Raw conversion for A7Ii

[cwheuston]

May I ask all experienced hands here what is the best raw converter and post processing software for raw files from A7 II?

[Guest all8]

Capture One has a free (for Sony with limited feature set) and around 60 € full (Sony ONLY) version. Try the free version, see if you like it.

[cwheuston]

Thanks for the reply. Will try it.

[olemartinorg]

I use AfterShot Pro 2. It costs about 45 euros for the full version (well worth the money), and you can try it out for 30 or 60 days (i did, fell in love with it and bought it). Look it up on Youtube, there's a few comparisons between it and Lightroom, and it usually wins.

 

This video is quite long, but it goes over most of the tools and what you need to know:

 

You can also follow along with your own photos. I find i can also look up techniques for lightroom (lots of that on youtube) as long as i know the naming differences (such as clarity in lightroom being local contrast in AfterShot).

 

Good luck!

 

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[lisabeaney]

I use Lightroom... as part of Adobe's Creative Cloud Photographers package.. it comes with a full version of Photoshop and costs £8.57 per month

[Mathias]

Lightroom CC here (photography plan including Photoshop CC for 10$ a month).

Adobe has a lot to offer here including lens and camera profiles. I also use the iOS app and sync my photos to the cloud as a lowres preview, they give you unlimited storage for that.

 

Tried out Capture One, didnt like the library as much but it has very powerful editing features including powerful color- and dedicated skin tone control.

[Verax]

I also use Lightroom.  The workflow from Camera to final product is so easy and smooth with Lightroom, that it would be really hard for me to use anything else.

[christer]

Capture One gives crisper and sharper images with much more highlight detail than LR. Unless you have used LR for a long time and got very accustomed to it, C1 is not more difficult to work with. As Mathias said, the C1 library is not to everybody's taste.

 

The C1 "for Sony only" version is a very good buy (no monthly fees) and updates are free.

[olemartinorg]

Capture One gives crisper and sharper images with much more highlight detail than LR.

 

Do you have a source for that, or is it your own subjective opinion? They both process the same RAW files, and you can apply more or less sharpening to the images in both tools (and in AfterShot, as i mentioned I use).

[lo9rd]

That's the thing with RAW, it's only data, it's up to the software to decide how to decode it into an image. RAW convertors do this is different ways so while I've not tested C1 side by side with LR, when using it's trial I felt that many of my images looked nicer than those coming from Lightroom.

[holmes4]

Throwing in another option, I use DxO Optics Pro.

[alastc]

I use lightroom, but export to DXO for raw conversion.

 

I find DXO does a better job by default, better colours and contrast, not something that affects my Canon images where there is less difference.

[Philber]

After years of LightRoom, I also use Capture One, and find that RAW conversion is significantly better, and the PP tools more powerful. I wrote a couple of blog posts about it, but don't want to seem to push that on another Website.

However, since that post 2 things happened, one positive for LightRoom, as it now handles HDR (multiple) shots, and one negative: they introduced de-hazing, but only on the monthly rental CC version. That is why I left Adobe in the first place: they tried to strong-arm their clients into an eternity of monthly rentals, and I feared the day when I would lose access to my files and/or edits if ever I stopped paying, even though I might have paid a lot more than I would have for an an outright licence. I still hate that business model, and to see them not include an attractive upgrade on the purchase model confirms I was right to leave. That this is a priority for me, and that I find Capture One a superior piece of software are individual choices, though, and others are welcome to feel otherwise.

[christer]

Do you have a source for that, or is it your own subjective opinion? They both process the same RAW files, and you can apply more or less sharpening to the images in both tools (and in AfterShot, as i mentioned I use).

 

That is my personal opinion based on side-by-side comparisons of half a dozen pictures processed in both LR and C1 trying to achieve the same quality with LR as I obtain with C1. BTW, I use the A7r, often on a heavy tripod, and I have a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I often print A3+ on an Epson R 3000.

 

The day before yesterday my wife took me to Aux armes de Bruxelles where I had dover sole in sauce dugléré. It was real awful. This morning my wife went to the fishmonger's in Hauteville-sur-mer, bought the same fish and cooked it for me this evening, also in sauce dugléré. It was fantastic. Same fish but different result. Same RAW files, different result.