DCM staff may have noticed that the magazine has been coming under a bit of flack recently regarding the quality, or should I say lack of quality, of their reviews. Um, if I had my doubts before then these were very much reinforced by reading the review regarding RAW software. Would someone kindly tell me who this Rod Lawton fellow is and what qualifications he has that make it possible for him to write these reviews? I mean, for goodness sake 89% rating for Lightroom. Has he even used the application and more importantly perhaps, has he taken into consideration that he is using a version 1 application of which no mention was made. I can forgive him for not mentioning anything about version 2 as it probably wasn't available prior to publication, but come on at least compare like with like. Having mentioned LR version 2 beta - there is someone on this forum whose opinions are very well respected and he has compared LR v2 to Aperture v3. Ok, each to his/her own I suppose but 89% - Rod you make me laugh.

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"Being a Pro doesn't mean you're better. It means you get paid" - David duChemin

. . and he only compared things you have to pay for - I like UFRAW, free for llinux and windows.

I downloaded a trial of lightroom once, and I still can't work out what it's for.

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I guess the 10 minutes he had to play with each of them using just the default setting was good enought for a reveiw...I just find most reveiws from magazines just a little laughable just lately.

I mean I'm a Adobe man most times but i can get better raw conversions from silkypix than ARC and to say its expensive when it is a little cheaper then CO4 (which I also own) which recieved editors choice is ridiculous specialy when silkypix gives better output and more accurate colours (epecialy in the red spectrum).

As for having to use the exposure slider to control highlights I guess he missed the highlight controler and it seems a multitude of other controls, granted it's not the easiest to get to grips with but it seems as if the reveiw  was based on how easy it was to use the push here dummy for straight default raw  conversions..which kinda defeats thec object of using raw.

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Paul
My glass is 4/3rds full :)

MY PBASE GALLERY

What I think could have been done better was the comparison shots.  They should have shown the same shot for each of the software, as comparison.  There was no need for a "control" in this instance as far as I am concerned as there isn't really a right or wrong answer, and the control should have been the camera manufacturers software.  A comparison as above would have allowed us to pick our manufacturers software (or our current software) as the control and compare results afterwards.  From the review you can't see how CO4 compares with Nikon or Adobe products for example. 

I couldn't care less about the scores for any of them anyway.  He could have rated CO4 as pants, 12% and I'd still be using it as I like it. 

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I guess this is all subjective but was also suprised at how inconsistent the comparisons were. They could have taken a file from a common camera from each manufacturer and pushed it through all of the applications tested that support the given camera raw.

With all raw converters it's down to which workflow works best with you and which converter provides best results for given image. In my case when working with Nikon RAW files Capture NX produces the best results when skin tones are critical, otherwise Lightroom or CS3 suffices.

Maybe the comparison photos should be a little larger? They all look the same to me.

Why does Aperture not get marked down for only being compatible with a Mac? Nothing wrong with Apple, but this is a small user base compared to Windows, and all the other software works on both.

How about converters like Bibble - I think this should have been in the comparison, as it gets very good reviews in other mags and is only £30!

Nikon NX costs £120 - shopuldn't it be marked down a little in the review when comparing other offerings that are free from manufacturers? Many people are a bit cheesed off with having to pay so much for the proper software for Nikon (Picture Project just doesn't count). Also, NX is very slow.

Finally, it's very hard to compare the results without spending a huge amount of time tuning the shots. I know I can get similar results from Elements to those I get in Bibble, but it takes a lot of work.

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Chris Seary

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