There has been some debate concerning the ability of Adobe Camera Raw to extract the highest image quality from the 50D raw files. Many users are reporting that Canon's Digital Photo Professional, which is supplied with the camera, is doing a better job.
I'll explore this claim by comparing unaltered images converted directly from Adobe Lightroom and DPP. I'll be using the cabin image I used to compare noise and resolution detail with noise reduction.
Again, these are straight conversions without any alterations, except for conversion to JPG. I'm using Adobe Camera Raw version 4.6
Click on the magnifying glass beneath each image to get a full 100% crop view.
Conclusions.
It is obvious to me that Adobe Camera Raw ver 4.6 is not creating as detailed and sharp an image as Digital Photo Professional ver 3.5.0.1. I've played with both files in 16 Bit Tiff format as well and DPP is doing a better job of converting the raw image no matter how I slice it.