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.

The good news is that Apple just released Aperture 3 – and not a moment too soon, considering how many users were tempted to ‘jump ship’.

Aperture 3 brings a number of improvements across the board, most notably:

• better library organization, with easy catalog switching, searching and filtering; GPS integration; face detection;
• support for video;
• non-destructive brushes.

It’s still hard for me not to see it as Apple trying to catch up with other products. Non-destructive brushes have been available in Lightroom for an year and more recently in Bibble. Same with almost all other features like fullscreen support, import options, image attributes such as color labels and so on.

Other features seem more geared at the casual photographers rather than the pros (not that this is bad thing), like export to Flickr or Facebook.

Overall, I believe Aperture is not about bringing new users rather than keeping the existing ones, but Apple’s commitment is important not only to reassure the users but also to keep the pressure on competition (Adobe, I’m looking at you).

You can see the full list of new and improved features on Apple’s site.

Aperture 3 is priced at $199 for the full version and $99 for an upgrade.

Update: There is a new article that compares Aperture 3 with other similar programs. Read all about the newest RAW converters here.

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.

What is this raw thing, anyway?

Camera sensor

Diagram of a Bayer sensor array

RAW in itself is just a term denoting an unprocessed image. It’s not a file format; all camera manufacturers (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc.) have their own file formats to store this unprocessed information.

You see, all digital cameras work in the same way: there’s a sensor that is made of 6 (or 8 or 24) million elements laid out in rows and columns that can capture light. Each element produces a pixel in the final image. That’s where the “megapixels” term comes from. Now, these tiny elements don’t capture color, only brightness (there’s an exception, the Foveon sensor). To capture color, a trick is used, in the form of a so-called Bayer filter array placed in front of the sensor. The Bayer filter makes so that each recorded pixel can be either red, green or blue.

So, when saving a RAW kind of file, the camera simply takes all values read from each element on the senor, adds some info (date, time, camera settings and so on) and just writes that on the card, with no further processing.

How does the camera process the image?

When you’re saving files as JPEG, the camera has to go through several steps to get an usable image

1. take raw sensor data;
2. for each color channel (red, green, blue), pixels are interpolated to fill the gaps;
3. color balance and gamma correction are applied;
4. noise reduction, contrast, saturation and sharpening are applied;
5. image is encoded as JPEG and written to card.

How the RAW information is processed

Is RAW needed?

OK, you can’t see a RAW directly and the camera does the processing in less than a second, so why should we bother with RAW?

The answer is that under perfect shooting conditions, RAW wouldn’t be needed – that means perfect white balance, perfect exposure, perfect camera effect settings. In real life however, you don’t always get to control all variables. Color may be off (do you always calibrate the white balance?), you may have got blow-out (white) areas with no detail, and so on. You could try to tweak the jpeg in Photoshop, but if the shadow or highlight details are simply not there, you’ll never recover it.

What are the advantages for saving in RAW format?

Short answer: it allows you to correct your mistakes and be more creative.

Sounds good? Read on for the long answer.

Like I said in the beginning, the RAW file contains unprocessed data. It also contain more nuanced information per-pixel too. JPEG files store can represent 256 levels of brightness (8 bits/channel). RAW on the other hand allocates 12 (sometimes 14) bits for each pixel, resulting in at least 4096 levels of brightness! This helps you bring out details from the shadows or from blown-out areas.

Also, because when the image is saved, white balance is not applied yet, it can be easily set to whatever you want. If you ever took a photo with the wrong WB setting and then tried to fix it in Photohop, you know how hard it is. When editing the RAW, this is simple and accurate.

This is not all. In-camera conversion is done by the camera’s small processor, that also needs to do the processing in a fraction of a second, so all algorithms are optimized for speed. Modern RAW processing software allow for much sophisticated tools, resulting in more detail, better sharpness and less noise. Some of them even offer automatic optics compensation for chromatic aberrations, purple fringing and lens distortion.

How about some pics?

There are many articles on the web discussing the pros and cons of usig RAW, but very few of them actually post some examples. Why? Well, it’s most likely because artists hate for people too see their unfinished work. Still, seeing is believing, so let me show you some examples:

The RAW image (right) allowed for the image appearance to be improved compared to the JPEG (left)

I took this picture at Sacré-Cœur, Paris. The sun was very low in the sky, beginning twilight. The white travertine stone it’s made of was shining against the blue sky. Still, as you can see from the photo on the left, the camera could not capture all this. To avoid the sky and clouds from being blown out I had to reduce the exposure, resulting in a dark building, while the white balance, set on Auto, made a reddish cast on the whole picture. The image on the right was obtained in about a minute by processing the RAW. I set the white balance to make the stone white, increased the exposure a bit to bring out th details and added some highlight recovery to still have details in the clouds.

The RAW image

The differences in the image above, while not striking, are clearly visible; the eye at the bottom contains more detail and has less artifacts. Sure, the level of detail may not be important if you only print 6″x4″ (15x10cm) but if you’re doing big prints, all small details become important.

What’s the catch?

RAW is not the holy grail of photography. It can’t turn any snapshot into a work of art. On top of that, it has some clear downsides:

• bigger file size. RAW files are uncompressed or compressed using a lossless (think ZIP) compression. This is good because nothing is lost when the file is saved, but bad because instead of a 1-2Mb JPEG, you get a 8-10 MB RAW file. So if you plan on shooting RAW, you’ll need bigger cards.
• because of the bigger file size, it takes more time to save the files. Normal dSLR cameras have a buffer large enough to store about 5 RAWs, so if you’re shooting continuously, you’ll have to pause when the buffer is full. This is particularly annoying for sport and fast action.
• downloading and processing takes time. If time is of the essence, RAWs are not the way to go. This is why photojournalists don’t usually use RAW.

Do I need any special software?

Lightroom 2

Cameras come with some proprietary software for processing RAWs, but they are usually quite limited. There are a number of software capable of processing RAW images, some more powerful than others (I made a review of the biggest of them, here).

For now, my favorite in terms on features, workflow  and user-friendliness is Adobe’s Lightroom 2; other popular software include ACDSee Pro, Bibble, DXO and SilkyPix.

Conclusion?

In a nutshell, RAW is not for everyone, but if you are a creative type and like to get the most out of you camera, I think you should try it.

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.