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It seems that RAW convertors are all the rage these days as more
and more people buy DSLR's. Frustrated with the limitations of
jpeg, more of these new camera owners are turning to RAW. Unfortunately,
not all RAW converters are created equal and this can lend confusion
to the process of getting the best image quality from your new
DSLR. Parkcamper.com takes a ton of images for documentation purposes,
and we feel that having a good quality RAW converter is one of
the most important tools in your DSLR tool kit.
On this page we are going to explore any possible image quality
differences between Adobe's Lightroom 2 and the free Canon RAW
converter Digital Photo Professional (otherwise known as DPP).
The Lightroom program is a commercial product which retails for
$299. It does numerous things that DPP does not, so we won't go
into that comparison. We are strictly looking at image quality
here. Digital Photo Professional is a free program, and you can't
go wrong with that.
Our test scene is the top picture on this page; Two Medicine Lake
shot in Glacier National Park. The gear used was a tripod mounted
Canon 50D with a Canon 50 1.8 II lens at f 3.5 and ISO 100. A
remote release was also used. Noise and sharpness settings in
DPP and Lightroom were set to zero. The Neutral setting was also
used on both programs. We used Lightroom 2.6 and Digital Photo
Professional 3.5 to compare the images.
Canon Digital Photo Professional 100% crop.
Lightroom 2 100% crop.
Almost everything we shoot at Parkcamper.com is landscape, so
this comparison is pertinent for our uses. What I notice from
the images right off the bat is that color at the neutral setting
is basically the same. What's not the same is slightly more detail
in the Lightroom 2 crop. Detail and color differences are significant
when you look at the steel cable running down to the right from
the top of the posts. There's a bit more pop there, and a bit
more red in the rings. Also, the tree branches hold considerably
more detail in the Lightroom crop compared to the DPP crop. Look
at the gray tree going down into the water. The detail difference
is quite noticeable.
We have a second test used from an image of St. Mary Lake in Montana.
These were taken with a Sigma 10-20 at f 7.1, ISO 200:
This comparison looks to be a wash. The Digital Photo Professional
colors look to be slightly cooler. More crops from the same scene
of St. Mary Lake and the surrounding forest:
This last set of crops also looks like a tie in image quality.
Again, DPP shows what looks to be slightly cooler colors. This
is seen in the exposed bark of the dead tree. It looks slightly
more punchy in Lightroom 2, or more subdued in Digital Photo Professional
depending on how you want to look at it.
People have been arguing back and forth for quite some time over
which RAW converter gives better results. At this point, at least
for landscape shooting in neutral mode, there really isn't much
of a difference. You really can't lean to one or the other based
on IQ. The first crop results going in Lightroom's favor may have
been some more aggressive noise reduction that DPP saw fit to
apply for that particular image.
Digital Photo Professional is free, which is great. But at the
same time, Lightroom offers many more features and editing options
such as local adjustments and a life saving organizational tool.
From a pure image quality standpoint, there's really no winner.
So base your potential usage of these programs on the other features
they offer such as any possible organization tools or image editing
tools, or even if the software runs more efficiently on your photo
editing computer.
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