RPP's dirty secret

[Exdsc]

RPP (Raw Photo Processor) is recommended by everyone and at first glance it produces visibly 'better' results but then look at this comparison.

Conversion on the left is from RAW Therapee and on the right RPP. In both cases noise reduction has been disabled, including the default setting of blur chroma noise in RPP, and yet, RPP kills the shadow detail completely... it seems to have simply painted black on the shadow area.

Those interested might do their on test but I thought I share this because this has to be one of the most dramatic discrepancy in RAW conversion of the same RAW file that I have scene.

 

[eric rose]

How about if you adjust the contrast on the RPP image a tad. Might bring it into line with Rawtherapee. OTOH I love Rawtherapee.

 

[Exdsc]

How about if you adjust the contrast on the RPP image a tad. Might bring it into line with Rawtherapee. OTOH I love Rawtherapee.

I tried that and it did not bring back any detail.

This sort of heavy handed shadow "smoothing" can be useful in portraits but otherwise its too extreme for my taste.

From now on I'll use RAW Therapee exclusively.