GovtLawyer
10th of July 2005 (Sun), 21:57
I took a RAW photo from my XT, which was a keeper, and one which I knew I had to do some processing on. I post processed it in Raw Shooter Essentials, Adobe Photoshop Elements Camera Raw 3.1, Canon Raw which is bundled with ZoomBrowser, and Canon DPP. After a very unscientific trail, I found that I liked the image better after the Adobe RAW, but I do not believe the test was a worthwhile one, for the following reasons:
First, each program is fundamentally different in the suggested workflow as well as the actual controls. They differ in the way they deal with the camera settings and the way they are applied or ignored, saved, etc. They differ in the ease of saving selections, saving the final product, and the way they apply settings to other photos. While I may like the WB control better in one, I assume a tweak of WB in each should provide exactly the same results.
I found each one to have considerable pluses and minuses. Raw Shooter Essentials is a crazy mix of ease of use, powerful controls, and unintuitive controls. How do you exit the program?
In the final analysis, I preferred the finished product I got from the Adobe Camera RAW, but I'm not sure it could not have been identically produced the same in the other programs. Shouldn't I have been able to get the identical finished product in each program, only employing different means of getting there?
In short, after using each program, I came up with four different photos, and I was unable to apply any scientific means of comparing them or reproducing them in each program. Each photo was pleasing to my eye, but there were certainly some differences. Each conversion was merely a process of me tweaking different controls, and saying to myself, "that looks nice" and none of the photos looked like the other ones. For example, the WB was slightly different in each photo, yet looked pleasing in each. It is almost as if I got to the final product, in each case, by accident. A little of this, a little of that! Each looked OK, but when compared after the fact, they had slightly different tones or contrast, yet each looked "correct."
Can anyone suggest a test which would require a RAW conversion in each program, in which the end result should be known or realized before hand, and would be expected to be the same regardless of which program was used? If I could try that test, than the answer would be that they all do exactly the same thing, and the question would be which one got me there the easiest.
Hope this makes sense.
First, each program is fundamentally different in the suggested workflow as well as the actual controls. They differ in the way they deal with the camera settings and the way they are applied or ignored, saved, etc. They differ in the ease of saving selections, saving the final product, and the way they apply settings to other photos. While I may like the WB control better in one, I assume a tweak of WB in each should provide exactly the same results.
I found each one to have considerable pluses and minuses. Raw Shooter Essentials is a crazy mix of ease of use, powerful controls, and unintuitive controls. How do you exit the program?
In the final analysis, I preferred the finished product I got from the Adobe Camera RAW, but I'm not sure it could not have been identically produced the same in the other programs. Shouldn't I have been able to get the identical finished product in each program, only employing different means of getting there?
In short, after using each program, I came up with four different photos, and I was unable to apply any scientific means of comparing them or reproducing them in each program. Each photo was pleasing to my eye, but there were certainly some differences. Each conversion was merely a process of me tweaking different controls, and saying to myself, "that looks nice" and none of the photos looked like the other ones. For example, the WB was slightly different in each photo, yet looked pleasing in each. It is almost as if I got to the final product, in each case, by accident. A little of this, a little of that! Each looked OK, but when compared after the fact, they had slightly different tones or contrast, yet each looked "correct."
Can anyone suggest a test which would require a RAW conversion in each program, in which the end result should be known or realized before hand, and would be expected to be the same regardless of which program was used? If I could try that test, than the answer would be that they all do exactly the same thing, and the question would be which one got me there the easiest.
Hope this makes sense.