Normally I use photoshop, but I thought I would try Silkypix & Raw Therapee and see if they differed in noise & sharpness. Below is a comparison of an image processed in a 3 applications, using similar settings:
Photoshop CS4
100% Crop
Raw Therapee
100% Crop
Silkypix Pro 3
100% Crop
It seems from the pictures I have processed, that Silkypix manages to create slighty sharper images with less noise. Admitedly, this is under very close inspection and most people won’t notice. Many compact cameras suffer from noise, and getting as much detail from a photo without losing to much quality can be important.
Do you use different software? Here is the RAW file for download and maybe you can see what results you get and post them back here.
Thanks
James