Beyer pattern on Nikon D700 and D300 images

[mark9]

I'm re-visiting AfterShot and trying version 2.2.1 (on Linux), prompted by a single image that I wanted to crop some detail from.

What I've tried shows a visible beyer pattern in my Nikon RAW images from my D700 (and D300) cameras. It becomes particularly visible when sharpening is applied.

For comparison I attach a screenshot. At the bottom I loaded in the NEF file from a D700 camera, and applied sharpening. At the top, I converted to a TIFF using dcraw and applied the same sharpening, along with a rough match for exposure and contrast. The NEF decoding shows the obvious beyer pattern.

I can't be sure if this is a regression as I've not been using earlier versions AfterShot; I just installed the trial of this one.

Obviously it's a clumsy workflow to pass everything through dcraw, and I think it's reasonable to expect AfterShot to be at least as good, if not better, than the open source tool.

I don't /feel/ I'm being pedantic here; the pattern is quite prominent and so I'd feel doubtful about doing all my image processing in AfterShot. It's passable but this will always nag me (and in this case I can't use it for a large image or crop). Am I expecting too much, or is this an indication something is not quite right with AfterShot's Nikon decoding?

Many thanks
Mark