White balance test

Demosaicing test

Highlight recovery test

Shadow recovery test

Noise reduction test

Sharpening test

Test images download page

 

Demosaicing test

Typical Bayer pattern sensors are able to detect only one color per pixel (red green or blue). Demosaicing algorithm interpolates the colors creating a full color image. A perfect demosaicing method should give great resolving power, sharp, still not jagged edges, small noise (see noise reduction test for comparison) and no artifacts (wrong colors, wrong interpolation directions etc.)

What we are looking at?

The default view is a crop from in camera jpeg. It shows the results from a decent DSLR (Konica Minolta dynax 7D). Every tested application shows a bit different contrast, colors and brightness - this is not the result of demosaicing algorithm but color rendering.
 
White balance was always manually set to 9900K what corresponds to the color temperature of the LCD (yes - the pattern was displayed on LCD and then photographed). Images were not post processed (all noise reduction, sharpening and other tools were off) but it was upscaled 200% using ImageMagick.

Linux software

Bibble by Bibblelabs version 4.9.8e Lite was tested without any artifact reduction and with artifact supression and fringe reduction turned on.
 
DCRaw by Dave Coffin version 8.81 allows to set number of chroma smoothing iterations for all four supported demosaicing algorithms: bilinear, VNG, PPG and AHD. All algorithms are tested without it (zero number of iterations) and with two of them (the same name convention as with RawTherapee).
 
Lightzone by Lightcrafts version 3.4 (beta)
 
Raw Therapee by Gábor Horváth version 2.3 allows to select from three demosaicing algorithms: HPHD, EAHD and 4 color VNG, and set number of iterations of color smoothing for all of them. I present results of pure interpolation (HPHD(0), EAHD(0) and 4VNG(0)) and default number of color smoothing iterations set by designer (HPHD(1), EAHD(2) and 4VNG(2)).
 

Non-linux software

Capture One by Phase One version 4.0.1
 
DxO Optics by DxO Labs version 5.0.4 supports the combination of lens and camera used to take this shot.
 
Helicon Filter by HeliconSoft version 4.84 allows to use DCRaw and its demosaicing algorithms, or native algorithms. Here I present only the best native one - AHD.
 
Kolev RAW by Andrej Kolev version 0.99 BR 3
 
Photoshop Lightroom 2 beta 1 by Adobe .
 
Photostudio Darkroom 1.5 by Arcsoft
 
Raw Magick Lite by Raw Magick Team version 1.5 claims to have the best demosaicing algorithm ever. I must admit that there are several values that can be passed to the algorithm therefore tuning is indeed possible. The results speak for themselves. I present the best settings I could find for this test image.
 
SilkyPix Developer Studio by Ichikawa Soft Laboratory version 3.0.18.3 beta allows to tweak the demosaicing sharpness. I present two extreme settings and the default one.
 

DCRaw bilinear (0)	DCRaw bilinear (2)	DCRaw VNG (0)	DCRaw VNG (2)
DCRaw PPG (0)	DCRaw PPG (2)	DCRaw AHD (0)	DCRaw AHD (2)
Bibble	Bibble (artifact reduction)	RT HPHD (0)	RT HPHD (1)
RT EAHD (0)	RT EAHD (2)	RT 4 color VNG (0)	RT 4 color VNG (2)
LightZone
***	***	***	***
Capture1	Lightroom	DXO	Helicon Filter (native AHD)
SilkyPix (min)	SilkyPix (default)	SilkyPix (max)	Raw Magick (optimum)
Kolev RAW	Photo Studio