One of the most valuable apps for photo editing available on the App Store is Snapseed. Created by Nik Software, the simple app utilizes the iPad’s expansive screen and its touch capabilities. The app offers 11 different editing categories, ranging from selective adjust to organic frames. Within each category, a set of options is available to allow for an extensive editing suite being available to both professionals and amateurs.

Color Splash is one of the simplest and most fun apps currently available for the iPad. The app automatically imports all photos as black and white, and simply allows users to paint colors back onto part of the picture using your finger as a brush. A host of brushes, along with undo buttons, are available within the app. Exporting the photo to Facebook, a wireless printer, or into MMS or email is a breeze.

100 Cameras in 1, a recent addition to the iPad app store, offers a unique take upon the iPhone camera. A picture taken from an iPad camera or imported onto the iPad is subjected to one of many “camera” options. After choosing a filter, a set of overlays is available. The contrast of the image can be adjusted, as can the brightness. Several more advanced effects, such as adding a vignette, can be done easily with the app. The app further supports exporting pictures to social media websites with the touch of a button. This app accommodates photographers  in the same way   http://www.directstartv.com/ accommodates satellite TV viewers.

Photosync offers the most comprehensive and extensive set of editing tools available on the App store. Wireless options to transfer pictures are an absolute breeze, and the app allows for direct transfer from an iPhone to an iPad, further increasing its convenience. A host of editing features makes this app extremely well-rounded, and one of the best apps for those serious about entering the iPad photo-editing market with a comprehensive app with a slew of handy features.

Update: Jan.7 2011 with Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus

The review process

Most reviewers for magazines have the devices for a limited time only. They don’t have time to play and appreciate them, discover their strong and weak points or see how their familiy members interact with the the devices. They have deadlines, they may not even enjoy reviewing every piece of junk. In contrast, I personally own all the tablets in this review. How come? In addition to being a graphic artist and photographer, I’m also a software engineer – I write software for tablets. I have quite a few tablets around me, mainly for testing purposes. I know them. I take them home and let my wife and kids play with them.

I will not bore you with technical specs and performance charts; instead I’ll concentrate on real-world experiences.

Apple iPad 2

iPad 2 is, without a doubt, “the” Tablet. In fact, I could have made my job easier by declaring iPad the winner and be done with it. However, I’m not in the business of selling Apple merchandise, but in giving you short, honest reviews.

If I were to sum up Apple’s strategy, it would be – catering to the simple user’s needs, attention to detail and great marketing.

Construction

It’s a very robust device. The aluminium back stands out. On the sides it has a sleep/wake button, volume control and a lock/silent switch. It has one Home button on the front and a proprietary connector. Battery life is very good, although recharging is lengthy. The GPS is very good but the front/back cameras are not. Through the proprietary connector, the iPad 2 can access USB devices and can output HDMI, VGA or composite.

In your hand

At 1.3 pounds (600 g), iPad is rather heavy compared to other similar devices. It’s thin (0.34″ / 8.8 mm), but you definitely can’t hold it with one hand. It’s the kind of device that needs resting on a support.

Usage

Here comes Apple’s magic and appeal. The iPad 2 is (for the most part) extremely intuitive. Previously (with the first iPad), the only way you could close an application was by pressing the Home button, but now you can navigate through apps by dragging or pinching the screen. I gave it to my mother-in-law and she, with no previous experience with touch devices, was instantly able to use it and play with the mapping app.

AppStore

iPad is the ultimate consumerist device

The iPad is the ultimate consumer device and a publisher’s dream. You can buy movies, music, books, newspapers, magazines, apps and games for it. In fact, the process is made so simple that it encourages impulse buying (with no refund option) – you click “Buy” and it’s done! Apps and games in the store also make frequent use of “In-App Purchases” to buy virtual goods or unlock features.

The store is very family-friendly, you won’t find really objectionable materials there. With the new iOS 5 you can also place restrictions of all kinds on the tablet, so if you give it to your child you can be sure they don’t start buying stuff or delete apps. You can even disable YouTube.

All apps in the store are tested and they have strict guidelines so you can be reasonably sure they perform as expected.

Connectivity

This is an area that disappointed me. You can’t transfer a file via Bluetooth from your smartphone. You cannot transfer files from your computer unless you go through iTunes and even that is a pain (iTunes is so bad it feels like it wasn’t made by Apple). So if you’re with a friend, you can’t transfer a photo from their laptop simply via USB. You can’t even just copy a photo from your computer, you have to sync the photo library. Also, because each app lives in isolation, many operations are simply impossible (like transfer an Excel doc via Wi-Fi and open it with the Numbers app). Some nice features such as AirPlay or iCloud work only with other Apple devices.

The video formats it supports are rather restrictive; you’re fine as long as you only purchase videos through iTunes, but loading your own will require conversions in many cases. There are some third-party video players but their performance is pretty bad.

Even though you can connect a USB drive to the iPad (via the optional Camera Connection Kit), you can’t just copy a file and open it with an app without jumping though many hoops. Overall, it’s a frustrating experience when you try to use it for something productive.

For designers and photographers

There are some nice little tools for artists, mainly sketching apps, but nothing mind-blowing. Adobe Ideas is nice. Some apps are better suited for iPhones – DOF calculators, sun calculators and other small tools. Personally I used the iPad when shooting on location. I would transfer the RAWs on it using the camera connection kit and show them  to the client on the screen (it shows just the JPEG preview of RAW files, doesn’t actually decode it, so you can’t zoom too much to check focus and so on). There’s no real tethering app.

Price

An iPad can cost anywhere from $520 for 16 Gb Wi-Fi only to $850 for the 64 Gb white model with WiFi+3G. See at the end of the article for price comparisons.

Conclusion

As I wrote above, iPad is the ultimate consumerist entertainment device and a status symbol. It’s perfect for someone who doesn’t know or care about computers. If you set restrictions properly, you can safely give it to your kid. It’s not so great for doing productive work on it.

Blackberry Playbook

I received the Playbook as a gift from RIM. Somehow it grew on me despite its flaws.

Construction

Playbook is very small, just 7.6″ x 5.1″ (194 mm x 130 mm), a bit thicker (0.4″ / 10 mm) and lighter (0.9 lb / 425 g) than the iPad. The back has a fine rubberized texture that really feels nice. Side buttons are sleep/wake, volume and play/pause. In addition to the proprietary connector is has a micro-HDMI socket. The built-in GPS is the weakest of all tablets I’ve tested. It has the highest-resolution back camera in this review.

The processor is very fast and the graphic performance is also very good, overall at least on par with the iPad 2.

The battery doesn’t last as much (about 7 hours compared to 9 for iPad) but it recharges much faster.

In your hand

Because of its small size, you can easily hold it on one hand and use the other to tap on the screen. Unlike the iPad, you can fit it in a pocket.

Usage

The Playbook is almost as easy to use as the iPad, and in some regards even better. There’s no Home button, everything you do is with gestures. Its Tablet OS operating system has true multitasking and it’s a joy to switch back and forth through apps, for example to copy something from an app and paste it somewhere else. It recognizes more video formats, unfortunately it’s a bit small for watching movies (though they look very good and you can output to a HDTV).

Thanks to its smart gestures (the area outside the screen is touch-sensitive as well), the Playbook can work nicely without the system bar present in Android Honeycomb devices, allowing you to use the full screen effectively. This is a really nice advantage when compared to other 7″ tablets.

The software it comes with is a mixed bag. On one hand, it comes with a full Office suite. On the other hand it doesn’t have an email client (they are promising email for version 2.0 of WebOS)

AppWorld

Playbook is a nice companion for Blackberry phone owners

There are some nice apps and games in the AppWorld store but nowhere near as many as for the iPad. The store itself doesn’t feel as much polished. As a publisher I was frustrated by the lack of control I have over the apps, such as giving discount coupons. There are a number of big games available though. Sadly, no Angry Birds.

Blackberry promises that the Playbook will be able to run Android apps in 2012 with the release of Tablet OS 2.0.

