Can you answer a couple of questions:
When you used your 350D did you have a custom camera profile for use in Qimage? There is not one available yet for the 500D so that prompts me to ask what have you what raw preferences are set to in Qimage? It looks as though you may have sRGB set rather than Adobe RGB.
Using Adobe RGB will give more saturated colours than sRGB, and a custom profile will be better still.
Check you raw settings and let us know how you get on.
Terry.

All I can say is that with my 350D, the difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB is significant; the difference between Adobe RGB and a custom camera profile is less but noticeable.
Have you another raw converter that you can try?
Hopefully someone else has some more ideas for you.
Terry.

I find it hard to believe that FSViewer does a better job. I've just downloaded it and tried it out. It does not even seem to be colour management aware.
Have you got Qimage set up ok. in that respect with a good monitor profile? That's the only other thing that comes to mind.
Terry.

If you don't mind me asking a couple questions

1. Is FSViewer  *FastStone Image Viewer*?
    I did a search an that is what came up.

2. Is this about viewing thumbs in the programs or viewing thumbs made for the internet?

The reason I ask is I think I have notice some difference in some of my thumbs in some of my other programs.
But then again my eyes are not that great.

Thanks
Ya Me

[quote
With CR2's from the 350d the colors (saturation) was fine.
I added some thumbs that (hopefully) show what I mean.
The jpg's on the left, the CR2's on the right. Especially the reds and greens look dull.
Does anybody have an explanation?

[/quote]

I need to know a few more details, if you can indulge me.
Just to eliminate any possible corrupted or wrong monitor profile, can we turn it off for a few minutes and the rebuild thumbs?
Now we have a level playing field.
I assume you have a few images from each camera in a folder so you can compare.
Next hover the mouse over one of the thumbs and click the spacebar. You will not get a profiling label, and you should be seeing a hugh res screen of that shot.
Any difference? Are the colors better or worse?
Now put the monitor profile back on, rebuild thumbs, and try it again.

BTW, I have eyes like Yame, but something is bothering me about the sample images. The one with the brighter red shirt has an almost washed out sky compared to the one on the right. Looks like added contrast, some manipulation has taken place?

Next I would look at the settings of any software that you use to decode raw besides QSE.
QSE will only adjust your USM (sharpness), your color space that you chose, and a possible adaptive noise reduction if the ISO is high. That's it! It does an auto exposure which allows you to tweak later.
Other software, have preset contrast, brightness, saturation, exposure adjustment, tint, color temperature, that applies itself to the raw image, and many people think they didn't do anything to the image; but the software did anyway.
Have a look.
The JPGS, are from you shooting RAW + JPG or did you extract the JPG from the raw image.
Any clues?

Fred

That's exactly what I am trying to figure out: A thumb problem or a comparative image problem?

Fred

Phew, lot's a questions.
First off, let me say that I did not change anything in Qimage or my monitor color profile (Pantone Huey), the only thing that's different (ahum, see below) is that I now have CR2's from a Canon 500d instead of a 350d.
The only thing I wasn't sure of, was the color profile in the 350d compared to the 500d - in the 500d I had sRGB, now I changed it to Adobe.
I'm still not impressed - Qimage does not give me a neutral white balance.
The first picture is what Canon's own Digital Photo Pofessional makes of it, as far as I can tell the WB is ok,
The next is (a screenshot of) the thumb in Qimage, and you have to believe me: the jpg and the print look the same. It is not a thumb-problem, the washed out colors carried through to the jpg en the prints.