[MPrince]

Yes, Faststone is free, but I find it doesn't do a particularly good job of converting raw files.

Here's a shot I took last year covering an agricultural fair for a local magazine. The version on the left was converted using faststone, the version on the right was converted using PPL. No post-processing was done on either image, just a straight conversion from raw to jpeg.

Camera used was K100D with a Sigma 24mm lens.

In previewing the image, it's smaller than I expected, but I think you can tell the difference easily enough.

I still use faststone for some things, but converting from raw isn't one of them.

But of course, ymmv.