Aperture 2.0 vs Lightroom 1.3 at High ISO
Most of my professional photographic work to date has been in low light situations. Sometimes I have enough light to shoot at a decent speed and aperture at ISO 1000 or ISO 1600. Sometimes I don't. When I don't, I sometimes crank up the ISO to 3200 and sometimes I set up remote flashes and drop the ISO to something reasonable. At the Money:Tech 2008 conference a few weeks ago in New York City, I mostly took the high ISO approach and shot almost exclusively at ISO 3200 with my Canon 1D Mark III's. Of course, an ISO 3200 image has noise in it. The question is how well does the combination of camera and RAW processor render that noise. As part of my work comparing Aperture 2.0 to Lightroom 1.3, I examined a few of my shots from Money:Tech.
For example, here's a shot of Jason Knight of Wesabe on stage:
This shot was processed in Lightroom, but to even up the comparison as much as is possible given two entirely different tools, I went back and removed the adjustments I made. Here's a detail at 100% pixels of the photo as it was rendered by the new Aperture 2.0 RAW engine:
Now, here's a detail of the same shot as rendered by Adobe Camera Raw:
Shooting at ISO 3200 is about as far as you want to push the envelope with Canon gear. Compared to what was state of the art just a few years ago, it's incredible that I'm getting usable images at this speed. Of course, the Nikon D3 is the reigning high ISO champ, and I'm really curious to see how high ISO images at 6400 from the D3 look pushed both Aperture and Lightroom. But, unless Nikon decides to drop a test kit for me to try, I'll have to leave such comparisons to other people for now.
In the meantime, here's another example, this time of Steve Skiena:
And, here's the 100% detail from Aperture:
Really, the two renderings are pretty darn close to each other. If you factor out noise differences and just look at color and detail rendering, they're amazingly close. If you're not pixel peeping, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, and I'd bet that most people wouldn't be able to. Even while pixel peeping, the two are very close to each other, especially considering that these renderings are before any further processing. Add a touch of noise reduction to the Aperture rendering, or turn down the ACR noise reduction a touch, and they'd probably be even closer.
Bottom line: It's hard to have a favorite rendering here. And that, in my book, is goodness. It means that both products are making equally good use of the RAW data from the Canon CR2 format and providing results that serve as a solid foundation to work with. Of course, this comparison is just with one particular camera and the rendering from Nikon RAW data might show more differences. Also, the high ISO realm isn't the only kind of RAW rendering that matters. I'll be taking a look at comparing the results from lower ISO images as well.
What do you think? Which do you like better? Feel free to leave comments below about this comparison.
14 Comments
Just like you, I like the fine grain in the Aperture ones better, but it’s really hard to come up with sensible reasons to prefer one over the other, overall.
Most of all, these pictures are a testament to how good the sensor in the 1D MkIII is. I’d love to see a comparison with the D3, even though my dream camera at the moment is the D300.
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The ACR conversions look a bit sharper to me, but Aperture 2’s engine looks a lot better than 1.5. I did a comparison of one of my own 30D ISO 3200 images between 1.5 and 2.0 and the difference was incredible.
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Instinctively I have a slight preference for the Aperture samples. Something about the uniformity of the grain perhaps. But there is very little between them indeed.
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The Aperture processing looks a little more natural to my eye.
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A casual glance at the photos doesn’t attract any unwarranted attention to one or the other. A closer look at them, though, and I’d have to agree that the finer, better distributed noise in the Aperture 2 conversion looks better, or crisper.
I don’t notice it so much in the skin tones, but it is noticeable in the backgrounds of both images. In the second image, it seems to me that the light being reflected off his glasses is slightly less diffuse in the Aperture image.
I think, in a blind test, it’d be really hard to see the differences.
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Interesting. Unlike all the other respondents thus far, I actually prefer Adobe Lightroom’s rendering. This said even though I actually use Aperture 2 myself.
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I too like the finer grain the Aperture version produces. But unless you’re cropping heavily, as you say, it requires pixel peeping to see the difference.
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I also don’t see much difference and the Aperture 2.0 grain is creamier, but to me it is more apparent that the LR version is brighter.
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I was also looking forward to seeing how high-ISO pictures would improve with Aperture 2.0.
I noticed some improvements, but there are still areas that need work. I work with ISO 3200 in much more difficult available-night conditions and have noted some issues. After reviewing them in Aperture 2.0 and reading your post, I was spurred to make my own report on this with example pictures.
http://www.blackcore.com/2008/02/24/raw-converters-at-iso-3200/
If you still have contacts within the Aperture team, can you please pass on this to them. I have every reason to believe that they will find this of interest.
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I like the better detail I’m seeing in the ACR conversion, but I also like the finer grain of the Aperture conversion. I guess I can’t have my cake and eat it too.
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This is very interesting and thanks for sharing this. But let’s not draw any conclusion too fast. I’m working with D3 bodies and have been very disappointed with Lightroom high-Iso rendering. It’s all about grain / noise (and sharpness sometimes). Contrast and colors can always be tweaked in a satisfying way, but you can’t redraw noise when it looks ugly !
Aperture 2 is capable of providing a much better-looking noise, round, film-like, very pleasing to look at. Lightroom produces… well… little vertical and horizontal lines next to flat areas (depending on noise reduction settings), all this mixed in a strange way.
That’s why tools like AP2 or LR must be tested before purchase, with the bodies we’re working with. Because here, it seems to work absolutely fine with the MKIII !
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I think that AP 2 is a fantastic improvement over 1.5 and very close to LR now. That said, it seems like quite a bit more work to get there with Aperture. With LR the default already looks great and a few tweaks later, I’m finished. With AP 2 the default is not as nice and I have to add adjustment sliders before I can adjust because they are not present by default.
I just switched to LR a month ago but I have to say that for me the results and speed of editing makes staying with LR an easy choice.
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What do you think about the color noise difference between LR an AP2?
I prefer the LR method. When looking at high ISO images I took inside dark buildings, LR renders color noise reduction way better, I can’t reduce the color noise in AP2 as much as in LR.
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Pierre: Thanks for weighing in about the Nikon D3. I agree that with the mkIII, any differences are quibbles in the larger picture. It's interesting to hear that the differences are greater with Nikon RAW files.
Luc: I pretty much think it's a wash between LR and Ap2, especially when viewing at anything less than 100%. I am interested to see how the state of the art of noise reduction at the extremes moves forward, but I'm also at the point where I only want to use ISO 3200 when absolutely necessary.
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