Connectivity

The Playbook can pair with a Blackberry phone via Bluetooth, giving access to email, contacts, calendar and files on the phone. Playbook can connect via USB and it’s much more open than the iPad in this regard; you feel as you are more in control of the device. It can also connect with any phones via Bluetooth and you can add not just a Bluetooth keyboard, but even a Bluetooth mouse! I had some problems with the Blackberry Desktop software though.

For designers and photographers

Nothing really worth mentioning.

Price

RIM has massively discounted the Playbook, it’s currently $250 to $400. See at the end of the article for price comparisons.

Conclusion

Personally I use it more for writing documents, view PDF files and sync my Torch phone rather than to play. For Blackberry phone owners, the Playbook is a nice companion, not so much for anyone else.

Kindle Fire

Construction

Kindle Fire is about the same size as the Playbook. In fact, at a glance they look almost identical. The size and weight differences are so small it’s not worth mentioning.

Amazon’s Fire does not include cameras, GPS or Bluetooth and has just one micro-USB socket with no way to output HDMI. The CPU/GPU, although on paper is the same as with Playbook here feels underpowered; it also has less RAM and just 8 Gb of storage space. Battery life is similar to Playbook (7 hours).

In your hand

Same notes as with Playbook: very comfortable to hold and carry around.

Usage

The problem with Kindle Fire is that its real-world usage is severely restricted.

Kindle Fire runs an older version of Android. Its sole purpose seems to be to encourage you to buy stuff from Amazon – books, magazine, music, apps…

The operation has a carousel-like interface at the core, but I’m not a big fan of it. Downloading again the stuff you purchased previously from “the cloud” is nice, but the fact that there are no hardware controls for sound level is irritating. Overall it feels dumbed-down and definitely not as polished as the iPad or Playbook.

Amazon Appstore

The tablet doesn’t have access to the Android Marketplace (though you’ll find most apps here) and the store itself is not available outside US, so if you ask a friend to bring you a Kindle from the States to Europe or Asia, there might be problems in accessing the content.

Like Apple’s AppStore, the store is designed for impulse buying. In fact, it’s been reported that Amazon.com loses money ($2 – $10) on each unit they sell, so basically the tablet’s sole reason to exist is to facilitate buying of digital goods.

Connectivity

No Bluetooth, no HDMI.

For designers and photographers

Apart from the usual sketch apps, it’s too small for any work.

Price

$199!

Conclusion

At $200, Kindle Fire looks like an attractive choice. Amazon’s marketing team even managed to make a comparison chart to present it as a revolutionary device and to show that it’s better than an iPad. My problem with Kindle Fire is that its real-world usage is severely restricted. On the other hand, you can’t expect to get a $600 tablet for $200 and there’s huge demand for simple and cheap tablets. Many people don’t need a tablet for anything more than browsing the web, check the social networks and maybe read an ebook and Kindle Fire fulfills their needs at an unbeatable price.

Samsung Galaxy Tab family – 7 plus, 8.9 and 10.1

I’ll be reviewing the Tab 8.9 and touch upon its siblings, the new affordable 7″ tablet and the bigger brother 10.1

Construction

To be honest, when I unwrapped the Galaxy Tab 8.9, I was expecting a relatively cheap-looking piece of plastic. Instead, the Tab feels surprisingly well-built. Yes, it’s plastic, but it feels nice. It’s  a hairline thinner than the iPad (8.6 mm) and ligher, just (0.99 lb / 447 g). The 7 plus has the same dimensions as Playbook and Kindle Fire.

Without a doubt, Samsung copied shamelessly from Apple. The USB cable / charger looks the same, the proprietary connector looks the same (yet not compatible with Apple); even the USB connection kit and the HDMI output accessories (which cost extra) look much like Apple’s. I’m not saying this to criticize or anything, I’m just stating something obvious when you have both systems.

The 1280×800 screen resolution means higher density compared to the iPad (170 dpi vs. 132 dpi), so you get the same smooth, finely-detailed look of Playbook and Kinde Fire but on a bigger screen. One thing I noted is that the colors appear too saturated, especially the reds. I’m sure this is not a problem for most users but as a designer it bothers me a little.

The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus has a 1024×600 resolution, but because of the system bar at the bottom you have just 552 effective pixels. Not a big deal, as Kindle Fire is the same, but with a smaller device every pixel counts.

In your hand

Somehow I prefer the 8.9 size (230 x 160 mm) over the 7″ or 10″ alternatives. It’s easier to hold it than an iPad and at the same time it’s easier to operate than a 7″.

Usage

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is the only tablet I actually use for design

Just like Motorola Xoom and many other tablets, Samsung Galaxy Tab uses Google’s Android 3 Honeycomb OS.

Honeycomb is not nearly as polished in terms of UI compared to iOS or  RIM’s Blackberry Tablet OS. In a way it’s more like a traditional OS like Windows. It’s more powerful and customizable but not as intuitive and at times tedious.

To their credit, Samsung have added some nice touches (marketed as TouchWiz) – some useful widgets that live in the system bar, a nicer UI, a good email program, a “Social Hub” and so on.

Marketplace

By default it comes with Google’s Android Marketplace as well as Samsung’s own store, but you can install for example the Amazon’s web store. Unlike iPad and Playbook, you can install apps from outside stores (you just need to enable the option in Settings). The apps in the Market are not curated or tested, so buyer beware.

Overall there are many nice apps available for Honeycomb.

On the downside, at the time of writing, many games were not compatible with it, but I assume they are being ported.

There’s no built-in parent control system, but there are a number of third-party “Lock” apps to password-protect apps.

Connectivity

After you install the necessary drivers, you can browse the contents of the tablet file system at will via USB. Connecting via Bluetooth is not a problem. You are in complete control.

All tablets come as Wifi+3G or Wifi only.

For designers and photographers

From simple DOF calculators to Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro, from image viewers to RAW processors. There are tethering / remote control apps for Canon and Nikon. Adobe has a whole suite of creative apps, including Photoshop Touch, which is amazing. There are video players that can play more “exotic” formats such as MKV.

Price

Depending on the model (16 Gb / 32 Gb; Wi-Fi / 3G), a Galaxy Tab 8.9″/10″ costs between $490 and $650. Galaxy Tab 7″ may cost as little as $300 (if you get it from T-Mobile).

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 has become my favorite tablet. It’s the only one that I can actually use in my design workflow. I take it with me, meet with clients and collaborate using Adobe’s tools (Kuler, Proto, Ideas, Debut, Photoshop Touch). I’d hesitate to give it to my mother or my son though.

Asus Transformer Prime

The original Transformer was lacking in build quality but the new Transformer Prime seems much better. I haven’t had the time to test it enough to make an objective review, but I’ll update this article as soon as possible.

Motorola Xoom, Toshiba Thrive, Lenovo IdeaPad

I lumped all these together. To save time, I’ll start with the conclusion: none of these tablets impressed me.

They all use the same Honeycomb OS with minor tweaks. They have roughly the same 10.1″ size and the same screen resolution – 1280 x 800 pixels, are all pretty thick (up to 6.62″ / 16.8 mm – double the Galaxy Tab) and heavy (1.7 lb / 0.75 Kb). Battery life is lower – 5-6 hours. Apart from being $100 cheaper, there’s really nothing to distinguish them and I cannot recommend them.

What to Buy

The decision process pretty much boils down to three questions:

• Who is it for?
• What will you/they use it for?
• How much money do you have?

If the tablet is for someone not proficient with computers, especially elderly persons and children, nothing beats the iPad. Samsung Galaxy Tab may be a better choice for artists (although they tend to buy Apple stuff) and for those who want full control over their device. Blackberry owners and businesses may like a Playbook as a companion and will appreciate its security options. Students will probably appreciate the Kindle Fire as an advanced e-Reader.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1/8.9 is the most versatile of the bunch. You can use it for photo/design, documents, navigation, games and watching movies in any format. Next comes the iPad 2, best for games, presentations via projectors and e-magazines. Playbook is fine for documents and movies but doesn’t shine in any area. Kindle Fire is basically for buying stuff from the Amazon.com, mainly books, music and maybe some games and the occasional movie.

