"Best" RAW converter

I posted this in the "retouching" forum but also wanted to get feedback specifically from Pentaxians:

I'm wondering what one would recommend for a good RAW converter. I am only just starting to shoot in RAW and therefore have very little experience. I am looking for something that is easy to work with, not too expensive, and helps me learn what's going on.

I currently shoot a Pentax K100D and so have the accompanying RAW program (can't remember what it's called...) but am looking for some advice from more experienced shooters.

Also, before I get too flamed, I did do a search for "best Raw converter" but didn't find much helpful. Hence this post. Hopefully the adage, "no stupid questions" still holds true.

Thanks much.

--
FreakingGenius.com

FreakingGenius said:

I'm wondering what one would recommend for a good RAW converter.

Click to expand...

Did a search on this forum and came up with:

Pentax's Photolab
Silkypix
Photoshop

These are from least to most expensive, with Photolab free. Need to be sure the converter will read K100D files, and as far as I can see these 3 do. Others may chime in with other recommendations.

FreakingGenius said:

Also, before I get too flamed, I did do a search for "best Raw
converter" but didn't find much helpful. Hence this post.
Hopefully the adage, "no stupid questions" still holds true.

Click to expand...

No problems, we were all at this point in our learning curves once...

--
Cheers

Gordon
Perth, Western Australia

Bibble (they don't support DNG though)
Silkypix
Lightroom (new beta 4 is out)

--
Edvinas

second on Silkypix, best on color rendition, tried rse, bibble, c1, acr, lightroom, still like Silkypix best. I think it's about $120, but you get a 14 day free trial and after that, you can still use the basic version to convert files.

NChang said:

second on Silkypix, best on color rendition, tried rse, bibble, c1,
acr, lightroom, still like Silkypix best. I think it's about $120,
but you get a 14 day free trial and after that, you can still use
the basic version to convert files.

Click to expand...

Silky pix still holds the lead, but Lighroom is catching up fast imo.

Lightroom can still struggle with high contrast image sections, sometimes giving an almost posterised effect - but this is only occasionally, and to a much lesser degree than the previous beta version

Silkypix renders difficult areas very smoothly, but the detail extraction from Lightroom seems astonishing in the latest release.

Adobe has now added the Digital Vibrance' tool from RSE - but (mercifully) the colour handling is vastly superior to the Pixmantec product. Whereas RSE reds had a dirty brown hue, Lightroom reds are as red as a young communists neckerchief.

Lightroom is still in Beta, of course, and the finished product may well make it the RAW converter to have - depending on the price.

The PhotoLab 3 that came with your camera uses the famous SilkyPix image proceossing engine, so it is very good at processing RAW, it gives the best colours and it's also the easiest to use. You can also try the SilkyPix software, but user interface is a bit... boring. PhaseOne CaptureOne has very good processing too, with a straightforward user interface but it is a bit on the expensive side - and I don't think it has come for the K100D yet. I use Bibble Lite myself and like it, the latest version supports the K100D.

Take care
R

Roland Mabo said:

The PhotoLab 3 that came with your camera uses the famous SilkyPix
image proceossing engine, so it is very good at processing RAW, it
gives the best colours and it's also the easiest to use. You can
also try the SilkyPix software, but user interface is a bit...
boring. PhaseOne CaptureOne has very good processing too, with a
straightforward user interface but it is a bit on the expensive
side - and I don't think it has come for the K100D yet. I use
Bibble Lite myself and like it, the latest version supports the
K100D.

Click to expand...

I now have Bibble pro on trial.. Finally an easy to discover feature to lightne darker ares (took me a while to fiond that in silkypics, not in PPL nor in PSE 3.0/ACR).

The Bibble pro feature with curves for RGB, R, G an B individually makes it very usefull for IR PP.
Costs a bit I think....

Roland Mabo said:

Take care
R

Click to expand...

--
janneman
http://www.pbase.com/jl2

Just like you I'm new to dslr and started shooting RAW as well. I use silkypix and Adobe but find silkypix gives better colour rendition.

FreakingGenius said:

I posted this in the "retouching" forum but also wanted to get
feedback specifically from Pentaxians:

I'm wondering what one would recommend for a good RAW converter. I
am only just starting to shoot in RAW and therefore have very
little experience. I am looking for something that is easy to work
with, not too expensive, and helps me learn what's going on.

I currently shoot a Pentax K100D and so have the accompanying RAW
program (can't remember what it's called...) but am looking for
some advice from more experienced shooters.

Also, before I get too flamed, I did do a search for "best Raw
converter" but didn't find much helpful. Hence this post.
Hopefully the adage, "no stupid questions" still holds true.

Thanks much.

--
FreakingGenius.com

Click to expand...

--
New owner of K100D with kit lens

I use RAW Shooter Premium (also referred to on here and elsewhere as RSP) but unfortunatley that was bought up by Adobe!

Speaking of which you could have a look at Adobe's Lightroom which is currently in Beta and can be downloaded for free at the moment as part of the trial.

--
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucsacco/

I have really come to like Capture One (C1) very much. But I still use photoshop to do trickier post processing, when needed. I've been playing with the beta Lightroom software and feel that it shows a lot of promise.
Dave

Roland Mabo said:

The PhotoLab 3 that came with your camera uses the famous SilkyPix
image proceossing engine, so it is very good at processing RAW, it
gives the best colours and it's also the easiest to use. You can
also try the SilkyPix software, but user interface is a bit...
boring.

Click to expand...

