Originally posted by OldNoob I think i would like Silkypix if i understood it. Terminologies used in it seem unusual. For a free App its great, though Lightroom seems easier to understand for me anyway.
Yes, the terminology is translated from Japanese, and they came up with different terms from what we are accustomed to. A good example is they use "trim" instead of "crop". Also, their approach to performing
certain operations is a bit different - whether or not you prefer their approach over Adobe's is a matter of taste, and perhaps what kind of photos you take and what kind of operations you tend to do. The only
Adobe convention that I find myself "missing" when using other tools is the way crop and rotate can be performed in one operation.
I used a trial version of Silkypix Developer Studio 4.0 for a while, and got over the hump viz terminology/approach. I really liked the way it was set up, and the workflow I arrived at where I could use FastStone
to browse/cull my images, and then invoke Silkypix to convert a selected image, perform my adjustments, drop the RAW images onto the processing cue, return to FastStone, etc. Very smooth on my old, slow XP machine.
I hated the way Lightroom had to catalogue every folder I opened, and would bog the machine down every time I sent something to be processed. ( yeah, the smug response is always "get a real computer" )
Another nice bonus of the Silkypix approach is that it puts the Sidecar files in a convenient subtending folder. I could never get any Adobe product to do that for me, despite trying various things.
The Silkypix 3.0 that comes with the K-30 isn't quite as nice as version 4.0, and it won't convert files from other cameras ( in my case, my k200D ). I've also found it quite tricky to get it to generate output that's as good
as the JPGs that come straight from the camera. If it wasn't crippled WRT what files it will convert, I'd consider using it more, but I don't really feel like switching between raw converters depending on which camera the
RAW file was shot with. I've wondered if editing the EXIF data might allow me to trick it into converting the K200 files, but it hardly seems worth the bother.
Now that I've upgraded to a faster computer, PSE isn't as much of a pig to run, so I'm currently using it as my RAW converter - invoking it from FastStone. Not as smooth as I'd like, but workable.
If you've got Lightroom, and you're happy using it, then I'm not sure there's much point in moving to Silkypix 3.0. Back when I was using Silkypix 4.0, I was trying to decide between it and Lightroom 3.0 beta. I found
I preferred Silkypix, but it was too expensive.