At $199, Kindle Fire is unbeatable as an “entry-level” tablet. As I’m writing this, Playbook is $270 on Amazon.com, a huge discount from $500. At $270 it’s a great bang for the buck. At $500 it’s overpriced, even if they add Android support later. Samsung Galaxy Tab is about $450 for the 16 Gb Wi-Fi only version, which is pretty attractive for its features.

The problem

You see, Windows actually has a nice, modern, extensible imaging framework called Windows Imaging Component (WIC). In Windows 7, this framework allows new image formats to be seamlessly integrated in the OS, meaning that they’ll have thumbnails decoded, that you’ll be able to search for embedded metadata and that any WIC-enabled application will be able to open those files.

This system makes a lot of sense and it would have the potential to obsolete all/most thumbnail explorers, from ACDSee to XNView. Think about it: why should I launch a whole big application just to see what’s in a PSD file? Sure, image organizers usually have additional image processing abilities, like batch rename or watermarking, but wouldn’t you like to have these seamlessly integrated in the system? I know I would.

Sadly, the company who had the most to offer in this area not only did not add these features, they actually removed the little functionality they had. You see, Adobe CS1 and CS2 had support for PSD and AI images in Explorer. They removed this in CS3, pushing their own Bridge as a replacement. I have not met a single person who actually likes using Bridge. Opinions range from “incredibly bad” to “useless”. Even in CS5, as a response to the numerous complains regarding speed, they created a “mini-Bridge” inside every app, while users try to hack in old versions of psicon.dll and aiicon.dll (which, by the way, don’t work on 64 bit systems).

Adobe also created a DNG codec that was supposed to provide support for DNG files in Explorer, but it was so buggy it proved a complete fiasco (it was added in May 2008 in the Labs and never updated).

The Solution

With Adobe and Microsoft pointing fingers and each  expecting the other to fix things, I found the solution from a small developer.

Axel Rietschin has created a program called FastPictureViewer Codec Pack that adds support for all major image formats (JPEG 2000, DirectDraw Surface, Targa, EXR&HDR), PSD, DNG as well as more than 300 RAW formats.

What’s nice about his codec pack is that it integrates so nicely in Windows that you can preview any RAW file, check its metadata, search for keywords and more, right from Explorer. It’s not supposed to replace Lightroom, but it does replace Bridge for me. Also, in the 4 months I’ve been using it, I haven’t noticed any bugs.

There are only two downsides to this program: it does not support vector images like AI or EPS and it’s not free. Still, at $15 I think it’s a great deal. This is not a paid review by the way, I wasn’t even contacted by the author and I paid my own copy, but sometimes we should give credit where it’s due and recognize quality.

Alternatives

An alternative to FastPictureViewer Codec Pack might be Mystic Thumbs. It has the advantage of supporting vector files (requires Ghostscript) but I had reliability issues with it. I’m not sure whether it’s my Windows 7 x64 or if Mystic Thumbs doesn’t play nice with the FPV Codec Pack, but it just didn’t work right for me. YMMV. Mystic Thumbs is $29.

PSD and DNG Codecs from Ardfry Imaging support PSD+EPS and DNG files and cost $20 each. I haven’t tried them so I can’t comment on quality.

If you wonder why it took so long, it’s because with each version, I take the time to become familiar with each application and explore its strengths and weaknesses. I spent in total three weeks with the programs and the test images.

Table of contents

1. The lineup
2. Test images
3. Interface
4. Features
5. Image Quality
   • Portraits
   • Nature
   • Vibrancy
   • Enhancements
   • Edge sharpness
   • Detail extraction
   • Noise reduction
   • Optical corrections
6. Speed
7. Pricing
8. Conclusion

1. The lineup

For this test I selected:

• Aperture 3 – Apple;
• Bibble 5 Pro – Bibble Labs;
• Capture One 5 Pro – Phase One;
• DXO Optics Pro 6 – DXO Labs;
• Photoshop Lightroom 3 – Adobe.

2. Test images

One of the biggest challenges for this review was finding RAW images in my collection that would be readable in all five programs. My workflow is DNG-based but unfortunately DxO 6 and Bibble 5 don’t support DNG. Some other RAWs from compact cameras were not readable by DxO and Capture One. Also, I wanted flawed, challenging images. I believe that test images should not be perfect – how would I be able to check chromatic aberrations if the image was taken with a razor-sharp, $2000 lens? Or how could I evaluate highlight recovery for a perfectly-exposed scene? Or noise at low ISO?

So if you look at the images in the test and wonder why they’re not so good – it’s because I selected them to be like that.

3. Interface

All programs in this review have remarkably similar interfaces: dark/gray color schemes, tabs/stacks and sliders. By looking at their previous version, one can see how they’ve copied one another. Still, it’s easy to spot the leaders and the followers, the ones who employed usability tests vs. the ones designed just by the development team.

Aperture 3

As with any Apple software, Aperture 3 is polished to perfection. It manages to combine Library/DAM functionality with editing in a seamless way. For example, you can process any image while in browse mode. Also unique is the Light Table mode, an idea so simple yet so effective, which lets you arrange images – including variations of the same image – freely on a virtual table, drag them around, pan and zoom. You can also edit images while in Light Table mode.

Different adjustments (called ‘bricks’) can be added or removed and – very interestingly – multiple instances can be added on the same image. The usefulness of this feature is a bit dubious except for some very specific cases and it may confuse newbies since some bricks, like the Noise, are not added by default. Once added, a brick can also be enabled or disabled. Overall, I found this way overly convoluted.

Aperture’s Full Screen mode is very slick but I found it a bit impractical with the panels on top of the image. It’s a matter of taste.

Bibble 5

Bibble is more of a mixed bag. They changed the UI completely from version 4 and copied many concepts from their competitors, but it’s still a bit confusing as buttons are all over the place. Also, many of its features are very crude, like the image management or the print features.

Some simple operations are also needlessly cumbersome, like cropping or rotating and others are unintuitive.

Capture One 5

I absolutely love Capture One’s interface. It’s polished, simple and logical. It’s very easy to find the tools and the tabs are arranged in the proper order – from capture to details. It also doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It does not have a ton of half-baked features, but it’s focused on capturing and processing photos with ease. Just the Focus Check feature is a great little productivity tool, and its Tethered shooting feature is second to none.

DxO 6

DXO suffers from the same problems as Bibble – a rather confusing interface, with options arranged not very intuitively; for example, why is White Balance (a basic setting) placed after DXO Lighting (an advanced feature)? Still, in terms of speed and stability, it’s a huge improvement over DxO5.

Importing and exporting are cumbersome. First you must drag-and-drop files from the file system to a project, edit them and then drag-and-drop files from the project to the output queue. It just feels tedious for me, without enabling any advanced behaviour.

Whenever you want to change the color balance or correct distortions, the program will go in before/after mode, which can be frustrating.

The interface also feels slow, the slowest of all programs I’ve tried. It was also the only program that complained of a security feature in Windows (Data Execution Prevention – DEP), which leads me to believe that it has a serious problem in its codebase.

Lightroom 3

Lightroom has a simple and intuitive interface with parts that can be easily shown or hidden easily. You can easily customize the interface to fit your own workflow, turn panels off, even customize the “nameplate” to your company name – a nice touch for when you’re working with a client.

Like Aperture, it aims to be a full DAM but after 4 years it still hasn’t convinced me. Unlike Aperture, you have to jump from Library to Develop all the time as some operations are available in both modes, while others in just one of them.

On the other hand, its unlimited History, Snapshots, Presets and Variations are top-notch.

4. Features

Each program has its strengths and weaknesses. Initially I wanted to have a simple table with checks and crosses for the features, but then I realized it would not be fair to compare Lightroom’s print features with Bibble’s, so I opted for a color-coded comparison.

The topics are:

• DAM features: features like face recognition or geotagging, ease of use, reliability, etc.;
• Print: Print options, proofing, preview and overall versatility;
• Slideshow: whether or not it supports slideshows and what features it has;
• Web: Export to web sites such as Picasa or Flickr;
• DNG: If it has DNG support;
• Cameras: number of supported cameras;
• Lens corrections: number and quality of lens corrections, including chromatic aberrations, distortions, fringing and perspective corrections;
• Local adjustments: brushes, gradients and layers support.
• Tethering: basic and advanced support;
• OS: Operating Systems support – Win/Mac/Linux.
• Plugins: whether or not it supports image processing plugins and how well they’re integrated.

