Hi all.
Is there any real difference in quality when shooting .PEF versus the generic Adobe .DNG formats? I sure can't see any, but I'm curious if others have noticed anything.
The reason I ask, is:
I've been a die-hard Linux fanatic for 8 years now, and I do all my image processing in The GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program). It's an extremely powerful and FREE program, it has much the same capabilities as Photoshop, and it has been ported for Linux, Mac and Windows. It comes standard with most Linux distributions.
I'm unable to make my Linux machines read the Pentax .PEF files, but I've had no problem at all with reading .DNG. I had to install a plug-in module for the GIMP to do this, and thought that this might be of interest to any other Linux users here on the forums. The module is called 'ufraw' and you should be able to find it for almost any Linux, Mac or Windows machine that's running the GIMP. I was able to install it on Fedora Core Linux, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows XP GIMP with no problems, directly through the add/install software manager.
Frankly, the 'ufraw' user interface is (to me anyway) FAR more logical and easy to use than the RAW Silkypix WIndows-only software that came with my K10d. So unless someone advises otherwise, I'm sticking with .DNG and the GIMP for my RAW photo processing!
And if anyone has GIMP or Linux questions related to photography or publishing, I'm happy to help. I'm very enthusiastic about open-source software, and am currently wrapping up a 300-page book project that's been produced *entirely* with free software.....Linux O/S, The GIMP for photos, Inkscape for graphics, QCAD for CAD drawings, OpenOffice for text editing, and Scribus for layout and PDF generation.
GIMP - ufraw editing screenshot below.
DAN
Last edited by danbob; 01-22-2008 at 09:58 AM.
Reason: added screenshot