the comparison, it’s exactly what I wanted to know at the moment. I’m still wondering how the local correction tools (brushes, masks etc.) compare in terms of quality, versatility and speed. I’ve got the impression that Lightroom shines in that department.
Yes, I think I’d go with Lightroom in that respect, but Capture One Pro 7 is good too.
I realized how valuable ease of use was when I tried the free Raw Therapee. It’s very technical and quite unstable but I was very impressed with its demozaicing power. You can even choose between multiple methods and adjust the parameters.
I like the usability of LightRoom but am also growing more and more annoyed with it’s performance issues. I am currently working on a 2012 Mac Pro Retina with an i7 quad core and 8 megs of ram and feel like I am still on a Windows vista machine while working in LightRoom. Do either of these alternatives offer performance upgrades compared to LR. I might be switching back to Aperture soon.
I know exactly what you mean, but I’m surprised you’ve got issues with a quad-core i7 and 8GB RAM. How big is your library? Mine has around 45,000 images and runs at a tolerable speed, and that’s just on a 2013 MB Pro with a dual-core i5 processor (8GB RAM).
Do you have an HD or an SSD? I found an SSD made a big difference – Lightroom now starts in 4-5 seconds and renders thumbnails much more quickly.
It’s the speed factor that makes me prefer Aperture. Lightroom has the best editing tools by some margin, but Aperture is much faster at rendering and scrolling through thumbnails and I think it’s organisational structure is much better too.
DxO Optics Pro is no substitute for Lightroom because it only has a simple browser and no proper cataloguing tools. My Capture One Library isn’t large enough to make a proper speed comparison with Lightroom, I’m afraid.
Note, if you are using referenced files, then you could import all your folders in C1 Pro in just a few clicks and let it grind away, then you could do a proper speed comparison.
I have the 45k image referenced folder library that both Aperture, LR and C1 Pro hit. I’ve separated the Aperture library (the database) from the images. The library is on an SSD and the images are on a Thunderbolt-attached 4TB spinning drive. Having the library on the SSD made a HUGE, HUGE performance improvement.
To be honest my decision has not become easier. One is excellent for organizing and editing but is potentially slow (LR), one is good for high technical quality but not much else (DxO), one is good or very good at everything but is more expensive (COP). Am I exaggerating or seeing things too black-and-white?
I have a dilemma. I have about 65000 photos in iPhoto and individual directories that I want to consolidate. For the last several years, I have used DxO Optics Pro to process my “important” images and have certainly ended up with a disjointed image collection where originals and processed images end up in a folder or contained in an iPhoto Library. I have Aperture and Lightroom and see the advantages of each but have not made the move to either one because I can’t decide on an efficient workflow. Do I import to Lightroom/Aperture first then “roundtrip” the images to/from DxO? I’d like to be able to keep the DxO sidecar files too for future changes.
Sorry, Mike, but you can’t round-trip to DxO from any application, Aperture and Lightroom included. I think the only approach that would work for you would be to carry out your DxO conversions on your RAW files and then import them into Aperture (or Lightroom). It’s a little messy, but I’ve not found a better way to do it. What I would recommend, though, if you use Aperture, is to ‘reference’ the images in their original location rather than importing the masters into the library. If you do this, you’ll know where your master RAW files are stored if you want to carry out any further DxO conversions on them in the future.
Thank you for the advice. I think a referenced library would be easiest at this point.
Not a perfect round-trip, but I’ve settled on using the Aperture plugin Catapult (http://brushedpixel.com). With that I can use Aperture for managing my library and for quick conversions and edits, but then get selected master RAW files straight to DxO for conversion. Catapult manages that step and then pulls the DxO edited TIFF back to the original stack in Aperture. It’s a bit too clumsy for using with more than the handful of keepers, but it works well once you get the hand of the workflow.
Great article right on the spot !
I have adopted CaptureOne Pro as my raw processor of choice 2 years ago for all the reasons you perfectly describe. There is no way back.
I like DXO Optics very much, but I find the renditions have a reddish cast hard to get rid off later on. CaptureOne delivers the best results right from the start and requires minimal processing.
If you find camera raw renders blues contaminated with cyan (skies), wait until you compare what happens to the reds and oranges … it flattens them to a dull brown !
I also invite you to compare the effect of the vignetting tool. While CaptureOne applies the vignette as a luminosity mask, darkening or lightening the borders of the image in the same way an optical lens will do, delivering very natural results, camera raw seems to apply a black or white mask, blending the image to black or white !!!! what were they thinking !!!