In terms of DAM features, Aperture 3 is king, with its seamless features, faces and geotagging support, light table and easy filtering. Lightroom 3 is pretty good but nowhere near.

Lightroom 3 and Aperture 3 are almost equal when it comes to printing, making slideshows or exporting to the web, these are relatively small features anyway so their absence in the other programs shouldn’t be a determining factor.

DNG and camera support is however a big factor. I have RAWs as old as the concept itself and I want my files to be readable. Here Lightroom 3 shines, with over 350 models recognized. Its next competitor, Bibble, has about 180 models, whereas DxO comes in last with about 100 models. It’s true that all new & popular models are supported so not all users may care, but in some cases, wide support is a must.

DxO 6 is the unchallenged master in optical corrections – after all, they specialize in lens benchmarking. If you have a supported camera and lens, the precise corrections are great, and even if the lens is not recognized, you can still apply most of the corrections – sharpness falloff, light falloff, distortion corrections, even fish-eye corrections. The most impressive feature would be the keystoning, which lets you easily correct perspective distortions – a must-have for architectural shots (not everyone has a tilt-shift lens). It also has a built-in color rendering for emulating different film looks and more. Lightroom 3 comes close, but it can’t correct sharpness falloff and, while it can correct perspective, it’s not as powerful as DxO. Aperture comes in last, with no distortion corrections, only chromatic ones.

Bibble 5 takes the number one spot when it comes to local adjustments. Whereas Aperture has many brushes and Lightroom some brushes and gradients, Bibble comes with full brushes and layers, offering limitless adjustments. You can set parts of the image to have different WB settings or any other setting. It’s simply unmatched. At the oppositite end, Capture One and DxO offer only dust removal brushes.

Tethering is Capture One‘s territory. You can sense that this is a tool intended for studio photographers as everything is refined to help professionals.

Bibble 5 is the only program available for Windows, Mac and Linux, while Aperture is Mac-only.

Finally, Bibble 5 offers nicely-integrated plugins, followed by Aperture, whereas Lightroom has more limited support, something I’m sure it’ll cost them in the future.

5. Image Quality

5.1. Portraits

The photo below was imported in each program, using “As Shot” WB and leaving all settings to default.

You can see that all programs nailed the colors pretty much OK with only Capture One 5 bringing more blue in the shadows. The differences were mainly in brightness and contrast, indicating different default curves. Personally, I find Aperture‘s version as the best and Bibble the worst.

5.2. Nature

This is a study in green. Again, settings and White Balance are left to defaults, letting the programs show their interpretation. It’s hard to say which one is better; Capture One 5 produces the image most similar to the original JPEG; Aperture 3 and Lightroom 3 look very similar, DxO’s is the brightest one, while Bibble’s looks a bit dull (I tried all Look Profiles). Interestingly, I needed to apply a +0.5 EV adjustment in Lightroom to match the exposures obtained by the others by default.

5.3. Vibrancy

Here we go one step further, allowing adjustments of brightness, contrast and vibrancy/saturation to achieve the best look.

The original image is quite dull due to atmospheric haze and time of day. All programs do a good job at improving the colors, but I think Lightroom 3 does it best, followed by Aperture 3and Bibble 5 . DxO 6 gets the plane right but not such a nice sky, while Capture One 5 , having no Vibrancy but only Saturation, misses it. I could further improve the colors by using the various color editors to selectively alter hue/saturation/brightness, but I wanted to use only global changes.

Note how in all images I was able to remove the big ugly dust spot visible in the uncorrected top left image.

5.4. Enhancements

We’re now going to try something more challenging.

In this test Aperture reveals a flaw: it can bring a lot of luminance detail from the highlight area but loses almost all color information. Capture One also exhibited a strange issue – its High Dynamic Range Highlights slider affected too much of the midtones in the cathedral, so I had to dial down. Bibble was able to extract the most highlight detail thanks to the Perfectly Clear feature but again got the midtones wrong. Good results from Lightroom and DxO.

5.5. Edge sharpness & surface smoothness

Here are some 1:1 crops:

Lightroom 3 produces a very clean image except for the ugly halo on the sky, which looks even worse if you look at the full image. Aperture 3 and Capture One 5 versions are very similar, very sharp but with some artifacts. Bibble 5 has probably the most balanced image in terms of sharpness vs. noise, demonstrating the superiority of its licensed Noise Ninja technology. DxO 6 gets the same halo as Lightroom and also some shadow noise in the blue channel.

5.6. Detail extraction

I can’t decide between Bibble 5 and Lightroom 3 on this image, they are both very good. Capture One still has the tendency of leaving speckles, this is something unnoticeable in a print, but with more and more images intended for screen, it may be a problem in some cases.

5.7. Noise reduction

The first image is a 6mm x 4mm detail area, shot at ISO3200. For reference I also shot a version at ISO100.

Here are the 1:1 crops:

All programs do a good job, although Lightroom 3 clearly produces the best image. I am surprised the Bibble 5 didn’t manage to do better. Capture One 5 produces an image a little too soft, while DxO 6 and Aperture 3 leave artifacts.

Now let’s try something more extreme:

The image above is a crop from a macro image. The area represented here is just 3mm x 2mm, shot at ISO 12800.

Lightroom 3 is really outstanding here, considering the unprocessed image. Bibble’s version is a bit too dark and, like the previous sample, it shows some speckles. Aperture 3 comes in last despite all my attempts to improve the quality.

5.8. Chromatic aberrations

All images can correct lateral chromatic aberrations with similar effectiveness, so I decided to test just purple fringing.

The image above was shot with an old lens that was not intended for digital sensors. As such, it tends to produce severe fringing on white foreground objects (the hand is also a little out of focus).

DxO 6 and Capture One 5 manage to completely eliminate the fringing. Aperture 3 does it too, but a little less effectively. Bibble 5 and Lightroom 3 fail this test, removing only parts of the color and leaving the luminance the same.

5.9. Lens and Perspective corrections

Except for Aperture 3, all others were able to correct the distortion induced by the relatively inexpensive wide lens. DxO 6 and Lightroom 3 were able to take it further by correcting the perspective as well. Here DxO is superior in every way as its keystoning tool was able to easily and accurately correct the perspective, whereas with Lightroom I had to fiddle with the X/Y/Z rotation sliders (usually an image needs to be adjusted on more than just one axis).

DxO 6 was also the best at bringing the details from the shadows, with a nice, balanced, detailed and contrasty image. Lightroom 3 came in second. Bibble 5 and Capture One 5 were the least effective (the result is not clearly visible at this small resolution but on the full-size images it was very apparent).

6. Speed

Speed comparisons are not very fair, as we’re comparing apples and oranges – some programs offer more advanced corrections so it wouldn’t be fair to say that they are slow when they also offer superior quality. Also, speed is dependent on many factors and will vary greatly from image to image.

Having said that, I found the differences in speed to be really insignificant. Bibble 5 is still the fastest and DxO 6 is still the slowest, but the margin is not wide.

7. Pricing

Quality is not the only factor in making a decision. Let’s see how competitive are the prices:

• Apple Aperture 3: $200 USD
• Bibble 5 Pro: $200 USD
• Capture One 5 Pro: $400 USD
• DxO Optics Pro 6 – Elite Edition: $300 USD ($150 USD for Standard Edition)
• Adobe Lightroom 2: $300 USD

Note: DxO differentiates Stardard and Elite based on the supported camera bodies. High-end (full frame) digital SLRs require the Elite edition.

8. Conclusions

Four years ago, RAW processors were wildly different in UI, features and image quality. With each iteration, the gaps have shrinked, with significant improvements being offered even in point releases (Capture One 5.1.2 has better noise reduction support than 5.0). Because of that, differences are becoming minute, impossible to judge unless “pixel-peeping”. It’s only in edge cases where one can truly say that software X really made a difference.

Aperture 3 made a very good impression in me. It produced the best colors “out of the box”, it has a seamless workflow, excellent DAM features, some nice features and it’s priced attractively. It has its downsides, namely poor support for optical corrections and not so great noise reduction. If you’re a Mac user, Aperture is a solid choice for any kind of photography. Highly Recommended.

