Ready To Go Raw - What Program To Use

[John_A]

I am not ready to buy a $600.00 program. I have found 2 that sound good. Is there something better out there? Comments please?

Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X4

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

[KenJulio]

Adobe Lightroom 3 will do most of the work you'll need, and you can find presets and plug-ins for them if you want to achieve certain affects.

[kenw]

been using PaintShop pro forever. Search for it here as there has been a lot of discussion about it here lately.

[dmcantrell]

If you or anyone in your family are a student or education professional you might qualify for the Education discount (80%).

Adobe.com Site Requirements

[KenJulio]

See the below link

200 if you're not a student or teach
90 if you are

Pixtus.com:

[Rson]

I would look into lightroom seriously.

[Buddha]

Originally Posted by kenw

been using PaintShop pro forever. Search for it here as there has been a lot of discussion about it here lately.

Yeah, what he said! There are several threads about this on the forum right now.

[Kalrog]

How about free? Take a look at digiKam and GIMP. Both are great and 100% free software. I don't suggest people who know a different product switch, but if you are just learning, they are as good as anything out there commercially.

digiKam - Photo Management Program | Manage your photographs as a professional with the power of Open Source
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

[TXAvi8tor]

Elements 10 is due for release Oct. 3.

Next, what editor(s) are you now using? Knowing would help.

Be aware that Elements will open raw files, but will only EDIT them as 8-bit images. IOW, you can open a .NEF or 16-bit .TIF, but your edits are only going to save as an 8-bit .TIF or a .JPG. AFAICT, this applies to Elements 10 - Adobe apparently still feels that if the 8-bit limitation goes away, lots of people would have no reason to buy full blown Photoshop.

LR is an image organizing and cataloging app with pretty good editing capabilities - but it's not a pixel-level editor. The distinction may not matter for what you intend to do.

Another free (but very capable) choice is Faststone Picture Viewer. From the web site:

• True Full Screen viewer with image zoom support and unique fly-out menu panels
• Crystal-clear and customizable one-click image magnifier
• Powerful image editing tools: Resize/resample, rotate/flip, crop, sharpen/blur, adjust lighting/colors/curves/levels etc.
• Eleven re-sampling algorithms to choose from when resizing images
• Image color effects: gray scale, sepia, negative, Red/Green/Blue adjustment
• Image special effects: annotation, drop shadow, framing, bump map, sketch, oil painting, lens
• Draw texts, lines, highlights, rectangles, ovals and callout objects on images
• Clone Stamp and Healing Brush
• Superior Red-Eye effect removal/reduction with completely natural looking end result
• Multi-level Undo/Redo capability
• One-touch best fit/actual size image display support
• Image management, including tagging capability, with drag-and-drop and Copy To/Move To Folder support
• Histogram display with color counter feature
• Compare images side-by-side (up to 4 at a time) to easily cull those forgettable shots
• Image EXIF metadata support (plus comment editing for JPEGs)
• Configurable batch processing to convert/rename large or small collections of images
• Slideshow creation with 150+ transition effects and music support (MP3, WMA, WAV...)
• Create efficient image attachment(s) for emailing to family and friends
• Print images with full page-layout control
• Create fully configurable Contact Sheets
• Create memorable artistic image montages from your family photos for personalized desktop wallpapers (Wallpaper Anywhere)
• Acquire images from scanner. Support batch scanning to PDF, TIFF, JPEG and PNG
• Versatile screen capture capability
• Powerful Save As interface to compare image quality and control generated file size
• Run favorite programs with one keystroke from within Image Viewer
• Offer portable version of the program which can be run from a removable storage device
• Configurable mouse wheel support
• Support multiple program skins
• Support dual-monitor configurations

I find it easy to use yet powerful, and its Raw conversion to be very good. In fact, I sent them $$, because I wouldn't feel right using (and recommending) it so much without paying.

hth,

Larry

[ggeen]

Originally Posted by John_A

I am not ready to buy a $600.00 program. I have found 2 that sound good. Is there something better out there? Comments please?

Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X4

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

I started with Photoshop Elements and then switched to Nikon Capture NX2. CNX2 provides me the ability to perform photofinishing and I use Pixelmator on the rare occasion that I wish to perform any more serious modifications.

What I like about CNX2 is the ability to modify and store information in the original Nikon Electronic Format, NEF. I think Elements and some of the better software out there allow you to do the same. Pixelmator wants to convert to it proprietary format to maintain layers.

What operations system are you running? That may influence some of the recommendations.

[John_A]

I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager and need a much better program these days.

Thanks for all the info folks...

[mercphoto]

Originally Posted by John_A

I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager...

That rules out my suggesting you use Aperture. :) I echo the suggestion for Lightroom. It is far more than just a RAW converter. Its also your import merchanism, keywording and captioning tool, organizing tool, editing software, etc.

[dmcantrell]

Depending on how far you intend to go on your post-processing learning journey, it might be worth it to start in the Elements software. By doing this, the jump from Elements --> CS5 down the road won't be such a quantum leap.

[texkam]

Scarab Darkroom
Might give this a try too. There are several other free options out there.

[picman]

This one is free:
RawTherapee Blog

but still I +1 Lightroom