You may well have seen the blog post I made at the time Capture One 7.02 was released, which compared the OOC Jpegs with Lightroom (LR) and Capture One (C1). I wanted to extend this comparison to include Aperture, since its really very good RAW conversion capability was included. I also wanted to update the LR samples to LR 4.4 (since more advanced support for X-trans cameras was released).

By way of warning, in colour, I like punchy output verging on the over saturated and over sharpened… I strongly recommend you click through and enlarge the full versions as differences aren’t fully visible on these web/blog embedded versions.

Example 1 – OOC Jpeg is first, C1 output second, LR is third, Aperture fourth.

Example 2 – OOC Jpeg is first, C1 output second, LR output third. Note that with this one the original shot was underexposed by way of an over adjustment of exposure compensation by me (-1.67) to compensate for high dynamic range which seemed beyond the DR recovery function of the camera. To give a fairer comparison I reprocessed the OOC jpeg in camera to pump up the exposure by +1:

Example 3 – OOC Jpeg is first, C1 output second, LR third. Note that with this one the original shot was underexposed as above for example 3 and to give a fairer comparison I reprocessed the OOC jpeg in camera to pump up the exposure by +1:

Example 4 – OOC Jpeg is first, C1 output second, LR is third.

Personally, I think that Aperture has the most artefact free output (particularly at 100%), but that C1 and LR have much better dynamic range extension. So if your exposure is spot on, Aperture may be the best RAW processor, otherwise take your pick between LR or C1.