Bibble 5 has many great ideas but suffers from lack of attention to the details of UI. With other programs, you can feel how each tool is in its right place to better suit the user. Bibble also suffers from the lack of DNG support, a stance I simply fail to understand considering that it’s such an often-requested feature. Some other features seem to be present just to be able to list them, but are too crude compared the competition. On the plus side, the layers support is extremely powerful, and the licensed technologies Perfectly Clear and Noise Ninja help in producing superior images. Recommended with some reservations.

Capture One 5 Pro has the opposite approach from Bibble. Relatively few features, but very fast workflow, ability to quickly judge images, advanced tethering support. It’s still very expensive and hard to justify as a recommendation outside studio shooters.

DxO 6 used to be the king of optical corrections, but the competition is closing in fast. Its “lens modules”, finely-tuned and optimized for each camera are an asset as well as a liability. If your camera and lenses are supported, DxO will give you the best optical corrections, vibrant colors and great dynamic range. Recommended.

Lightroom 3 is the all-around reliable solution. It does not have any overwhelmind advantage over the others, but it supports almost any RAW format and has all the right features. The noise reduction algorithm is on par with Noise Ninja, optical corrections are almost (but not quite) as good as DxO but it has the DIY advantage when it comes to lenses: you can generate your own profiles. In a few hours, I was able to calibrate all my lenses for results almost as good as those given by DxO. The DAM features are not as good as in Aperture, but it can provide better quality in images. Highly Recommended.

9. Buy online

This review was made over three weeks of testing. If you found it useful, please consider purchasing your software from Amazon at discounted prices:

Note: Only the above programs and versions are available through Amazon.com. If you are interested in the others, please refer to their respective websites.

Update: There is a new article on the subject that uses the final release of Lightroom 3 and adds Apple Aperture 3 in the mix. Read all about the newest RAW converters here.

The lineup

For this test I selected:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta;
• Bibble 5 Pro;
• Capture One 5 Pro;
• DXO Optics Pro 6.

Notable absents would be Apple Aperture and Silky Pix.

I did not select Aperture for this review because it’s older (apart from updates and patches it’s still a 2008 product) and it’s also the only Mac-only product (all the programs in this test are available for both PC and Mac; Bibble is also available for Linux). In the case of Silky Pix, I started testing it, but I felt it’s not in the same league as the others, so a direct comparison would not be fair.

Also, in the case of Lightroom 3, it is still beta software; I decided that it’s stable enough to be used in production, so it wouldn’t be unfair to it. It’s good to keep in mind however that it may add features and/or improve image quality before it is released.

Originally, this article presented the beta version of Bibble 5, once it was released I retested and included new results from it.

Test images

For this test I found myself in the difficult position of not having enough test images. I made a habit years ago to convert all my pics to DNG. Unfortunately, DXO and Bibble don’t support DNG, so for this test I had to find some RAWs. If you think that would be easy, well, I actually had to run a program to recover some pics from my cards.

Second of all, I initially had some nice architectural pictures from Milan and Paris that were taken with a compact camera (a perfect test for noise reduction, chromatic aberrations and so on). Again, some programs (DXO and Capture One) did not support it.

Third, I wanted flawed images. I believe that test images should not be perfect – how would I be able to check chromatic aberrations if the image was taken with a razor-sharp, $2000 lens? Or how could I evaluate highlight recovery for a perfectly-exposed scene? Or noise at low ISO? or… you get the picture.

So if you look at the images in the test and wonder why they’re not so good – it’s because I selected them to be like that.

Interface

All four programs have remarkably similar interfaces: dark/gray color schemes, tabs and sliders.

All interfaces look similar, but there are differences in organization and workflow

I absolutely love Capture One‘s interface. It’s polished, simple and logical. It’s very easy to find the tools and the tabs are arranged in the proper order – from capture to details.

Lightroom comes very close, but for it the keyword would be ‘customization’. You can easily customize the interface to fit your own workflow, turn panels off, even customize the “nameplate” to your company name – a nice touch for when you’re working with a client.

Bibble is more of a mixed bag. They changed the UI completely from version 4 and copied many concepts from their competitors, but it’s still a bit confusing as buttons are all over the place.

DXO suffers from the same problems as Bibble – a rather confusing interface, with options arranged not very intuitively; for example, why is White Balance (a basic setting) placed after DXO Lighting (an advanced feature)? Still, in terms of speed and stability, it’s a huge improvement over DXO5.

Import and export

Lightroom has probably the widest camera support – it can read all camera formats under then sun and it also supports DNG (obviously, they invented it). Lightroom also goes beyond the typical RAW processor, as it aims to be a full DAM (Digital Asset Manager). In two years, it still hasn’t convinced me to use it exclusively, but it’s simple enough to import photos in its database and process them. It can also handle variations, has an unlimited history, snapshots and more. New in version 3 is the export system – you can publish from it directly to a service like Flikr. For me, it would be incredible to output directly to iStock, so I can only hope a plugin will come.

Bibble also has a wide camera support, but they don’t support DNG (despite numerous customers requesting it, I might add). Import and export are very easy and I like how printing is also treated like an output option and how easy it’s to define your own presets.

Capture One has a very straightforward way for import and export, focusing on simplicity. I might add that tethered shooting is perfectly integrated in the interface, a bonus for studio photographers. Capture One is more picky about direct camera support, but it does support DNG, so you can always convert to DNG first and then import.

DXO is the most cumbersome in this regard. First you must drag-and-drop files from the file system to a project, edit them and then drag and drop files from the project to the output queue. It just feels tedious for me, without enabling any advanced behaviour. DXO is also very picky about camera support and adds lenses into equation as it provides automatic correction for known camera-lens combinations. It also doesn’t import DNG (why oh why); it can output linear DNG, a feature I never used.

Unique features

As mentioned above, Lightroom is not only a RAW converter but a complete DAM, which comes in handy when you have tens of thousands of images (I have about 16,000 DNGs since 2003). You can easily filter by multiple criteria – tip: it really helps to use keywords for all images. The unlimited history, snapshots, virtual copies help you play creatively with photos, trying different looks. On the other hand, it’s the only program in this test that does not posses any sort of lens distortion correction, which is very disappointing (I still have hopes for the final version). Since version 2, LR also has some localized corrections (color, sharpness, exposure) via a brush or a gradient.

DXO is the unchallenged master in optical corrections. If you have a supported camera and lens, the precise corrections are great, and even if the lens is not recognized, you can still apply most of the corrections – sharpness falloff, light falloff, distortion corrections, even fish-eye corrections. The most impressive feature would be the keystoning, which lets you easily correct perspective distortions – a must-have for architectural shots (not everyone has a tilt-shift lens). It also has a built-in color rendering for emulating different film looks and more.

Capture One has the best support for tethered shooting  and a very useful focus checker – it will overlay the areas that are in focus, a great way to quickly asses a collection of images without zooming in, making it almost perfect for studio work.

Bibble has an incredibly powerful feature: layers. You can make a selection on the image and make any and all settings apply only to it. You can have an image with two or more different WB settings if you want. Areas can be defined using some tools or brushes and you can easily set/change the feathering. The system goes way beyond what Lightroom can offer. Bibble also has some interesting features licensed from other companies –  Noise Ninja for image reduction and a lens distortion database from PT Lens.

Processing Quality

This is where the fun begins.

Color rendition – portraits

With each program, I did not rely on defaults, but tried to achieve the best look. Looking at the image below, you can still see that each one has a different philosophy:

I think B5 nails it best with Lr3 second; though many will prefer C1's more natural look or even DXO's vividness

White balance was set for the black+white dress. I did not enable any “creative” color settings or film emulations.

Capture One really likes to stay neutral and true to the ‘real’ colors. Besides the WB tool, it also has a ‘skin color tool’ for achieving a pleasant skin color.

Lightroom throws more contrast; at least for my camera it has the tendency for more reddish skin, which I dislike. I know I can make my own color profiles (and I have), but how many users will?

Even with the Portrait contrast setting, Bibble generated a more contrasty image, while DXO created a very punchy result – very contasty, more yellowish skin and lipstick.