Finally … I’d like to encourage you and your readers to try (and review) the some free open source alternatives
LIGHTZONE (http://lightzoneproject.org) is now open source and being developed again. Some unique tools and approach you won’t find anywhere else … and the ability to apply each tool as an adjustment layer with true selections and masks … as many times as needed … with blending modes. Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux !
DARKTABLE (http://www.darktable.org) is absolutely impressive. This is a huge project involving hundreds of developers all over the world, they work hard and they work fast. It is the most powerful raw processor available today, and has the potential to compete even with Photoshop in most areas. It is the only software that has delivered renditions equivalent or better than CaptureOne, I’m still learning it. Available for MacOS and Linux (not for Windows)
It think these two open source options may line up with the spirit of this website, showing and promoting the great software alternatives available today, delivering much superior results than the established standards.
I have no ties with any of the softwares I mentioned. I hope I’ve been helpful. Thanks again.
Thanks, Fernando. I remember Lightzone from years ago and I had no idea it had resurfaced. I have not heard of Darktable, but I will take a look.
On a whole I believe that none of the “alternative” raw converters can match the camera makers version. Put aside ACR and concentrate on your chosen examples…
DxO was my first experience at using a 3rd party raw converter way back when the 10D was released. It produced detail ACR could never find. Sadly since then, I find the use of raw converters unable to recover disaster shots to be of limited use. DxO can’t do that any better than ACR does.
The supposed reason for using RAW in the first place is to give you enough headroom to recover a disaster shot. By disaster I don’t mean a totally ruined photo, just one where the dynamic range is greater than the camera can convert to a jpeg.
Capture on has always surprised me in how it removes noise and does a few adjustments (all beneficial) out of the box but even this excellent program can’t process a Nikon Raw image as well as Nikon’s own Capture software. I just wish I could use the Nikon raw processor and Capture one together.
Being a Nikon shooter and having one lone Canon 5D camera gives me the opportunity to experience the best (and worst) of both worlds. I don’t thing any of the 3rd party processors have yet reached to level of quality Canon and Nikon raw converters provide.
Faced with that knowledge, I’d ask then which of the ‘Image processors’ can produce the best results from a Camera maker’s RAW conversion. If any of the programs reviewed here are intended to replace Photoshop.
Every single (working Pro) photographer I know has Photoshop on their computer and knows how to get good results from it. If alternative software is going to be used, surely it needs to be assessed here (of all places) as an alternative to Photoshop, not a companion to it?
I’m not sure I understand all of your points, but it does sound to me as if you are very happy with the software you’re using and don’t see the benefit in alternatives. Nikon’s and Canon’s own software does produce conversions which are entirely faithful to the camera makers’ intended renditions, and if that’s your priority, there seems no need to look further. There is much more to a RAW converter, though, than just dynamic range recovery.
I agree entirely with you Rod but if you buy a Nikon or any other brand because you like the skin tones or whatever other feature you liked enough to buy it, why then would you want to endanger that by using a less than faithful Raw converter?
Having said that, there is plenty that Capture one offers in the way of colour identification that (supposedly) allows you to fix incorrect colours.
I recently used Capture one Pro to evaluate a set of camera brands intending the most suitable to be used for reproduction of paintings. This is an area that taxes a sensor’s ability to produce exact or extremely close colour match. I found inconsistencies in all three cameras but provided I used the Makers RAW converter, the colours were more accurate than any of the after market Raw converters I purchased (and updated/upgraded) over the past 5 years. Capture One is one such program. I dont think the time has come yet when any of the third party converters are faithful to a sensor. That was the point I was making.
Hello,
I use X-rite Colorchecker Passport for color correction within Lightroom 5. Have used it since version 3. I’ve grown used to creating the color profiles and am happy to take that extra steps. Is Capture One – color checker friendly for creating the color profiles and applying it to multiple shots at a time? In Lightroom I select a range of photos and apply the color profile
Thank you for this in-depth comparison Ron. I’ve still yet to oust my PhotoShop CS 6.0 final overall output image quality that I obtain using curves, Neat Image noise removal, and High-Pass selective sharpening. I find the original ACR conversion settings to just be the tip of the iceberg, and I do tweak them a bit to fit my needs. Do you think I would benefit from some of the pre-capture settings like highlight recovery from Capture One, and then bringing the image into CS6?
Thanks!
I like Capture One’s RAW conversions myself, but it does mean adding an extra step (and expense!) to your workflow. I know other people find Adobe Camera Raw perfectly good, so there’s clearly a strong element of personal opinion and preference. I’d suggest downloading the Capture One 30-day trial to try it out: http://www.phaseone.com/en/Downloads.aspx
for some reason it autocompleted my wrong website on previous comment! it is daveblinder.com
Hi !
I tested all those 3 and the amazing PhotoNinja, too.
