RAW files - which software?

[Dansk]

I find myself in that 'in between' section more often than not. I bought an Olympus E-P1 because I wanted something in between a compact and a DSLR. It's all about getting the most power in the smallest, most functional package as far as I'm concerned.

[Colin Southern]

The bottom line for me is it's free, and that's why I wasn't including anything by Adobe in my comparison. If you want to pit RawTherapee against Adobe, there's no question which will win. One is made by volunteers, the other is made by a team of highly paid programmers. It's just not a fair fight.

The question is how important a consideration money is in your decision. (For me it was a deal-breaker if it cost anything--unless I stood to gain a significant amount of functionality by paying--but that's my personal preference.) I'll stand by my assertion that RT is the best of the free software by a significant distance, but I'll happily concede that it's bested by Adobe. That's not something to be ashamed of, IMO.

Hi Kevin,

I agree with you - and as I say, I'm not knocking RT. If I was shooting overseas without a PC - popped in for a cuppa - and "only" had RT to process my images then I'm sure the end result would be exactly the same as had I used ACR in most cases. I guess the point I'm trying to make though is that in a real world commercial environment things other than price enter into the equasion. Perhaps a good example would be many years ago an ex client decided to run with a linux based server rather than a Microsoft authored server - presumably because the former was free and the latter anything but free. Unfortunately, when something went wrong it wasn't possible to just pick up the phone an employ the services of a certified linux engineer whereas it would be a lot easier to pick up the phone and employ the services of a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. In the end (with down-time, loss of business, loss of reputation) one product cost less to acquire, but cost a lot more than the other in the long run.

For me the Adobe Photoshop system (and it is an integrated system) is exactly the same. Sure, it's not cheap - but neither is anything else I use. Bottom like is that professional equipment costs - (but professional services cost more, so I get to make a profit ) - but with that outlay ("investment") comes power - convenience - support.

Perhaps a bit like Open Office being a free alternative to Microsoft Office ... and yet I'll bet that Microsoft are still selling lots of copies of MS Office (and server products too for that matter!).


Horses for courses!

[Owl]

I use Photoshop CS5 and Camera Raw 6.0, I think? They work very well. Or there's the ones you get with the CD's that come from the camera, those are pretty awesome too.

[Stu3133]

Hi Guys.....does anybody have an opinion on DxO Optics Pro?
http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/dxo_optics_pro
I'm having a play with the trial at the moment and am reasonably impressed.

[David]

Re Lisa's comment about software from the camera manufacturers, in my case Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP), there is sometimes a tendency to dismiss these as somehow inferior, partly because such software is normally limited to the manufacturers' own RAW formats. However, that view should be resisted. DPP is a very powerful piece of software for decoding Canon RAW data, probably the best for that task alone. (Canon will of course agree with this!) In recent versions the scope of this software has increased into noise reduction, lens corrections, printing options, and some editing functions. Coupled with Picture Style Editor DPP allows the development of individual creative styles. For many everyday tasks and for Web publication there is really no need to use any other editor. It seems to me that the trend to introduce more editing functions into own-brand RAW decoding software will continue. In Canon's case I hope that will be along the lines of more individual channel control. Overall, look again at what the camera guys supply - it's probably better than you thought.

David

[Colin Southern]

Hi Guys.....does anybody have an opinion on DxO Optics Pro?
http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/dxo_optics_pro
I'm having a play with the trial at the moment and am reasonably impressed.

Hi Stu,

Welcome to CiC - it's great to have you with us.

I've had a reasonably good look at it, but in all honesty - if one makes good choices at the time of shooting - then I really can't see any great benefit in it. A major PITA is the fact that it won't accept a DNG as an input file (which rules out exactly 100% of my shots), and the likes of Adobe Camera RAW (in association with Bridge & Photoshop) are far more versatile all round. So it's a bit of an "answer in search of a question" if you ask me.

[Stu3133]

Thanks Colin...Hmm yeah....I dont actually have any fisheye lenses that need correction.....but I do dislike PhotoShop with some passion....I'll do some further experimenting with it but will probably stick with the Canon suite and maybe Neat Image for the time being.

[Colin Southern]

I do dislike PhotoShop with some passion....I'll do some further experimenting with it but will probably stick with the Canon suite and maybe Neat Image for the time being.

Hmmm - that's a very "passionate" response Why the "passionate dislike for Photoshop"?