DXO6 makes gets too much contrast and C1 too little.

Four programs – four interpretations of the same scene with WB set for the eye white. What’s not to love?

Capture One again favors a very bland/neutral look, while DXO goes “a little” overboard with contrast. I think I like Bibble best.

Color rendition – landscapes

I really like the way Lr3 renders colors; DXO is over the top

For this image I also used a little Fill Light to open the shadows in the flowers and fruits. WB was adjusted for the white wall. Both Lightroom and DXO produce beautiful colors – Lightroom with a great blue sky (not very realistic since it was overcast, but beautiful nevertheless); DXO has a bit unnatural grass, but I’ve seen the color in magazines and ads a thousand times. Lightroom also gets the purples right but gets the orange walls a bit wrong. But this is just nitpicking.

Capture One misses it – the grass seems dirty/muddy and the Fill Light doesn’t work nearly as well. Bibble fares better but the colors are off and the contrast and shadow/highlight details are not that great.

Dynamic Range

You could get a taste of how well Fill Light & Highlight recovery work from the previous test, but now lets try something extreme:

DXO6 obtains the best results, followed by Lr3

DXO is really amazing with this image. Beautiful colors and look how detailed the dark, shadowed part of the building looks. Lightroom comes in close.

Initially, Bibble generated a rather poor image in the Preview release 3, but in the final version I managed to get better results.

As for Capture One, it just can’t.

Detail extraction

Let’s see now how much detail vs. noise can our four contestants extract from an image (100% crop):

Excellent detail in Capture One and Lr3

DXO produces a clean but not very detailed image, with some speckles here and there. Capture One removed too much chroma and has a quite speckled look (but note how natural the skin looks). Bibble 5 puts Noise Ninja to good use, leaving a pleasing image in terms of noise and details. Lightroom 3 renders the best image in terms of details, even though it’s slightly noisier.

Noise reduction

I don’t shoot usually at high ISO, but I have for this test- a boring detail of my keyboard.

It's B5's turn to show what it can do

The image above was shot at ISO6400.

Thanks to Noise Ninja, Bibble gets the crown. Lightroom 3 has the luminance noise reduction disabled in the beta, so the final version may look different. Although very noisy, it’s not that bad – I prefer Lr3 over C1. DXO cleans the luminance nicely but leaves some coarse chroma noise. With Capture One I tried 2 different approaches but the results are still very poor. The one shown above has luminance noise reduction very low, chroma to max; also reduced sharpening to zero.

Optical corrections

Unfortunately I did not have any RAW picture to really have a need to correct the chromatic abberations or barrel/pincushion. As I mentioned in the beginning, almost all of my pictures are DNG.

Having said that, based on my past experience I can safely say that DXO is unmatched in optical corrections – especially with a supported lens, whereas Lightroom comes in last since it has no distortion correction.

Here’s something from a previous test in 2007:

DXO Keystoning in action

I was able to test for purple fringing:

DXO really saves this image

Bibble has the least effective fringing correction (I couldn’t actually see it making any difference, although the Fringing option was set to Standard). Lightroom is also largely ineffective in this area (Purple fringing was set to All Edges). Capture One corrects the purple fringing but leaves a glow. DXO corrects both the color and the luminance in the affected area, leaving a sharp image.

It’s also worth mentioning the noise – Lightroom image is noisy but detailed (look at the black lace), while Capture One’s looks clean but speckled.

Speed

Speed comparisons are not very fair, as we’re comparing apples and oranges – some programs offer more advanced corrections so it wouldn’t be fair to say that they are slow when they also offer superior quality. Also, speed is dependent on many factors and will vary greatly from image to image.

As a general statement, Bibble is the fastest, followed by Lightroom and Capture One and unsurprisingly DXO comes at the end.

Pricing

Quality is not the only factor in making a decision. Let’s see how competitive are the prices:

• Adobe Lightroom 2: $300 USD (I can only assume version 3 will be priced the same)
• Bibble 5 Pro: $200 USD
• Capture One 5 Pro: $400 USD ($130 for the standard version)
• DXO Optics Pro 6 – Elite Edition : $200 USD ($109 for Standard edition)

Some notes:

• Capture One 5 standard does not offer optical correction and tethered shooting.
• DXO differentiates Stardard and Elite based on the supported camera bodies. High-end (full frame) digital SLRs require the Elite edition.

Updates

I intend to update this article when the final versions of Lightroom 3 and Bibble 5 are released and to also add more tests – so please come back.

I will also gladly correct any factual errors that may have slipped in this review (I worked for a week on it).

Updated on January 4, 2010 with the final release of Bibble 5. I changed some three of the Bibble results and used the new sales price.

Conclusions

It should come to no surprise that there’s no “perfect” program – each one has its strengths and weaknesses and your decision on which one is better for you should be based on the type of photography you do.

Having said that, I have a hard time recommending Capture One. I really wanted to like it and I know it has its fans, but I just can’t justify its price tag vs the output quality or the workflow. The interface is nice and clean, but it has nothing worth 4 times the price of DXO or the quality and workflow offered by Lightroom. It may work well for studio photographers because of its tethered shooting features and focus checker but even then it might be worth testing it along with Lightroom.

In terms of features and quality over price, DXO 6 is an absolute steal. If your camera and lenses are supported, $110 is nothing, even if you also use a different RAW converter. If you shoot landscapes or architectural elements, HDR, ultra-wide and so on DXO is a must. DXO 5 used to be a nightmare, with frequent crashes and a very slow interface, but DXO 6 is nothing like that – it offers a solid experience and in many cases it produces beautiful results.

Bibble 5 has great potential – it’s very fast and its adjustement layers feature is truly powerful. It supports more camera models than DXO and Noise Ninja does wonders for high-ISO images (obviously, you can always purchase Noise Ninja or Neat Image separately).

Lightroom is a very good all-round program. Its image management and workflow features are very useful for professional photographers. On the other hand, it’s relatively more expensive and lacks more advanced optical corrections. Adobe has included optical corrections settings in the latest DNG standard I hopefully support will be added in Lightroom 3.

So which one is best for you?

If you’re an amateur with a compact camera that supports RAW and want to get creative, go with Bibble. It will correct noise problems and optical distortions and will let you get creative.

Landscape and architectural photographers will benefit from DXO advanced corrections.

Portrait and studio photographers who work closely with their clients and shoot thousands of photos will be best suited by Lightroom.

Capture One has its fans too. It has some very professional features but its scope is limited. I would recommend it for professional studio photographers who worry more about correct colors than high ISO performance.

Ethics? What ethics?

Without trying to justify the abuses of retouching, it does has its uses. Acne for example is something transitory, I’ve had models with a few spots now and a perfect skin a week later – what should have I done, postpone the shoot? Ask her to put a thicker layer of makeup? (have you seen how much makeup is used in film/tv?) Moreover, the camera and studio lights are unforgiving. Stuff you’ll never notice in real life, like small wrinkles, shine and so on, become painfully obvious at when captured in full 25 Mp resolution. And even before Photoshop, people were using makeup and airbrushing and favourable angles to get the most flattering look.

The moral dilemma is, obviously, where to draw the line?

Portrait Professional 9 from Anthropics is definitely not going to make the previous question any simpler because, if anything, it pushes the boundaries further, allowing one to enhance portraits so easily it’s almost ridiculous.

How it works

At a glance, it’s a stand-alone program (not a Photoshop plugin) that does face sculpting, eye recoloring, skin repair, hair repair, teeth whitening and more. What’s really cool about it is that it creates some sort of a 3D model of the face, so after you set the control points, most adjustments are fully automatic.

You start by loading a picture and choosing the gender. You then click to indicate the corners of the eyes, the tip of the nose and the mouth. After that the program will build something like a wireframe model of the head, which you can fine-tune. I found that this is the most important stage; misplacing control points can lead to poor results.

In this screen you align the wireframe model with the facial features

After the model is built, the fun begins. The program has a very simple interface based on sliders.

