RAW convertor programs - Pentax Lab 3 vs Photoshop CS

I don't shot much RAW files, so I really don't pay much attentions to the RAW convertor program. I only tried a few programs: Pentax Lab 2 and 3, Photoshop CS, and Pixmantic Rawshooter. The CS's color is too cool (when compare to the jpeg shots from the same scene), and Rawshooter is too sharp and shown jizsaw edges in some occasions. So I just keep using the Pentax program in the pass.

However, a friend using Pentax complained the Pentax Lab 3 sucks and loss a lot of details. In that comparision, he compared it with Silkpix, but un-sharpen mask was applied when he use the Silkpix program. So that is not a good comparision.

I don't have Silkpix, so I just do a quick test Against Photoshop CS. Below is the 100% crop of a screen shot, side by side comparsion:

Camera: Pentax istD
Lens: Sigma 105/2.8 EX DG macro
Camera setting: all parameters set to "0"
RAW conversion settings: all use camera setting, ie: no tuning.
*CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE*



I don't find any difference in terms of sharpness. The color, as I experienced before, is that Photoshop gave a cooler color tone, but that's easy to correct in the parameters of Photoshop RAW conversion.

One final note: the image responsed very well to un-sharp mask filter in Photoshop, and does not show much artifices even with aggressive setting. It's very 'processable' in short.