[Stu3133]

Colin I do a lot of 3D rendering so I use image editing apps. in post processing, pretty regularly. I started using PhotoShop but found it counter-intuitive, bloated and obscure and fell back to using PhotoImpact and FastStone Image Viewer which I found were good enough for my work stuff but not enough for my current photo editing needs.....and so my interest in Dxo Optics Pro

[proseak]

"Hi Guys.....does anybody have an opinion on DxO Optics Pro?" - Yes, I use it, especially for "problem" raw, and for very high ISO images. I don't find it as easy as ACR, but sometimes it's just what's needed.

Frankly, I'm impressed!

[Donald]

Hi Guys.....does anybody have an opinion on DxO Optics Pro?[

Yes. It's brilliant. I love it. And I'm never giving it up.

As you can see above, opinions vary - which is how it should be. As I've written elsewhere, I played around with various RAW processors. The first time I tried DxO, I didn't get it. The went back to after a couple of months and all the pieces fell into place, the lights came on and I was up and running. As you may have seen, I do mostly B & W. I love it for what I can do in terms of B & W conversion.

[arith]

Re Lisa's comment about software from the camera manufacturers, in my case Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP), there is sometimes a tendency to dismiss these as somehow inferior, partly because such software is normally limited to the manufacturers' own RAW formats. However, that view should be resisted. DPP is a very powerful piece of software for decoding Canon RAW data, probably the best for that task alone. (Canon will of course agree with this!) In recent versions the scope of this software has increased into noise reduction, lens corrections, printing options, and some editing functions. Coupled with Picture Style Editor DPP allows the development of individual creative styles. For many everyday tasks and for Web publication there is really no need to use any other editor. It seems to me that the trend to introduce more editing functions into own-brand RAW decoding software will continue. In Canon's case I hope that will be along the lines of more individual channel control. Overall, look again at what the camera guys supply - it's probably better than you thought.

David

Tell them how it is David. It is a good program once you worked out how to use it.

[proseak]

I recently bought a Fuji HS10, and the bundled software was Silkypix. That was not a pleasant experience - an app that only gives Jpg from raw and won't even install on 64-bit systems was just as bad as I first thought. Now that ACR supports the .raf files, I could get some reasonable results.

ACR good, Silkypix bad!

[Hansm]

I suggest test a few RAW converters and choose the one that gives you the best "feeling".
For example: I was checking some converters a few years ago and tested Lightroom, Aperture and Lightzone.
For me personally I have chosen Lightroom. But my son hates this program and found his way in Aperture, where I get lost.
Honestly I wonder if the differences are that big between good converters, specially if you expose correct.
If you choose a RAW converter with good reputation like ARC, Lightroom, Aperture, DXO and so on, make your choice on one of them, dive into it and you will get the maximum out of it.

[dogald]

Being a cheapskate, I use GIMP and have done for a while. I have tried several raw converters, but now rely on UFraw. It may not be for every one, but I like it. I have an olympus camera, and found the raw converter from olympus very cumbersome. Just my 2cents worth.

[lichtloper]

Hello,
I'm new to this site & forum.
Have done several attempts to get RAWtherapee to develop the ORFs [=RAWs] from my Olympus E-620. But even after some help & advice from RT fans the programme never worked like it did when I used it to develop the ORFs from my E-300 camera.
So now for development I use Olympus's Master2 -though it's slowish-,
and, more often, PSelements8, which I bought in Adobe's "summer sale";
the latter also does further fine tuning (selection, layers) perfectly - for me...

FastStone is a free viewer, very pleasant, with some very elementary tools and an EXIF-information table (though the histograms it produces look quite odd and useless...); it can 'read' many different kinds of RAWs (preview) and lets you open your RAW files directly in your favourite developer.

lichtloper

[Hansm]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to CIC.
I see you are from Nijmegen, this means we are almost neighbors (Beuningen).

[pono]

I shot some photos in RAW. I converted them to TIFF files. I'm trying to make an album so I can post them for advice, but I think they are too big. What do I do?

[carregwen]

i shot some photos in raw. i converted them to tiff files. im trying to make an album so i can post them for advice, but i think they are too big. what do i do?

Create a JPEG from the TIFF (use save as). Then resize the JPEG (not the tiff) to be 800 pixels on the long side. That should make them small enough to upload here to your album. See the FAQ above for details on posting images and attachments. Or, you can host them on FLICKR and get the FLICKR URL and post them direct into a thread here. Just ask if you get stuck. If you would rather, send me a PM.

[Hansm]

Hi Pono,

welcome tot CIC
It's good to convert from RAW to TIFF. This to avoid loosing quality during editing.
Also I would recommend to archive them in TIFF.

After that you often need to convert these TIFF files to JPEG because most printshops need JPEG and also for posting you should convert them to JPEG.