The main slider areas are:

• Face sculpt (head, jaw, nose, neck, eyes, mouth);
• Skin controls (spots, wrinkles, shadows, hue, shine, texture);
• Eyes (whiten &brighten, sharpen, eye color, darken pupil, remove reflections);
• Mouth (whiten & brighten teeth, lip saturation and colour);
• Hair (shine, tidy, vibrance);
• Skin lighting (shadows, relight, contrast, highlights).

Overall, there are enough sliders to keep you happy for hours.

Almost anything can be ajusted via sliders

There are some mask-painting features to restrict the skin and hair areas. The skin controls even feature a Texture selection that allows you to retexture the skin so it doesn’t appear unnaturally smooth. The Skin lighting controls seemed the least useful, at least for me, but I think it can help in bad lighting situations.

Enough theory, let’s see it in action

Scenario 1 – spots

This is an all-time favorite. So ephemeral yet so low-esteem-inducing, they appear exactly when you want them the least – like before a photo session.

Removing spots and wrinkles is a one-click process

In the original, the acne was visible even with the makeup. The image on right is the result of automatic processing in Portrait Professional. Perfect skin yet not plastic-like.

Scenario 2 – Skin shine, teeth and eyes

Here I had a beautiful model with a different – it was very hot and the lighting was pretty crappy (indoors, available light – tungsten – yuk!).

With one click, skin was cleaned up, shine removed, teeth whitened and just for fun I recolored the eyes too

Sweat on makeup is always an issue, but Portrait Professional managed to clean it nicely. Also note some subtle teeth whitening (not really needed). Just for kicks, I made the eyes wider and changed their color.

Scenario 3 – Playing God with Face Sculpting

This is THE feature that sets Portrait Professional apart from competition. In short, it uses some internal algorithms to determine the facial structure and “push” them towards an ideal. Obviously, not everyone is going to like it. I tried some face sculpting on a photo of my wife and she hated it; others have loved the results.

This is understandable because, as the program tries to alter the photo to perfection, it also destroys one’s uniqueness (as an example, look at a beauty pageant – the contestants tend to look all the same) and I mean it when I say “perfection is boring“.

There’s something disturbingly fascinating in reshaping someone’s body to fit an idealized fantasy. Perhaps Photoshop (and plastic surgery) has made us all into little Frankensteins or Doctors Moreau, always trying to undo God’s / Nature’s work. But I digress.

For the final example I chose someone with a great attitude and a small flaw. She had a rather big jaw compared with the rest of her hear. I did not have Portrait Professional when I took the photos, but decided to try it now for this review and see what would the program do in her case.

Since there are many subtle changes difficult to notice side-by-side, I included a flash animation for the Before and After.

Conclusions

It took me a while to realize it, but the makers of Portrait Professional want it to be seen as an alternative to Photoshop (one of the reasons it’s a standalone app and not a plugin) and at $69 it’s quite tempting. It can definitely turn a few hours of retouching into a 10 minute play time and if used sparingly it can do wonders.

The downsides? Well, if everybody get their hand on it, no Facebook pic will remain untouched. God help us all.

In case you are curious what I’m dealing with in this article, have a look:

HDR of Orthodox Cathedral, Sibiu, Romania

The cathedral is located here.

If you find it interesting, read on.

Introduction

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the therm, HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging. As I’ve discussed before, a regular photo can’t capture the full range of lights and shadows that the human eye can see. Photographers have long learned to avoid high-contrast situations or to use them to create artistic effects. It all changed when Paul Devebec presented at SIGGRAPH 1997 a method for combining several images with different exposures into one single image with a much higher range of luminosity. To put things in perspective, a camera sensor can cope with contrast ranges on the order of 4000:1, while a scene of a room with an outside view in full sun (something our eyes see every day) has a dynamic range of 100,000:1.

Initially HDR was used in 3D graphics as environment maps to create realistic scenes. Because a HDR image contains 32bits per channel (in floating point, e.g. can take almost infinite values), it cannot be displayed directly on the screen or printed on paper, so a second operation is needed, called Tone Mapping. Tone Mapping consists in “compressing” the high dynamic range back into something we can see on screen. This is something easier said than done; a simple conversion results in a lifeless, murky image so there’s a whole research field in creating algorithms that present images that are realistic and pleasing for the eye.

Shooting the scene

Equipment used:

• Sony α700 DSLR;
• Sigma 10-20mm lens;
• tripod (Canon, in case you’re interested).

First, a straight JPEG of the cathedral interior is hopelessly bad. The stained glasses are blown out while many areas are pure black. Colors are muted and overall it’s not an incredibly attractive picture. Shooting with Dynamic Range Optimizer marginally improves the shadow detail, but not by much.

JPEG image lacks the needed dynamic range

So, I put the camera on a tripod and shot eight pictures, from under- to over-exposed, one f-stop apart each. I started with just enough light to see the windows and ended with an exposure long enough to see clearly in shadows. Here they are:

8 images with different exposures make the final HDR

Picturenaut

Picturenaut is a nice little FREE tool from a guy named Christian Bloch. The interface is pretty barren, but it has to be the fastest HDR tool I’ve tried. Did I mention it’s free? (some tools can cost $700)

Selecting images for HDR

Tone Mapping dialog

First step is selecting all images that will make the final exposure. Picturenaut has the option to automatically align the images, which is extremely important since even with the camera on tripod the image can be slightly different from shot to shot.

Aside from being very accurate, Picturenaut is really, really fast. It generates the HDR in no time. The HDR image displayed on screen usually looks rather flat, but that’s expected. You can save it as a 32bit TIFF if you want.

Second step is the “fun” part – tone mapping. Picturenaut offers two algorithms (Adaptive Logarithmic and Photoreceptor physiology). Which one is better depends on the actual scene.

The tone mapping is also very fast, almost real-time.

Photoshop

Image selection for HDR

Tone Mapping in Ps

You access the HDR option from File –> Automate –> Merge to HDR (rather unintuitive, but that’s me). The process is very slow, “Aligning layers based on content” message seems to take forever.

For Tone Mapping (achieved via Image –> Mode –> 8 bits/channel), Photoshop offers four options: “Exposure and Gamma“, “Highlight Compression“, “Equalize Histogram” and “Local Adaptation“. Again, depending on the scene, one mode may be more useful that the other, but I find Local Adaptation to be good, with Highlight Compression and Equalize Histogram essentially useless.

Image Quality: Photoshop vs. Picturenaut

With both programs, after tone mapping, I spent some time tweaking the image, playing with Curves to increase the contrast and Saturation to bring out the true colors I saw in the cathedral.

Here’s the side-by-side end result:

HDR result - Photoshop vs. Picturenaut

Apart from some color differences, the two images are remarkably similar. I did manage to preserve highlight detail better in Photoshop and its local contrast made everything “pop” more, but overall they are on par, so if you can’t afford Photoshop or some “pro” tool, Picturenaut will deliver good results (but you still need to tweak it, it’s not a “push the button and you’re done” kind of operation).

Dell Adamo

With much fanfare, Dell unveiled their new ‘luxury’ laptop this week. Just 16mm (0.65in) thick and weighting 1.8kg (4 pounds), Adamo (meaning ‘falling in love’ in Latin) seems aimed at the Macbook Air market. But is it really worth the hype?
Adamo’s system specs are as follows:

• 13.3″ display;
• Intel Core Duo 1.2 GHz;
• 2 Gb DDR3 RAM;
• 128 Gb SSD;
• Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.

How much does it cost? Two grand. ($1999 to be more exact.)

Now excuse me, but it seems like a crazy idea to me. Coming out with an underpowered and overpriced laptop in these economic times? How are they planning to sell it?

Have a look at the advertorial below:

In case you got bored watching it, here are some quotes:

• “Adamo was created to elicit desire and redefine the image of power“
• “Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure“
• “Once you hold it, you won’t want to put it down“
• “Because with this ultra-thin, portable aphrodisiac at your side, lack of attention won’t be a problem.“

Excuse me? Union of technology with pleasure? Portable aphrodisiac? Are we talking about a laptop here or were the copywriters on crack? My take is that they’ve tried to copy Apple’s style and failed. I mean, have a look at the video again, the woman pulls the laptop out of a cheap & ugly cardboard. Marketing 101: if you sell something at a premium, at least make sure it’s packaged like a jewel. (Apple knows it best).

