editing software or shareware

[andyland]

Can anyone help with this?
what is the best shareware editor system? I dint want to get photo shop yet
can any do basic edits on NEF/RAW?
and can they upsample a image to 40 MG or near

thanks Andy

[Manfred M]

Use the View NX2 that came with your Nikon to do the RAW conversions and use GIMP as your editor. GIMP is freeware and is as close to Photoshop as you can get for free.

[flashback]

I agree with Manfred about GIMP. For some reason I haven't had much luck with NX2 for RAW. I downloaded UFRaw (compatible with GIMP) but it seemed buggy and didn't want to play with GIMP. I've since downloaded RawTherapy (also FREE).
For some reason I am not able to go from RT directly to GIMP so I just save it to the desktop and then open with GIMP.

[jcuknz]

It does depend somewhat on what you call editing, or perhaps better ... what aspect of editing you wish to do. Once you get the raw file sorted into a tiff file there are a large range of programmes available. The NX2 may do all you want to do at this stage
I downloaded GIMPshop the other day and it is so strange and incomprehensible I probably will delete it and not try to understand it Aparently it is slanted for PS users to understand it. Heaven help them
For simple stuff you could try Paint dot Net which as a Paint Shop Pro user of several years I found relatively easy to use. For a not so simple task awhile back I did an exercise using P.N, PSP, and Photoshop and found the results from very little if at all different ... how much that was the programmes and how much ME I really cannot say

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_editors#List
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...aphics_editors

[ajohnw]

I would suggest Rawtherapee and then the GIMP for things that rawtherapee can't do. That's likely to mostly be dodging, burning and cloning but there are lots of plugins available that do all sorts of things and layer work etc if needed.

The manual for Rawtherapee gives reasonable insight into the operation of it's facilities and it also has it's own forum. Best read all of the manual when you install as other software should be installed as well.

If a problem such as exporting to the GIMP best ask on the forum. It might just be a setup problem.

John
-