I actually agree that Aperture's raw conversions look closer to Capture NX's, though that doesn't mean I prefer them. To my eyes they are a little "soupy", while Adobe retains a little more detail at the cost of a small loss in saturation. But that's a very unscientific, impressionistic "soupy" based on trying some more difficult images with reds and skin tones.
But going back to Philmar's challenge, I'd argue that among these programs, whatever comes out of fine art pixel peeping of individual images is less of a distinguishing factor than how long it takes to get a number of pictures "finished" or ready, which also affects the time you can spend on the real winners. In that regard, I'm amazed Aperture 2.0 didn't do something with the Lift and Stamp two step - Lightroom's Auto Sync mode is so much more efficient.
John