Now, I’m no Apple fanboy (I don’t own any Apple products) but it seems to me that Dell dropped the ball on this one. Advertorial aside, the laptop specs don’t justify its cost and personally I don’t even like the design. I wouln’t buy it.

Would you?

From RAW to perfection

With the new releases from Adobe, DXO Labs and Phase One, I’ve decided to put to the test some of the top RAW processors. These are:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3;
• DXO Pro Optics Suite 5;
• Capture One 4.

Update: There is a new article on the subject that uses the final release of Lightroom 3 and adds Capture One 5 and Apple Aperture 3 in the mix. Read all about the newest RAW converters here.

I would have wanted to also test Apple Aperture 1.5, but it wasn’t possible at this time, so, I decided to postpone that test.

These programs represent the high-end segment of the RAW converters, since they are all geared (or at least marketed) as tools for professional photographers. This doesn’t mean that Bibble, Silkypix or ACDSee Pro are not capable, it’s just that they have a different market.

Of course, their features and intended uses do not overlap completely. Lightroom in particular is billed as a DAM (Digital Asset Management) software, whereas DXO has extended features in term of image geometry correction. Still, I’ve tried to judge all three of them fairly and bring the best out of each one, rather than trying to prove a point.

Interface

All three programs have similar interfaces. It would be definitely unfair to say that any of them copied the other. They all employ a dark, monochrome look that is essential in avoiding misjudging colors, and they all use collapsible side-panels.

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Unsurprisingly, Lightroom has the most complex interface. It has five tabs on the right, called Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web as well as panels on the left and right. The nice thing about its interface is that all of them can be hidden, including with an auto-hide option, allowing for a very efficient management of screen estate. Moreover, in the “lights dim” mode, the interface is faded, allowing the user to further concentrate on the photo itself.

DXO has a more workflow-oriented interface, with four main tabs called Select, Prepare, Process and Review. Its focus is on the Prepare tab, dedicated to adjusting the image. On the right side there are a number of panels stacked one on top of the other (similar to Lightroom) that can be also quickly accessed via the icons on the top right, although I still find them a little confusing due to their number and location (e.g. the White Balance is somewhere in the middle).

Capture One takes a different approach. It doesn’t want to be a DAM, but a very fast RAW processor. It has some quick tools at the top and some tabs on the left (Library, Quick, Exposure, Color, Details, Crop, Metadata, Adj. Clipboard, Output and Batch). The first tab lets the user select the files from the drive and then the next tabsset different processing parameters. With the Quick tab and the Copy/Paste settings tools at the top, adjustinting settings is very fast and efficient.

Features

Of all three, Lightroom is certainly the most ambitious. Its image management features allow for thousands of photos to be maintained by the Library and retrieved with ease. Still, the library management is rather slow compared to dedicated programs such as ACDSee. Even with that, Lightroom has plenty of other features to keep one happy. For example, the History tool allows the photographer for unlimited undo since all edits are non-destructive while snapshots and virtual copies lets one experiment with different looks. Web Slideshow and Print Management are nice perks too, although not essential.

DXO has different strengths. Its image management features are minimal, yet it shines in a different area: geometry correction. Having separate profiles for each camera/lens combo, DXO can automatically correct distortion, chromatic aberration, purple fringe and softness. Actually, DXO will automate many things: noise reduction, shadow/highlights and more. Features like keystoning and volume anamorphosis corrections are not only impressive, they are essential especially for architectural or wide-angle shots.

Capture One represents a huge improvement over version 3, but it has a different philosophy. It reminds me a little of RAWShooter – very small, very fast, allowing for quick corrections. It has less options, but they are arranged so that it’s extremely easy to correct and process hundreds of photos. It too has a Variants feature but lacks advanced color correction, a “healing brush” and other features present in its competitors.

Color Rendition

Camera sensors differ from one model to the other; most RAW processing software use their own camera color profiles, so it’s not surprising to get different colors out of the same picture by using different programs, even when leaving the white balance, contrast and saturation to “as shot”.

In my tests I’ve tried to get the best colors out of each picture, rather than relying on defaults. Below are some photos processed with each of the programs:

Nature

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

In all nature shots, I noticed Lightroom’s tendency to produce yellowish greens. Here, without a doubt, DXO produces the best image without even trying (it was on default settings), whereas I couldn’t get the same look in the other two even after many tweaks. Capture One fared the worst with unnatural colors (see the blueish shadows on the roof).

Illustrations

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

This is a more extreme case. In order to get a nice blue sky, I’ve used the Vibrancy control to enhance the colors. Capture One doesn’t have the vibrancy feature, so I had to rely on plain old saturation, with disastrous results. Lightroom and DXO produced virtually identical photos, with DXO having a slight edge.

Portraits

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Here DXO misses by automatically applying too much of its “lighting effects”, which is a Shadow/Highlight recovery control (it can be turned off but I left it on for this photo to illustrate how sometimes too much automatic control can degrade a picture). Capture One creates a more natural-looking image, but overall Lightroom renders the most pleasing photo. Also notable is that Capture One is the only one missing a healing brush, which was used on the girl’s face in the other two images. The absence of this tool is not really a big deal, but it would have been nice.

Sharpness, noise and dynamic range

Now lets look at the level of detail provided. Note: to avoid any compression artifacts, details are presented in PNG format.

Detail and artifacts

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Capture One doesn’t have any chromatic aberration control, which is responsible for the vertical blue line. I was very surprised and disappointed by DXO performance; even though it boasts a new processing engine designed specifically to avoid these kind of situations, it still produces some rather ugly color artifacts while at the same time looking not sharp enough. The only way I could remove them was by increasing the color noise reduction, which in turn would have negatively affected other areas of the picture. Lightroom provides a sharp, clean and detailed image, clearly the best.

Light and shadows

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

Now here DXO gets to show its power. Its lighting control is more advanced than the Fill Light present in Lightroom and Capture One, while the perspective correction (keystoning) capabilities allow for a superior photo. The shot was made at ISO800, 1/10s handheld, f5.6. Looking at the details, Lightroom and Capture One manage to create very clean images, although Capture One leaves some specks. The DXO version features more noise (to be expected in the shadow considering the extra processing) but also more detail. Annoyingly, DXO loses detail in the stained glass, which is peculiar since the brighter area of the photo shouldn’t have been affected.

Sharpness

Going back to the portrait above, lets see a 100% crop:

Lightroom	Capture One	DXO

I have “played” considerably in each program, trying to achieve the best possible results, but Lightroom manages the best balance between sharpness, cleanliness and noise.

Speed

Processing speed is dependent on many factors, including the processor, available memory, image size and amount of processing applied to it, making perfectly objective tests rather difficult. The numbers presented here are meant just for comparison.

Still, the fastest program is, without a doubt, Capture One, which is also impressive because it seems to be written entirely in C# (DXO is also based on .NET). On my laptop, the processing speed on capture One was 10 seconds/picture. In the second place, I had Lightroom, with 32 seconds per picture. I’ve tried to make things fair for DXO by removing all advanced processing such as lighting effect, geometry correction, even chromatic aberration and vignetting. Still, DXO came in last, with an atrocious 94 seconds spent for each picture, or almost 2 minutes per picture will all options activated.

Conclusion

In terms of output quality, the differences aren’t that huge and in some cases are more related to personal preference; all three tools are very capable of high quality output.

Of the three, Adobe Lightroom is the most consistent. It has a nice set of tools and features, solid results and few weaknesses. It’s integrated features allow the photographer to do all their work, from start to finish, in one program, in many cases with no need for Photoshop or other tools.

DXO is a mixed bag. It produces great colors, especially for nature and its geometry correction tools are a real life saver. On the other hand, it’s very slow, rather very unstable and just not great in terms of processing details. [Edit: I've thought initially that there must be something wrong with my computer but then I've found out on forums that many people complain about DXO 5 stability issues; for me, it crashes 80% of the time, when doing simple things like zooming in or applying sharpness.]

Capture One seems like a very nice “quick” tool. Even though it’s a beta, it’s fast in all areas (UI, workflow and processing), polished and stable. The pricing is also very attractive – just $130 compared to about $300 for the competition.