Raw editing pref's for PEF's

[todd_phillips3]

I did some searching the board on this subject but maybe not thoroughly enough,

so thought I'd just post a new thread.... I am using Ufraw and Gimp for editing

that PEF's that come from my K100D. They are free softwares and suit most my

desires and newb abilities just fine at this point, except that this combo

doesn't give me a good way to preview photos with thumbnails and do preliminary

edits... So what I do is preview PEF images using Irfanview to do the initial

weeding through and then use Ufraw (frontend for dcraw) on individual images,

which then spits the image out to GIMP... This would be perfect if I could do

some initial stuff like rotating images and previewing thumbnails.. I have tried

Raw Therapee too, but isn't as intuitive and gives me too many options... I am

thinking of just continuing to try and familiarize with Raw Therapee because

then I could use it for prelim edits, like rotating vertical shots, etc..

 

So what do you guys and gals use/prefer for previewing thumbnails and editing

raw PEF images? Photoshop? Does photoshop do a good job previewing thumbnails

and handling the PEF data correctly? Any other apps I should consider? I was

thinking of trying Bibble because I've read some good stuff, but haven't been

able to find out conclusively that it handles PEF's adequately..

[jgredline]

hey Todd, How goes there?

I use PS and recently purchased Lightroom but have not used it much. From what I hear Lightroom is the way to go for editing Raw files, but since I shoot Jpegs 99% of the time, I think I wasted my money for lightroom. Sorry I am not much help here.

[rocinante]

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 to view, edit and file my PEF photos. The plug-in ACR 4.4(Adobe Camera Raw 4.4) does such a good job, that I only use APSE6 Editor for special needs. Also, for free you can download Picasa2, which will read, rotate and delete unwanted photo using thumbnails. It is a nice program for fast and dirty editing as well as posting photos to their free web albums and sending photos via email. It will automaticaly resize and attach photos to your default email program. Pretty neat for free! The combination of the two programs seems to meet all of my editing and publishing/emailing needs. Also the book, The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby is an excellent resource and covers processing RAW images thorougly.

 

Dave

[todd_phillips3]

Javier.. It goes well! I had a good time yesterday with a particular zoom lens somebody just loaned me! ;-) I took a bunch of shots for a friend at a Civil War Reenactment yesterday and shot in PEF so I could give him the best quality I could... 300 raw photos to edit though is leaving me wanting a little quicker process than what I've been doing...

 

I just tried Picasa and it's not for me.. (First it wanted to scan my drive very badly and I didn't want it to.. I turned its scanning off and then could rotate the raw images in thumbnail view but it would only save them as jpegs from there. Ideally I just want to rotate my PEF's in a thumbnail view and then go back through and edit them...)

 

Doesn't look like there's a consensus "best app" from this small sample.. For me right now it's just about saving keystrokes.. I think I just need to stick with what I am doing pretty much and figure out more ways to automate this kind of stuff... For instance in GIMP, I need to make a hotkey for rotating an image 90 degrees and that will save me a menu nav and 3 mouse clicks right there on each image... I have shortcuts for other stuff in GIMP and just need to keep with it..

[snik75]

Firestone is available as a free download and is pretty good for browsing and basic editing, although you can't rotate PEF files. I use that with Pentax PhotoLab for more detailed editing, and the two balance each other.

[todd_phillips3]

I am doing a bibble pro trial right now and it's looking pretty slick...

[todd_phillips3]

Pentax Photolab! That's a thought! :-)

 

I just haven't ever read anybody talking good things about it so I figured it must not be very good..

[del_gray]

Nick, did you mean Faststone? I use it and like it - also a free download.

[personalphotos]

I use Pentax Photolab. It's just fine IMO. I load the files from the day and run though them to file the Keepers in one spot and the duds in another file. I never toss the duds becuase ou just never know what can be done later. As my editing skills have gotten better, I've revived some old shots I thought were goners.

 

So after the files are sorted, I'll do any WB adjusting in Photolab that needs to be done. It does a fine job of that. Then all the files are saved as TIFFS. more precise edits are done in Paint.net

 

The program I use Paint.net (PN) Paint.NET - Free Software. The program is very similar to PS CC3 because many of the users write open source plugins from PS adapted for PN. I find it much easier than GIMP to navigate and make adjustments. If you download it make sure you register for the forums and search for the extra plugins available. The shell of the program is fairly basic without those add ons. There are some very cool things you can do with it.