My first concern about RAW quality conversion is color.
And on this point, LightRoom is the last one.
I see ppl spending hours and hundred bucks on color tools, profiles and such with LR. I tried to go this way : LR still worst than others. There is always a lack of “punch”. And not related to contrast/saturation.
DxO is better. And Capture One/PhotoNinja are first on this point.
I use a little more color adjustment on PhotoNinja. Capture One is spot-on most of the time.
I love my Olympus colors. And apart Olympus Viewer, only Capture One and PhotoNinja nail them 😉
Second point : dynamic recovery. LR was first for years…it is no more. They are all good, but with some subtleties. Like Color recovery in highlights from PNinja.
Last point (to me) : clarity/sharpness. On this point, PhotoNinja and Capture One seems to have an edge from RAW demosaicing. When you get a sharper “base”, you can extract more details from it. Final result tell you they are just better on this point. You can try hard and even harder on LR or DxO, you will never reach what you get with C1 or PN by just moving two sliders.
Thanks for this article !
Thanks for a fantastic article.
As a Nikon user I agree with Ryadia that Capture NX does a great job with NEF’s. Sadly CNX2 is being retired for the, frankly useless, Capture NX D.
It’s time for Nikonians to find new software. I refuse to get ‘locked’ into Adobe’s Creative Cloud, so I think it’s between COP and DxO for me. Thank goodness we have trial versions.
Rod, this is a great review and has helped me with most of my decision making. To all the commenters in this thread, thank you as well for you helped with what was left.
I have Iridient, COP7, & LR5 and Aperture… I have to be honest, despite seeing the the advantages in almost anything but LR5 (BTW, I am a Fujiphile) I have grown quite used to, and perhaps spoiled by, the LR workflow and intuitive UI.
I have decided to jump in with both feet to COP7… I know it file management might pale in comparison, but I think I can live with that as I don’t have as many files as those chiming in here, and maybe by the time I do they will have grown that element of their product.
Thanks and well done all of you, you have done what most blogs strive to accomplish… you helped someone 🙂
Bradley
Yeah, I miss some of the of the conveniences of Lightroom but I’m liking the results I’m getting in Capture One Pro 7 Better. It really is just getting used to a new workspace. Every program has its flaw. Once you learn to get around it you forget it’s their. Overall I’m glad I switched from Lightroom to using COP 7. Really like the customer support through phase one also. They always address my problems. To be fair though I haven’t tried DxO or PhotoNinja.
One Cool feature but not necessary that Lightroom has now though is a new analytics plugin of some sort that shows in graphs which lens you use the most, which focal length, ISO ect, what settings you apply the most, ect. Don’t know how useful that would be but something I wish I had now. For now I’m sticking with COP.
Hi Rod,
Very interesting comparison!
I knew very little about Capture One but was familiar with DXO.
I originally used Aperture 3 but for some reason found it very slow & buggy on my Mac. Changed to Lightroom 3 & even though its a bit of CPU hog seemed to work better for me. Though I always thought that LR’s RAW processing looked a flat & lacking something. I have also noticed the clipped highlights on some images as shown here – the recovery could be a bit better.
I assumed that a software giant Adobe would be at the cutting edge of image editing, but it appears as though it’s days at the top are being seriously challenged.
Some food for thought there. I’ll need to explore DXO & C.O’s compatibility with Nik software, Topaz, PTGUI Pro which i use for my panos, & LR/Enfuse which I really like using to process my brackets. I’m assuming these other two won’t play well with CS6. I like the ability to round trip images between LR & CS.
Thanks for a great article!
Cheers, Vic.
Capture One and DxO Optics Pro come in trial versions so you could check them out quite easily. If you want to use plug-ins, though, you’re restricted to Lightroom and Aperture.
According to my personal experience the CaptureOne 7 perform the best. However it is worth to remember that they don’t treat all camera owners at the same serious way. Saying that I mean that input colour profiles for some cameras are very well made and the colour reproduction is very fine but for some less “proffesional” cameras they doing messy profiles, that doesnt perform quite well. Good example is processing of NEF files from my Nikon D700 – exelance in all aspec – bot on the other hand when I try to process RW2 file from my new toy – Lumix GX7 I see clearly that colour reproduction has nothing to do with real live! I think it is big misteake from Phase One side because since they decided to support some camera (eg lumix GX7) they should do homework as carefully as for big brothers like Nk D3 EOS 1d etc.
I agree. When it’s good, Capture One is very good indeed, but its camera profiles are pretty variable.
