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Switching to Raw.. Need advice

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photoshooter1

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I am thinking of switching to Raw. Need recommendations as to which processor to use. Must be easy to use and not very expensive.

I know Silky Pix is boxed with camera- G3, but I am looking for easier
Please give your recommendation and the reasons you like it.

Thanks
 
photoshooter1 said:
I am thinking of switching to Raw. Need recommendations as to which processor to use. Must be easy to use and not very expensive.

I know Silky Pix is boxed with camera- G3, but I am looking for easier
Please give your recommendation and the reasons you like it.
Click to expand...
It may be worth telling people what operating system you use. Windows, Mac or Linux?
 
photoshooter1 said:
I am thinking of switching to Raw. Need recommendations as to which processor to use. Must be easy to use and not very expensive.

I know Silky Pix is boxed with camera- G3, but I am looking for easier
Please give your recommendation and the reasons you like it.
Click to expand...
RAW Therapee 4.x is free and high quality and available for multiple platforms (32-bit as well as 64-bit). The default setings of the program provide the user with a good start. Any RAW processor has controls. The whole idea of RAW processing is to have and to use controls. Silkypix SE is relatively simple as such things go. While I have not used, it appears that Aperture also attempts to minimize the number of controls. Lightroom / ACR is also of the same genre. Easy.

It's important to understand that the controls are not your enemy. The default settings on many of these programs may serve you well. It's also important to not think that you can have it "both ways", that is, effortless for you as well as always effective. Stick with in-cam JPGs if you want that
 
It might be the best 149 $ you have ever spent in your photographic career. You can do things with LR that are either too complicated, or even impossible to accomplish with any other RAW processor. And is even more than that, is also a resource manager. It handles your files, you can back them up, catalog, sort, tag, keyword, export, create print jobs with color management, create websites, presentations, PDFs, books, even GPS tagging.

Right now I believe LR have the best tonal adjusting capabilities in the market. Just take a look at this article: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/tonal_adjustments_in_the_age_of_lightroom_4.shtml

And if you want to learn to use it, the easy way, I would also recommend you the video tutorials from Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe. Never regretted buying them, and I have all, back from LR2.
More info here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/lr4_combo.shtml
photoshooter1 said:
I am thinking of switching to Raw. Need recommendations as to which processor to use. Must be easy to use and not very expensive.

I know Silky Pix is boxed with camera- G3, but I am looking for easier
Please give your recommendation and the reasons you like it.

Thanks
Click to expand...
--
Martin Ocando
-------------------------

 
photoshooter1 said:
I am thinking of switching to Raw. Need recommendations as to which processor to use. Must be easy to use and not very expensive.

I know Silky Pix is boxed with camera- G3, but I am looking for easier
Please give your recommendation and the reasons you like it.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Easy and Raw are two things you don't really see in the same sentence. Raw is designed to give the largest editing flexibility so ease of use doesn't really translate. Picasa is free and it does edit raw with very basic tools so that may be of the easiest you can get if ease means lack of tools. It gets the job done but what you have is more powerful. It just takes time to experiment and practice before you end up with better results than jpeg. Once you start figuring out basic options more advanced ones will start making sense. I personally use Camera Raw and only ever experimented in order to learn.
 
Ditto. A little bit of a learning curve, but so very worth it. You can get it with an educational discount if you have someone in school. My daughter bought it when she was in kindergarten. :)

They've dropped the price recently though, so it's not bad for what you get. Pick up a book along with it. I like Kelby's books, but I'm still waiting on one for LR4.
--
Russ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfortson/
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/russfortson
Even bad photography can be fun :)

 
I still hate the way it uses catalogs and not your computer's own file system, but you can't beat Lightroom 4.1 for easy.

Tom

http://www.kachadurian.com

Call me crazy. I happen to like photos of cats.
 
Hmm, it does use your computer file system, only that it doesn't care of the full path. The root of your drive is the root of your image folder, which makes sense, because LR doesn't care about the other files or folders.

Catalogs are virtual, and some of them even "Smart", which I found very useful at times.
Thomas Kachadurian said:
I still hate the way it uses catalogs and not your computer's own file system, but you can't beat Lightroom 4.1 for easy.

Tom

http://www.kachadurian.com

Call me crazy. I happen to like photos of cats.
Click to expand...
--
Martin Ocando
-------------------------

 
... be the first on your block to be just like everybody else. Diversity is not encouraged in Lilliput :P
 
Lightroom is a fantastic product, with a well designed, organized interface. The learning curve was much higher on the Oly menus than LR itself and I really mean that.

At this point I use an import preset which means I plug my camera in, hit import and it imports all of my images to the predetermined folder and adjusts the images to my common preferences. I then go through a make tweaks to get the extra pop where needed.

There are many products but I'm not sure any that are better. But free can be compelling!
--
Dan
 
Adobe has a really nice package in Lightroom and that's the way to go for now. I hope Apple releases something interesting with Aperture 4 though.
 
Tried them all. Nothing beats it as of version 4.1. Very affordable for what it gives you.
 
Detail Man said:
... be the first on your block to be just like everybody else. Diversity is not encouraged in Lilliput :P
Click to expand...
So try RawTherapee 3.xx or 4.xx for free.
Even default settings give excellent results.

Diversity: with RT you can try different demosaicing engines (download a dpreview test chart of your camera and try - choose what you like best! If this is not enough, you got lots of developing parameters to experiment with.

I use RT 3.06 even for fast and excellent PP of JPEGs - I like the auto exposure function of Version 3.06 best and use it as a basis for further corrections.

Peter.
 
Martin Ocando said:
Right now I believe LR have the best tonal adjusting capabilities in the market.
Click to expand...
I have to agree with the recommendation -- but , if you haven't yet stepped up to a 64-bit OS, either in the Mac or Windows domain, you'll be disappointed with its performace. (In fact, I think the Mac version will run only on 64 bits.)
--
http://www.pbase.com/morepix
 
Martin Ocando said:
Hmm, it does use your computer file system, only that it doesn't care of the full path. The root of your drive is the root of your image folder, which makes sense, because LR doesn't care about the other files or folders.
Click to expand...
Not certain exactly what you mean, but I can tell you that LR 3 and/or 4 will manage a catalog that has pieces on more than a single drive. I've done it, when I was out of room on a single drive. Granted, it's tidier if your images are all in subfolders of a single folder.
--
http://www.pbase.com/morepix
 
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