Plus the forums have tutorials and a Q&A section that is using the same forums profile as Pentax forums to get answers. I wanted CS3 but I haven't seen the need after using PN for about a year now. I've even bought a couple of CS3 how to books and used the techniques in PN.

[todd_phillips3]

Sounds good. I have tried PN a little bit in the past, before I got my K100D, and still have it installed, but at some point I read that GIMP could better reach the PShop level than any other free editor, so I tried a couple tutorials with GIMP and got some results I was happy with so have spent most of my editing time in it since then. There are a lot of plugins and resources for GIMP too that I've ran across. I will spend some time in PN again now that I've been learning a little more about editing in general... Thanks

[johnmarsden]

Hi Todd,

From what you tell us you are really wanting a quick way to preview your pictures.

Set your camera up to shoot RAW plus jpeg. Since you only want to preview the jpeg can be at low quality. This will use only a small amount of extra space on the card and save you heaps of time when editing. I actually shoot RAW plus high JPG. Then if a shot doesn't matter too much I just print off the jpeg straight away and still have the option for messing about later with the RAW.

 

The Pentax software isn't too bad, although I have no experience with the other stuff you have been playing with.

 

All the best.

[michael_kuhne]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the K100D can shoot in RAW+JPEG. I shoot with the K100D, and so far I've seen nothing in menu allowing that.

 

The K100D is a really fine camera, though, even without that feature.

 

Like Javier, I shoot mostly JPEG, and the K100D's JPEG image quality is excellent.

[renatoa]

Michael, the JPEG is there, but no separate, is embedded in the PEF.

 

That's why in Photo Browser Tool menu you have an entry labelled "Extract JPEG..." and it takes a flash, instead some seconds like RAW converting. It is ** quality and full size 6M.

[renatoa]

Todd, have a look at Raw Shooter essentials Free Edition, it was considered the best freeware RAW converter until it was aquired by Adobe and embedded in Aperture.

[godfrey]

I use Lightroom to manage thousands of TIFF, JPEG, PSD and RAW files ... my work-in-

progress catalog has over 28,000 image files in it. I process hundreds of files a day

sometimes. It handles all of them very nicely.

 

Godfrey

[andrewg_ny]

Another vote for Adobe Lightroom. I have also used ACDSee in the past. I rapidly tired of using RAW+JPEG as I tried when I first switched from JPEG. I found it made for an annoying workflow on the computer--now shoot RAW only. I generally only want to 'develop' the better shots anyway.

[dan_lenski]

Todd, under Linux I use GThumb to browse images... it can find the preview image in PEFs, and a quick right-click or menu option can launch the Gimp or UFRaw to develop the photo!

 

Very convenient for me. GThumb is also great with JPEGs... it can do lossless rotation, cropping, contrast/balance, color balance, resizing, and redeye removal all without launching a full-fledged photo editor. Nice and fast too.

[john carter]

Godfrey said this a year ago: Pentax PhotoLab is fine, but it is slowwwwwwwwwww. And he is right, I do very little RAW because I shoot very little digital, so I like Pentax Photolab. If you aren't using it for 100 files a day it is great.

[todd_phillips3]

I may have to trial Lightroom, although I have some resistance to Adobe products because of their bloated code and premium prices.

 

I really like Bibble Pro from the testing I did last night, but they have some demosaicing issues with Pentax cameras that I am bound to run into, so it wouldn't be my only converter, but it could be my main converter just based on how quick and easy it is, and I like some of the neat tools embedded in it. And a new release is coming...

 

I am still mainly using Windows, and have only flirted with a few Linux distros, Dan. Sounds like Gthumb is a good app though and I will check it out the next time I boot up Ubuntu...

 

I will try Raw Shooters Essentials here at some point too... Thanks for that recommendation Renato...

 

And I need to try the Pentax apps, to be fair. :-)

[todd_phillips3]

Interesting comparison:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture-2-review.ars/7

[xpiotiavos]

If you can find a way to convince Adobe that you're a student, or a teacher, or a parent of a student, or someone that knows a student (ok, THAT may be a stretch...), you can get Lightroom for $99. And of you can convince someone to split the price with you, even better (helps to have a sister who also loves photography!)

 

Lightroom is fantastic. It really has very few limitations at all, and as Godfrey has said many times, it's really fantastic at handling hundreds of photos at a time.

[todd_phillips3]

Well after some frustrations with Bibble, and accepting the reality that I need to try and stay away from spending money on software right now, I decided to give Picasa another try, since I hadn't given it a fair chance.. I really am glad I did. There are some things I don't like, but all in all it's effective and quick and easy.