This post lists the main processing capabilities that the converters support. For the previous article in this series, click here.

Overview

Most, but not all, of the converters being tested here support both basic and advanced image processing. Photolemur is, of course, totally automatic. I have made educated guesses at what it supports, based on the results it produces.

Smart Photo Editor is totally unlike the others. Rather than having a host of options, it has just the basic set. It then relies on a vast array of user effects to process and enhance the images. Therefore, although it may not have the capability built into the tool, it probably has an effect that can produce the same or similar result.

Raw Processing – Basic Capabilities and Lens Corrections

The table below details the basic raw conversion abilities of each tool including its ability to correct things such as distortion and vignetting:

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Raw Processing – Image Enhancement Capabilities

All the tools offer a vast range of image adjustments beyond basic RAW processing and camera-lens corrections. The table below lists the main capabilities.

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Observations

What the tools include is not surprising. What they exclude often is.

DXO provides a Film Pack add-on to allow it add film-grain effects. This has to be purchased separately. Its camera and lens profile support is the most advanced, as is its sharpening and noise reduction.

Luminar lacks a red-eye removal tool. It does have a host of unique tools, including an effective Polarisar filter. These will be considered when I look at Luminar in more detail.

Lightroom is a very mature product and does most things. It lacks support for Layers.

Exposure X3 is relatively new to the RAW processing world and currently lacks Dehazing and, more significantly, chromatic aberration removal. Hopefully they’ll add that sooner rather than later.

Smart Photo Editor is a unique product in that it’s not trying to be another tool that does what all the others do. It has many unique abilities but does lack support for some of the more basic operations.

Photolemur does just about everything but nothing can be adjusted manually.

In the next post I’ll look at Photolemur in a bit more depth…