Interesting,
1: D A C B E
2: C B E D A
3: E B C A D
4: A E C D B
5: D A B C E
Without context, I thought we were developing an awesome never seen before demosaicing algorithm. 
With images like this you end up with several versions of GOOD, from each processing approach, and there really is almost no value comparing these images cos they are pretty close to each other and unless one saw them side by side, any of them would be acceptable…
The choice of tool should really come down to - workflow efficiency, and features, and of course cost in money and time (i.e which one takes longer to get a good result).
Ultimately the one you enjoy using the most, is the one you will become most proficient with, and most familiar with and end up delivering the best results with.
I for example tried Raw Therapee, Darktable, Capture One.
Capture One was so non intuitive for me, and I simply could not find my way round the user interface, cos in my opinion, there was very little consistency from feature to feature, so while eventually I got acceptable results, I would never bother trying to use it again.
Raw Therapee - I stopped using for only one reason - the display of the image on screen was really poor, I had to resort to using other image viewers to cross check the final result…
Darktable - swings the other way, the image in darktable looks so good, I feel that the image is degraded somewhat, whenever I view it in any other viewer or on the web. Darktable gives me the best view during editing - no second guesses.
I first considered overall appearance (fit to screen), then detailed (view 100%). I treated overall appearance as more important than detailed.
1
a, b, d, c, e
2
c, e, a, d, b
3
b, c, e, a, d
4
e, c, d, b, a
5
d, c, a, b, e
The advantage of a raw development software over ooc jpeg is not the default “neutral” preset but the possibilities to change things to your liking. So, I would hope the ooc jpeg comes out best, because the camera developers put a lot of thought into the software 
.
Since this is just a small experiment, it’s already time for some results! Thank you to everyone who took the time to make the lists. 
I mapped your choices back to the original processing methods. Then I gave each first choice 1 point, each second choice 2 points, and so on. The sums give some idea of the general preference for a certain method.
In the summarized results I excluded the people who did not give the ranking for each list, or who did not make the ranking for each image.
The results
Summed rank order (lower = more preference)
| Process | Score |
|---|---|
| RawTherapee | 103 |
| Camera JPEG | 123 |
| Lightroom | 137 |
| darktable | 151 |
| DxO Photolab | 161 |
Amount of Nth-choices (higher = more preference)
| Process | Count of 1° | | | Count of 1° + 2° | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RawTherapee | 16 | 1st | | | 23 | 1st |
| darktable | 10 | 2nd | | | 16 | 4th |
| DxO Photolab | 8 | 3rd | | | 13 | 5th |
| Camera JPEG | 6 | 4th | | | 21 | 2nd |
| Lightroom | 5 | 5th | | | 17 | 3rd |
I could also dive further into the personal responses, but I haven’t got the time to do so now. All I can say so far is that everybody’s first choices were always mixed (no one picked the same processing method 5 times out of 5). The closest came @CarVac who choose the RawTherapee processing 4 times as his number 1, and the remaining number 1 was for darktable. So, congrats on being the most biased participant (* just a joke *)
Also, the OOC JPEGs has never been chosen more than twice as the preferred processing method.
5 Likes
I always did like the way RT handles colors.
Are you going to reveal a key to which images were processed how?