Another thread got me thinking about RAW files and their conversion.
Whilst not a technical person I think I have a reasonable understanding of the RAW file format and the differences between RAW and JPEG.

This thread is not meant to be a debate of RAW vs JPEG.

Its about trying to understand how each third party RAW converter interprets the RAW file produced by the camera.
I read somewhere that most in house software use the in camera settings selected at the time the image was shot as the starting point which then represents the preview image on your screen.
But most third party RAW conversion software, do not apply the in camera settings.

My understanding is every third party RAW converter chooses a set of default adjustments as its starting point when it first demosaics a file. Most (all) third party RAW converters will also apply other default adjustments when opening the file such as exposure, lens corrections, denoising and sharpening.
So the same RAW file opened in any number of RAW converters will produce different results depending on the software’s interpretation of the information the camera has embedded in the file. So what is really a RAW file?

I wonder how the RAW developers engineer the algorithms and come up with how their program interprets the RAW file?
Do they then look at the image on screen and make a judgement based on what they see?

This article : http://www.nomadlens.com/raw-converters-comparison
does some interesting comparisons of RAW converters and if you look at page 2. (Defaults) each one appears different.

Nevertheless it would appear then that all the results become subjective through the eyes of the viewer depending on their taste of contrast, colour, noise, sharpness etc.
Other factors also come into play such as viewing environment, quality of monitor, colour calibration etc.

So I suspect if 10 people viewed the same RAW file on the same monitor in the same environment using a number of different RAW converters at their default settings , they would have different preferences as which converter produced the most pleasing image.

Even creating your own presets or camera profiles becomes a matter of personal taste.

After trying a number of third party RAW converters, I have lately reverted to using Olympus Viewer 3 to convert my Olympus RAW files (.ORFs).
Whilst it is fairly clunky and slow with limited exposure corrections/features, to my eyes the Olympus software renders the raw files in the most pleasing way.
I rarely make any changes to settings in OV3 but have the option to do so if required. I then export them as 16 bit TIFFs to Photoshop.
Basically this is my starting point to make further adjustments/enhancements in Photoshop as I consider are necessary.

Any thoughts/comments on RAW conversion, RAW converters you prefer would be welcome.
Dennis