Docking With A Smile

One thought on “Docking With A Smile”

1. Since adopting a workflow exclusively using RAW for my photography, I have relied on Capture One to process my pictures, with subsequent tweaks in Photoshop. Canon’s Digital Photography Professional software for RAW processing was pretty good when it comes to the processed results, but was far less intuitive to work with. Several products have since emerged of which I am trying out two at the current moment: LightZone and Adobe LightRoom. Both of them offer new, intuitive ways of RAW file-processing.

   Especially interesting is LightZone’s ability to process selectively, different areas of the same RAW file using principles of the Zone System. I still feel though that the rest of LightZone’s interface can be improved, together with its RAW processing speed.

   Adobe Lightroom’s interface does look very polished and refined (I am trying out the beta 4 release, due to expire on 28 Feb). Its ability to process selected regions of the image’s histogram makes it a very powerful tool. I am concerned with the final output quality that I can obtain from the RAW file though. To my naked eye, it seems that Capture One delivers a cleaner image compared to Lightroom. Capture One also seems process images at a quicker pace. I am hoping that there will be a try-out version of the full release of Lightroom eventually, so that I can make a better comparison.

   Here’s a rough comparison of the different processed RAW results from the different converters I have. Your mileage will vary depending on the settings that you tweak within the converters. I have tried to process for a similar look/exposure within each converter but must admit that the results are influenced by my differing familiarity with each of them:

   

   As it stands now, I will still be sticking with Capture One 🙂

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