If you haven’t read the first two parts please take a look at them, because there you may see the images unsharpened and sharpened with the native tools of each raw converter, and you’ll learn about the specifics of this comparison.
Raw Converters Mega Test part I
Raw Converters Mega Test part II
Here I used the images from the first part, the unsharpened ones, but I worked them with a 4 rounds sharpening routine in Photoshop CS5.
The routine, the same for all the pictures, consists in:
1) SmartSharpen amount 10, radius 10, “remove lens blur”, “more accurate” checked
2) SmartSharpen amount 40, radius 1, “remove lens blur”, “more accurate” checked
3) Unsharp Mask amount 20, radius 0,5, threshold 0
4) Unsharp Mask amount 39, radius 1, threshold 11
This routine sharpens both the macro and the micro detail; obviously the values above would need to be tailored to each image (but are a good starting point); I kept them constant to allow the comparison between the crops.
Please, keep in mind that some of the images may look a bit oversharpened here at 100% on screen, but than they will look good once printed.
To my eyes: Apple Preview and Rawker win hands down, closely followed by RawDeveloper.
100% crops, 4 rounds sharpening
