Thanks for sending me the raw image. At DPP's default settings, I saw the same results you posted. But after trying some of DPP's optional settings, I came up with a version that is virtually identical to what you posted for Camera RAW 4.1.
My settings were simply +2 on Luminance Noise Reduction, together with 100 apiece for Peripheral Illumination, Distortion and Chromatic aberration. I'd be interested in your opinion on the image quality in DPP for that image with those settings applied.
Thanks Chuck, your setting make it look better, but the red LEDs end up looking yellow, and the image overall is softer than the Capture One version. Adding sharpening over level 5 leads to more issues, and the LEDs still are the wrong color - yellowish, not red. If you look in the original crop I posted you'll see what I am talking about.
I always thought that DPP offered the best image quality, so I am surprised to find this...
Thanks for checking. My take is that "best" is in the eye of the beholder. If you prefer the Phase One rendering, that's your prerogative. I certainly don't mind forwarding your sample images and comments to Canon's DPP software engineers for their consideration. But I would point out that the "red" LEDs don't look red in any of the renderings I've seen, including the Phase One, and also that DPP's luminance NR adjustment goes a long way towards minimizing if not eliminating the jaggies around the edge of the stoplight housing.
For the purposes of this forum, I think it's only fair to mention that DPP has the ability to change the image quality significantly from what you presented in your example. Hopefully, anyone who's interested in following the discussion will take the time to try those adjustments on their own in order to comprehend the depth of DPP's capabilities.
It would be great if you would forward the file along to whoever could look into it. I am fairly sur that something is amiss, as Capture One even with NR off, while showing more noise, has no jaggies issue to speak of. (also, in the sample which I posted in the top of this thread, the LEDs in the right image C1 image do not look red on your monitor?)
By the way, I found this same phenomenon with other 1Ds3 RAW files, where DPP shows jaggies on diagonal lines and Capture One does not.
>> in the sample which I posted in the top of this thread, the LEDs in the right image C1 image do not look red on your monitor?<<
Not on any of the monitors I've used to examine that image. The LEDs themselves look light amber or yellow. The spaces between them and immediately outside them look red in both DPP and C1.
The way I see it, there's an obvious difference in the default settings for noise reduction in DPP versus C1 that accounts for most of the variations between the samples you posted. Default settings, in and of themselves, do not make one program superior or inferior to the other. I'm sure I could make the same file look jaggy in C1 if I played with it, and so could you. As long as the jaggies are correctable, I really don't see their occasional presence in DPP or any other RAW converter as a big issue.