| I have worked with the following:
PentaxPhotoLab (uses SilkyPix 2.0 engine)
LightRoom/ACR Same engine somewaht different interface
SilkyPix
PentaxPhotoLab is capable of excellent results but the user interface is so bad that many abandon the program.
SilkyPix 3.0 is very very good if a little idiosynchratic in its user interface. It produces the best colors and is now much simpler to learn with the book that has been published for it.
Lightroom/ACR is a very good program and I think it will help you save many poor exposures. With the new "Camera Standard" profiles it now produces color renditions much closer to Pentax jpg's and PhotoLab. The rendering engine is teh same in both programs. Bridge and ACR are very competent.
I find myself using LR for most of my work and SilkyPix for my nature photography in order to get some of the colors it can produce.
I work in prophoto color space until I am ready to output. If I am going to do additional adjustment in CS4 the photo stays in that color space. If I am going to print, I out put 16 bit tiff in Adobe RGB to print from Qimage to my Canon I9900.
I can see the difference in my prints between Adobe RGB and sRGB and 8 and 16 bit. Smoother transitions and more subtle colors.
If I need jpg they are output in RGB and must be in 8 bit.
Mike |