Originally posted by robgo2 John,
I discovered RPP about 3 months ago and have been in love with it ever since. An important point to appreciate is that it is not intended to be a full featured image editing program, a la Lightroom and Capture One (and which I think Raw Therapee aspires to be as well). With RPP, you just try to get the best possible histogram for subsequent PP in Photoshop. In other words, the image is not nearly a finished product at the time of output. The developers make this point clearly on their webpage. (Think of RPP as producing an optimal negative from which to make a print.) But the file from RPP that you open in PS has more detail and tonal information than you can get from any other raw converter. (RPP's compressed exposure is a brilliant innovation that gives film-like roll-off of highlights and shadows.) But the user has to be willing and able to make all the proper adjustments in PS in order to get the best final results. I'm sorry to say that RT, when it works for me, does not really come close.
I realize that many photographers want to do all of their image editing within their raw conversion programs. I understand this desire from a workflow point of view, and it is the reason that RPP is not a raw converter for the masses. Nevertheless, it is the best raw converter that I have found, bar none.
Rob
Hello again,
I'm happy to hear you're enjoying RPP. And I felt the exact same way you do about it when I discovered it about 2.5 years ago. Mind you, there were many changes over the years with the software though for the most part, I think RPP's best feature is its simplicity.
Having said that, I never really gave-up on RPP per say given that it has never let me down. However... I've always found RPP's lack of chroma NR and inline filtering to be somewhat of a letdown since features such as these are best implemented in RAW(prior to demosaic). which means that I had to import my TIFF's into ACR prior to post processing, which was a bit of a pain at times. However... I still preferred using RPP as my main developer because there was no other solution that could render the level of detail that it provided.- or so I thought...
That as until I came across Raw Therapee's new demosaic engine dubbed(Amaze) which claimed to be better than any other RAW developer engine to date. Which I was skeptical given that I had past experience RPP, but.. I figured I'd give it a look just the same to see just what all the fuss was about. And that's when I saw for myself that the claims were true! - RT was visibly rendering better(more) detail than any other RAW developer I had ever used including RPP! And before I go sticking my foot in my mouth, I should state for the record that my tests were conducted about a year ago. And so there is always the possibility that RPP has been updated since then. However those were my findings at that time.
Whatever the case, RT has undergone several major updates since that day and in the process, some of which I must say turned-out to be rather intuitive. For example: on the RAW side of things, RT sports both input and output WideGamut color profiles. It also has an an HSV channel control panel that allows for parametric color control(ie. magenta cast removal) which is amazing for high ISO color shift corrections. Another very powerful feature, is referred too as an inline noise filter. Which allows noise patterns to be muted-out with very little impact on IQ. Then there is a Chroma NR filter that rivals ACR's legendary performance and finally a RAW white/black point controller that works in conjunction with the highlight reconstruction tool(which is second to the none the best I've ever seen). And of course, the most important feature of all, which is the Amaze demosaic engine, that comes with a false color suppression controller. And then my personal favorite, a post demosaic artifact noise reduction tool(phew) that helps eliminate for high ISO artifacts. All of which fall into a host of other nifty features that could easily fill an entire page. Though for the most part, make-up for a very powerful RAW deveoper solution.
Having said all that, I think what really stand-out with most of these functions is that they take place at the pre-processing stage rather than at the post-processing level, which allows for the processor to take full advantage of the overhead data that comes with RAW files - Anyways... I didn't intend to turn this into some technobabble lecture, but I couldn't come-up with a better way to share some of the highlights behind RT's functionality.
At any rate, unfortunately... I wasn't able to find the test images that were generated in my last comparison between RPP and RT. However I did find some RT preliminary test crops that were used to evaluate Raw Therapee's Amaze engine. And so I'll post those to help explain what I saw and perhaps, give you the opportunity to download the source file and compare them with your own RPP build.
The RAW file I used can be downloaded here:
http://216.18.212.226/PRODS/K5/FULLRES/K5hSLI00080_NR_0.DNG In this image, I focused on the thin horizontal lines inside the letters of Lager Beer title. This proves to be a challenge for most demosaic engines as traditional rendering seem to muddle detail in areas such as these. In this sample, I focused on the pattern definition of the red and visibility of the weave in the fabric. While taking note of the consistency of the neutral grey background to gauge overall grain quality. This evaluation helped establish the overall detail contrast in against the artifacts produced in oversharpening. And the final area that I found useful to evaluate was in the shadow quality(SEE: bottle cap) as well as the fine threads fraying from the pink fabric edge.
Well there you have it in a nutshell. This was the test method that caused me to give Raw Therapee a serious look over a year ago and I hope it proves useful to others as well. And since RAW developers are all subject to updates and improvements, I thought I'd post this to give you the opportunity to check for yourself if these results are still worth considering.
Hope this helps.
JohnB
PS. I forgot to mention this in my initial comment that Raw Therapee also produces slipstream negatives with Photoshop.