I”m shocked at the general ignorance about what a RAW converter should be used for: namely, converting raw data into usable images for processing. Unfortunately, these raw converters have over the years aquired so-called editing tools, mostly of the slider type, so as to encourage photographers to think of these programmes as image processors or editors, which they most definitely are not. Almost all the wizz tools and sliders in these programmes are vastly inferior and will destroy your much needed data at the point of conversion, if you are gullible enough to believe all the hype and sacrifice your data to such tools.
A raw converter is not the place to edit (i.e. to process) images, or to correct or to retouch them. The most powerful tool for that, by a very very long way, remains Photoshop. Not ACR, but Photoshop proper. The attraction of lightroom and other such software for photographers is that it seems to make a shorter learning curve possible – but by actually ruining your precious RAW data. Why the hell would anyone buy a hugely expensive camera and lens system only to throw all that capture data away BEFORE converting the file for processing and retouching?
The path of creating a sucessful photo is as follows: Capture – Raw conversion – Processing – Retouch – Output.
A RAW Converter, no mater how attractinve its sliders and options appear to be, is not the place to correct images. That is the job of an image processor, PhotoShop being only the most powerful version. Most of its tools for doing this were present way back in version 4 and are still thankfully available in the latest versions – though Adobe would have you beive its latest CS versions with new bells and wistles are an improvement; with a few exceptions they are not. There is no shortcut to quality images using silly, slider bars. A good understanding of colour theory and the superior tools still to be found within PS that allow you to use that knowledge and apply it in a consistant way is the best grounding by far. Yes, not many peope want to hear that, but its true nonetheless.
Of course, if you just want passable images, by all means use LR and etc. All you’ll achieve is a confusion of pathways through endless edits, which you will soon find inconsistant and unrepeatable, as each poorly understood modification subtracts from your data and has a knock-on effect to each sucessive destruction.
I have to say, RAW really is pissed on too much.
At the core, you should never demosaic until you export; demosaicing is a destructive process and removes information that is useful in photo-editing. BUT not all sensors and CFA’s are alike and if you don’t have native support for the new “formats” then you need to export into a “neutral” format.
Why does this matter?
The question is what data is removed or added rather than how the photos look.
If the raws remain untampered, can you adjust settings to acquire similar colors / contrast; for instance. Sliders also have the effect of imposing upper and lower limits which should be taken into account.
If the raws require exporting into a new format does using a different “conversion profile” offer similar characteristics that you desire.
Why does this matter?
What is the point of RAW if you’re just going to be treating it like a TIFF (16bit) or JPEG (8bit).
RAW provides data BEFORE any tampering, the RAW photos are just “black and white” images usually 14bit or 16bit; all the colour data is added after conversion which means that converting first adds in data-losses due to rounding or clipping, dependent on the demosaicing algorithm and the CFA weights.
I”m shocked at the general ignorance about what a RAW converter should be used for: namely, converting raw data into usable images for processing. Unfortunately, these raw converters have over the years aquired so-called editing tools, mostly of the slider type, so as to encourage photographers to think of these programmes as image processors or editors, which they most definitely are not. Almost all the wizz tools and sliders in these programmes are vastly inferior and will destroy your much needed data at the point of conversion, if you are gullible enough to believe all the hype and sacrifice your data to such tools.
A raw converter is not the place to edit (i.e. to process) images, or to correct or to retouch them. The most powerful tool for that, by a very very long way, remains Photoshop. Not ACR, but Photoshop proper. The attraction of lightroom and other such software for photographers is that it seems to make a shorter learning curve possible – but by actually ruining your precious RAW data. Why the hell would anyone buy a hugely expensive camera and lens system only to throw all that capture data away BEFORE converting the file for processing and retouching?
The path of creating a sucessful photo is as follows: Capture – Raw conversion – Processing – Retouch – Output.
Of course, if you just want passable images, by all means use LR and etc. All you’ll achieve is a confusion of pathways through endless edits, which you will soon find inconsistant and unrepeatable, as each poorly understood modification subtracts from your data and has a knock-on effect to each sucessive destruction.
!
Amen ! completely agree ( except I am NOT shocked! ). Unless high speed workflow on batches are Necessary, do NOT edit images in LR or any other raw image processor. Stick to PS CC and rely entirely on layer blending, masks, mage adjustments, and blend modes. Use Camera Raw almost never, and when employed stick the range -50:+50.
Rod, look here
Best photo editing software review comparison – RAW Converters Comparison
http://photo-typ.blogspot.com/2014/09/best-photo-editing-software-review.html
result looks completely different
Well, I read it Palo, and the author’s opinions don’t seem so very different to mine. That article uses different tests on different images and looks for different properties and includes a bunch of other apps I didn’t look at. Both are out of date, BTW, as the author’s note I’ve put at the top of my comparison points out.