Software Recommendations

[cls]

CLS...this was my first cut at comparing the three. When evaluating how to test the software I considered how I currently use DPP and thought of three common scenarios: 1. Simply converting from RAW to JPEG; 2. Minor edits to several photos at a time; and, 3. Several adjustments to a single photo at a time trying to make it the best it can be. I choose to test scenario 1 first because I keep hearing that one of the primary differentiators in the software is their RAW conversion engine. I am not sure what I did was the perfect test, as I am still learning about each program, but I am surprised that for scenario 1 of how I have been using DPP, each software performed very differently.

I understand, what I tried to say is that only DPP can read your "JPEG generating" camera settings from the RAW file (desired sharpness, contrast, ALO, lens correction etc). This means that if you open the RAW-file in DPP and generate JPEG without any changes, it will give the same result as generating JPEG in camera (shooting JPEG). Third party software don't read those settings. I don't know DxO, but if you use the default RAW conversion settings (from the original software setup) in Lightroom, the resulting image may often look rather dull. As I remember the LR default it only applies some sharpening by default. (No contrast, no vignetting correction, no...)

To make the comparison between those more fair, you could disable ALO and lens correction and set the picture style to 'faithful'. Then the result from DPP will look more like the LR result. (That is for test purposes. In real life of course, you simply change the LR deafult to something you like for most of your pictures.)

When it comes to DxO there may be an option "don't do any adjustments to my image" for raw conversion that could be better to use for your test purposes.