Strange Behaviours for RAW Processors?

It was late afternoon and the sun was about to set, but still I whipped out my Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL) to try to get the sky a little more blue, so I zoomed full wide and shot the below. When I first saw the photo on the PC it was rather OK, but when I tried to process it using ACDSee RAW processor, I was surprised to see mechanical lens vignetting (dark around the four corners of the photo). It turns out that the different processor will interpret .RW2 data differently and produces different results.

The SilkyPix RAW processor somehow reduces lens vignetting through software and actually produces very little lens vignetting. It also gives very natural colors, more bluer skies.

The cons is that it's not the easiest to use piece of software.

Note: The supplied PhotoFunStudio viewer, despite inability to process raw files, still manage to render the photo close to what you'll see in SilkyPix.

ACDSee RAW processor simply produces much more vignetting. The whole photo is also a little brighter.

Adobe DNG converter first converts .RW2 files into .DNG file which amounts to about 3 times the size of the .RW2 file. Since a .RW2 file is about 12MB, the .DNG file is about 36MB.

The results produced very little vignetting but slightly washed out colors, with the whole photo brighter on the whole.

After comparing all 3 photos, which raw processor will I use?

  • I will avoid the Adobe DNG route since it involves creating another huge file without major benefits.
  • I will always have a look at all raw photo using PhotoFunStudio and only when necessary, use SilkyPix.
  • If ACDRaw is not giving me problems, I'll stick with it since it's the easiest to use.

6 comments:

  1. Look closely: SilkyPix is cropping. This is removing the vignetting, but not exactly the way you thought.

    By the way, I'm another happy owner of a FZ28.

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  2. Holy Mackerel! You're right! Are we on to something here?

    OK. I've got some testing to do and I promised to put up a blog post as soon as I'm done. Here's what I plan:

    a) Take a shot using tripod, using JPEG.
    b) Same shot using RAW.
    c) Compare shots using JPEG, RAW + Silkypix, RAW + Adobe DNG, RAW + ACDSee.

    Thank you Bill, we've learned something haven't we?

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  3. Can the burst mode be used with RAW?

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  4. No, Burst mode works only on JPEG and not RAW.

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  5. Is ACDRaw part of ACDSee Pro? How much does the ACDSee cost in RM?

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  6. Yes it is. Cost: No idea, sorry.

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