Hi Roland,

As someone who's been using Silkypix to process my *ist D RAW files for two years, I beg to differ here. I find Silkypix's UI to be very logical. I'm now used to the workflow of adjusting settings of each image and tag those that I want to convert. You can also save one particular adjustment to one image as a "template" or "stamp", then apply this template to other images. For example, same white balance settings for images taken in the same situation. Silkypix also has easy presets for WB, Contrast, Sharpness, Color Saturation, etc. so you don't have to go down to details all the time, just pick "A bit more vivid" in color settings if you want it to be more saturated than default, for example. After all the individual adjustments, just start a batch conversion and leave the PC to do the thing while I go to sleep.

It's a welcome addition that Pentax Photo Lab 3 licenses the Silkypix processing engine. However, I find the scattered UI of Photo Lab 3 as unintuitive as previous versions of Photo Lab. This old UI really needs a facelift to compete with full feature RAW processors like Silkypix or CaptureOne. Perhaps I am a bit too demanding on a free program but I think users that shoot RAW all the time deserve a better workflow. With the 22-bit ADC in the K10D and possibilities of 16-bit RAW outputs, we'll be more demanding on software!

Peter

--

Peter Fang - Pentax user for more than two decades: *ist D / MZ-S / Z-1 / SFX / LX

rajojo ma said:

Just like you I'm new to dslr and started shooting RAW as well. I
use silkypix and Adobe but find silkypix gives better colour
rendition.

Click to expand...

I've used CaptureOne, Adobe Camera RAW and Silkypix plus a few others and just like you I find myself prefer Silkypix's color rendition to others. I don't know why but my *ist D RAW images always look a bit odd in color when converted with Adobe.

--

Peter Fang - Pentax user for more than two decades: *ist D / MZ-S / Z-1 / SFX / LX

Pete Fang said:

rajojo ma said:

Just like you I'm new to dslr and started shooting RAW as well. I
use silkypix and Adobe but find silkypix gives better colour
rendition.

Click to expand...

I've used CaptureOne, Adobe Camera RAW and Silkypix plus a few
others and just like you I find myself prefer Silkypix's color
rendition to others. I don't know why but my *ist D RAW images
always look a bit odd in color when converted with Adobe.

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more Peter. ACR has a nasty habit of turning reds to orange, not just with Pentax cameras either. It can be corrected by calibration of course, but even calibrated the images it produces are not as good as those from Silkypix IMO.

It's very easy to get a "finished" picture from Silkypix often without even moving from default, but ACR always requires additional work in Photoshop to achieve a similar result. I try others but always fall back to Silkypix for it's exemplary choice of good defaults but with a huge range of control when needed.

--
John Bean

PAW Week 38:
http://waterfoot.smugmug.com/gallery/1082841/3/97517668/Large



Index page: http://waterfoot.smugmug.com
Latest walkabout (4 April): http://waterfoot.smugmug.com/gallery/1348582

Photography monthly rates bibble pro 8.7 out of 10 while silkypro was given 9.3 or something like that as i could have recalled

i used bibble pro as well, but i had seen some of the images displayed here edited with velvia emulsions feature on silkypix. the colour is just amazing!!!

--
Roentarre - just an amateur (canon + pentax)
http://www.pbase.com/roentarre

Canon 24/1.4 35/1.4 50/1.4 85/1.2 100/2.8macro 135/2 300/4IS 16-35/2.8 70-200/2.8 FE15/2.8 MP-1x5/2.8 EX550
Pentax FA77/1.8, 14/2.8
Sigma 20/1.8 30/1.4 150/2.8 macro
tokina 12-24/4

Silkypix
Silkypix
Silkypix
--
Fero, London
My blog: http://feronovak.blogspot.com/index.html

I've just been trying the Adobe Lightroom beta - looks OK after a short test. There's another thread on this around today.

Otherwise I've been using Picasa, in which I really like the workflow, but it has one major flaw: it can't read EXIF information from PEF files, so that is lost on saving. This is true even of the latest version which I updated today. 8(

--
brian thomson - dublin, ireland
stereoroid.com - picasaweb.google.com/stereoroid

FreakingGenius said:

I'm wondering what one would recommend for a good RAW converter.

Click to expand...

Silkypix is nice, but I use Rawshooter for birds and Moon shots,
for the feather detail and CA correction.

--
cheers!

Gunn

-- Get a big lens and get closer™.

http://www.dpreview.pentaxistDS.photoshare.co.nz

http://www.y3m.net/penwik/pmwiki.php/Main/PentaxLensWiki

I tried SilkyPix on my PC and when I switched to Mac I got it a new change, but I still can't get used to the GUI. On Mac it's even more... "boxy" I would say, feels unlogical and not intuitive. Very un-Mac. I know that the image processing is probably the best in business, but I don't feel creative when using it. So, I stay with Bibble Lite.

I feel temped by Aperture, I like the GUI but it still supports only the D and DL...

Take care
R

You should try several and then just choose the program you like to use. I think that most programs would allow you to download and test free full version for the period of two weeks.

That being said I think that Bibble pro is a good program and I like its features. It is also the only one (well there is the free Ufraw but I do not like it) if you want to use Linux (it has native Windows, Apple and Linux support).
Cheers,
Wojtek

Hi Chris,

chris gunn said:

Silkypix is nice, but I use Rawshooter for birds and Moon shots,
for the feather detail and CA correction.

Click to expand...

CA correction I think I understand in RAW conversion,
but I thought the theory was don't sharpen too much
during RAW conversion. See the comment on feathers,
it made me wonder, are you doing most of your sharpening
in Rawshooter during the conversion? And if so, why/what/how?

I'm using PSE4 and adobe's 3.3 raw converter.

thanks
jim cowan