Has someone compared LR to PhotoNinja?

[Guest]

http://www.picturecode.com/index.php

how does LR and PhotoNinja compare in image quality?

the reviewer seem to be impressed.

but how much is just PR blahblah (makes small format camera images look like medium format) .... how much is fact?

“I have been using Photo Ninja for a while now and I must confess that the image quality is amazing. Better than any other raw converter I have ever used. The images get this ‘realistic’ look. I cannot describe it better than that.” 

Tomas Hellström Photography enthusiast, Sweden

“Photo Ninja makes small format camera images look like medium format work -- simply fantastic!”

Pete Myers Fine art photographer, Santa Fe, NM.

“...a stellar raw converter...” 

Rob Galbraith

“The image quality this program produces absolutely destroys any other raw converter I've tried in terms of colour reproduction, exposure controls, and noise reduction. ” 

Mark van Dam Wedding photographer, Wasaga Beach, Ontario

edit:

i have spend a few minutes with it.
loaded some DNG files and compared it to LR.

i noticed that the highlight and shadow adjustments in photoninja work more restricted.

they don´t affect the medium tones as much as LR.
for the images i tried it on i liked it better then lightroom.

the colors are way better out of the box. that really suprises me.

i have only looked at a dozend of photos yet but color rendition seems to be great out of the box.

the photos i have looked at show a blue yamaha R1 bike on a racetrack.
no matter what LR profile i use the color is off by default (too purble or too light blue).

the photoninja color is SPOT ON without any editing.

i sure will spend some more time testing photoninja.

here is a crop from an image (from the image backround, not in focus. but look how much detail photoninja managed to show).

best i could achive with LR and with photoninja.

http://i.imgur.com/8b72x.jpg

[areohbee]

Thanks again Harrie, and also: consider optimizing adjustments in both, then compare.

e.g. Lr version seems to need -blacks, and PN version probably needs some recovery.

As you probably know, Lr4 has automatic highlight recovery which can not be disabled, and is very good, and it may not show clipping in the same way...

Cheers,

Rob

[HarrieB]

Been working with LR from version 2 but never found the automatic highlight recovery.... What am I missing here? You don't mean the useless Auto-tone, do you?

Harrie

[areohbee]

harrieb wrote:

Been working with LR from version 2 but never found the automatic highlight recovery.... What am I missing here?

It's new to Lr4/PV2012. Try switching to PV2010 (with a photo that has highlight clipping) to see the difference.

[HarrieB]

After trying to edit my post I got a message that something went wrong. So I hope this way I can add what I wanted:

And still I'm looking for maybe something instead of DxO when I need very quick results. Unfortunately I didn.t find any batch-capability in PN. Is it there, somewhere hidden?

[HarrieB]

For new comparising shots and my conclusion please see http://members.chello.nl/h.borgers1/tijdelijk/LRPN.htm

This information will be there for a limited time.

Thank you all for your interest,

Harrie