Seemingly awful RAW rendering for Nikon D80

Question

I installed the RAW support update, and tested out how it looked when importing an image from my D80.
I have been using the Adobe Lightroom Beta, and whilst I like it in a lot of ways, I thought Aperture looked great for some things. Unfortunately the rendering of RAW files for my camera (on screen) looks awful compared to the way Adobe lightroom treats them.
Take a look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarmes/tags/raw
All I did in each case, was import into the application and adjust the white balance temp to 2550k. It looks great on screen in lightroom, and completely washed out and generally rubbish in Aperture.
Anyone have any ideas why? Is it just poor rendering of the specific flavour of raw, or are there other settings I can change?

Answer 1

Ah ok, I wondered about that - but then I thought that if you open up a RAW image it should be exactly as it was shot in the camera, that's the point of RAW isn't it.<<</div>
It is, but RAW is only RAW in the same sense a film negative is. It must be interpreted and rendered to screen, or output-- just like a negative needs to be at least contact-printed to make sense of.
n.b. Yes, I know you can get an ABSOLUTE sense of a negative with a densitometer, but you know what I'm getting at!
In any case, different apps apply different default interpretations. So to merely slam a file into LR or AP using each app's default or Auto setting really doesn't tell you that much.
To better compare, you might want to shoot a Macbeth chart, set white balance for each, set the same white and black levels, then see how each app deviates on the individual colors. You might also shoot a scene, set identical white balance, then (With sharpening and NR OFF) look at how each convertor renders the image.
Whatever you do, try to minimize the variables in your testing. Also, I ought to say that in my experience, with the proper tweaking, most, though not all, differences between RAW renderings can be eliminated.
Aperture does tend to get slammed for some noise/posterization effects in swaths of sky (See James Duncan Davidson's PhotoBlog) , though this may be ameliorated, others have said, by lowering the Boost. YMMV.
And remember. . . THERE IS NO PERFECT APP OR MAGIC BULLET!