LR2.5, LR3 beta and Capture One 5 comparison

OK, so I have been trialling LR3 beta along side LR2.5 and a few days ago, upgraded Capture One 4 to 5.
As I had nothing to do today except watch the Grand Prix qualifying, clean the pond pump filter and lounge about the place, I decided to compare all three.

I wanted an image that ran from black clipping to white clipping with as wide a variation of colour as possible. As it turned out, I'm too lazy to set that up so I walked to the end of my driveway, pointed the camera down the road and pressed go.

The resulting image was processed in each using auto exposure and auto adjustment. For sharpening I used the Landscape preset in both LR versions and let C1 5 pick it's own with auto adjustment, not that it matters much given the subject.

Anyway, I'm not going to draw any conclusions beyond what I've thought for some time. The whole exercise has only reinforced my preference which I won't state as it doesn't matter what I think.

Here you go, click for full size image (12MB each ish), oddly LR3 makes slightly larger JPEGs from the same file than LR2.5 and C1 do.

Small size images were all scaled down in PS using bicubic sharper.

Lightroom 2.5

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C1's colours look more natural, particularly the greens of the trees etc. but at this size it's difficult to see detail etc.
Mind you i don't know the exact colour of the trees out side your house as I'm not currently stalking you

NinetyEight wrote in post #8933338
but at this size it's difficult to see detail etc

You can click the images for unscaled, uncropped images.

HankScorpio wrote in post #8933378
You can click the images for unscaled, uncropped images.

Doh!

One thing I've just noticed is that LR3 handles the purple fringing where the bare branches touch the sky much better than LR2.5. Nowhere near as good as C1 though.

C1 has always been good at 'purple fringing'/C A - it just seems to automatically correct it.

Still think the C1 image looks better to my eyes/taste though - mind you with a bit of playing the colours could be corrected in LR quite easily, but C1 usually gets it right 'out-of-the-box' IMO, particularly with skin-tones and grass/trees etc.

I still use LR (2.5) for most work though but use C1 or DPP for certain shots that these programs seem to handle better/easier.

But this is all subjective and everyone has there own preferences...

I've also been testing the same 3 packages side by side. I also preferred C1's renditions out of the box but with the availability of dead simple DNG/ICC camera profile creators you can get better results than any generic profile and your results can be consistent with any software package.

I can get the nearly the same result from LR or C1 using my own profile so then I can choose between them based on workflow, interface, speed, and stability rather than image output. Of course noise and CA and a few other details from the RAW conversion will still be different but the colours and saturation would be the same.

On the left is ACR Camera Neutral and on the right is my X-rite profile in the afternoon sun after a white balance:

LR3 really does provide interesting sharpening compared to 2.5. Not sure which I like better, but LR3 does seems to bring out more detail though less contrast on the edges.

From the OP, the C1's Greens look a little desaturated and/or a bit too yellow.

The greens are yellow, it's autumn.

I think the difference of the green between C1 and LR3 is quite noticable around the lower right grassy area.