Post Processing Beginner's frustrations

[pa79]

To anybody who can help:

I am just starting to use RAW instead of JPEG, but I am having an almighty hard time getting the results I am looking for.

My camera is a Samsung GX20.
I am using (or failing to use) the following software on Linux.
Raw Therapee
Picasa
F-Spot view

When I shoot in RAW, I still usually specify a white balance. I know it's not absolutely necessary, but I find it helps when looking back at the shots on the camera. When I look at the files on my computer, via F-Spot view, the computer seems to take the in-camera white balance settings, and the photographs look the same as they do on the camera's screen. However, if I use Picasa, it automatically re-sets the white balance and makes the colours appear more muted. Even if I try to alter the colour balance manually, I am unable to get back to the starting point. If I use Raw Therapee, I have a similar problem, although the muting effect is less pronounced - even if I specifically ask it to use the camera's WB settings. I am still working through my ignorance in Raw Therapee, and I am sure that I will eventually be able to get the colours as I want them, but why is it so complicated? If F-Spot view doesn't seem to have any conversion capabilities, and seems to be just for looking at what you've got.

Is there any other software which people can suggest (either for Linux or Windows)? I have been using open source software so far, but I might be willing to spend some money to make life easier, although there's no way I can afford Lightroom!

Many thanks for any help.

Philip

[MrApollinax]

I use lightzone and I know they have a Linux version as well. I think that Picasa generates it's own JPG preview based on the original RAW file. So in that case the JPG previews and the fully opened versions will be unprocessed and kinda washed out. I'm thinking F-Spot might use the imbedded JPG the camera creates/uses for display/preview which is why the white balance matches with what you see in-camera.

[Venturi]

LightZone is the only app running native linux I ever found that has an accurate profile for the K10/K20. The GX10 is on the list of supported cameras, I don't know if the GX20 is merely missing from the list or they haven't added its profile.

And wow, they seriously dropped the price of LZ. For $99 (I bought it for $149 a year ago on sale) it's a damn good editor.

[Marc Sabatella]

I'm not familiar with F-spot, but most likely it is not showing you your RAW data at all - it's just showing you th JPEG preview embedded within the file by the camera. So no surprise that it shows the correct WB. Whereas Picasa and RT are showing your actual RAW data. I'm surprised they don't apply your selected WB by default, but there is probably a way to get them to. Certianly "most" RAW procesisng programs apply the "As Shot" WB automatically. Perhaps they are, but due to the very nature of RAW, they just happen to be doing so slightly differently. It's certainly normal for there to be some variation in how different RAW programs display an image.

[innershell]

I use UFRaw on Linux. Seems to work great for my slower 'puter.

[pa79]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I shall have a look at lightzone - it seems pretty reasonable. I'll have a play with UFRaw too.

I have looked for an option in Picasa to get it to use the camera's WB setting, but haven't been able to find one. As for RT, there is an option to use the camera's settings, but it doesn't seem to make any difference - perhaps it can't find that info in the files the GX20 creates?

The comments about F-Spot showing the camera-generated jpeg preview make sense, but the files seem to be very large (take a while to display properly and are able to zoom in to the same size when looking 1:1).

Thank you all again.

[nanok]

as mentioned, f-spot probably uses the camera preview embedded jpeg, it is normal that you can zoom to 1/1 (i use geeqie, it does the same thing): just try to look at a picture with a lot of sky, for instance (in general: smooth wide area gradient), and you will imediately notice you are looking at a very low quality (highly compressed) jpeg. i like that approach for previews though, it is very fast.

i also use ufraw, and am pretty happy with the results and interface. i also use it in batch mode quite often. btw, rawtherapy is not opensource (last time i checked, at least), this is the only reason i have been too lazy to give it a try so far (i prefer open software, for peace of mind).

one more note: what you see (the difference) is not only due to white ballance, but also to other settings of in-camera raw conversion. as you change them, the preview jpegs will change too (on the pentaxes, i could even get a monochrome preview, while shooting raw, which can come in handy, i didn't manage to do the same on the gx10 though, the menus are designed differently, sadly), so in short, keep in mind that every raw converter will display a different look by default, there are so many parameters to raw conversion, that it is safe to say that the contrast, colors, sharpness, in general, the overall look of the output of each raw converter will be unique (it is even so between dcraw and ufraw, eventhough ufraw uses dcraw behind the scenes), so don't be frustrated, just look around and see what works best for you. another option you seem to not have tried is digikam, a very capable (and, similarly to RT, and unlike ufraw, "all in one" piece of software), and raw studio (both are also dcraw-based, both look entirely different from eachother, from ufraw and from dcraw as far as output is concerned )