There are different ways to make jpg files with your Pentax K10d. In fact, there are two ways :
- configure your Pentax K10d to make jpg files.
- configure your camera to make DNG or PEF files and use a software to process theses files to jpg files.
The first solution is far the easiest one and, as we will see, not a so bad choice in fact. To process raw files, we will see sample of 3 different software :
- Pentax Photo Laboratory
- Raw Therapee
- Dcraw
I could test BibblePro and UFraw as well, but UFRaw will not give a better result than dcraw as it uses dcraw it self and BibblePro is not a free software (as a free beer). All tests have been done on Linux Ubuntu. Raw Therapee and dcraw run natively on Linux. Pentax Laboratory runs under Wine, kind of Windows emulator running on Linux.
Here are 4 jpg files from the same raw file but the first one who is the jpg processed inside the camera.
JPG processed by the camera.
The same processed by dcraw
The same processed by Pentax Laboratory
The same processed by Raw Therapee
Scaled to 640×480, all the jpg files look great to me and I can use any of them to publish on my web site. If I have absolutely to choose one, I’ll the jpg from the camera as the automatic processing has been better than me to select the best curve (look at the top left of the photograph), it’s as well this one who is the most dynamic one.
But go to a 640×480 file from a 10Mpx will obviously hide a lot of bad things on the original file. What if you want to print, display at 100% on a very big screen … Let’s make the same test with a 100% crop of each file.
Crop 100% on the jpg file processed inside the camera.
Crop 100% on the jpg file processed by dcraw
Crop 100% on the jpg file processed by Pentax Laboratory
Crop 100% on a jpg file processed by Raw Therapee
Obviously, results differ here and Raw Therapee appears as giving sharper pictures with more definition (please note that all have been sharpened in The Gimp). The EAHD algorithm used by Raw Therapee seems to be better when definition matters at 100%.
In a second position, dcraw seems to give very good results as well. In fact, it’s hard to really make a difference if you make a blind test. I guess that UFraw and any other software based on dcraw will give very good results as well.
Pentax Laboratory is maybe a little bit better than the jpg processed by the camera but it definitely does not answer expectation as Nikon Capture will do for a Nikon camera.
To conclude, if you want to take photographs to publish on your web site on a 640×480 or 800×600 size, just use inside camera jpg, PP will be simpler and faster, you can put hundreds of photographs on one SD card and camera is really faster configured this way. If you want the best to print in big format, check Raw Therapee, you should not be disappointed.
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A Clubsnap member noticed that the in camera processed JPG was over sharpened. That I agreed when I look carefully at it.
The point of my test was to take the best possible solution for each process, I consider that default setting of the camera is the best possible, it seems I’m wrong on this point and sharpening may need to be lower a little bit. I did not test it and I’ll not give you a advise on a correct value here (that will maybe part of an other test).
Anyway, in camera process is not good enough for a 100% high definition file, over sharpening will not change anything for web edition and you want to use RAW files and Raw Therapee for more quality.