[madbrain]

I have been using Corel Aftershot Pro for a while, as well as DXO Optics Pro 11.4 (free version they had last year).
Unfortunately, neither of these programs can open any K-1 II DNG files.

I know I could use exiftool to "fix" the header files in those DNGs and probably make it work with both programs. I was wondering if there is any other option that didn't need such hacking when a new camera comes out. ON1 Photo RAW 11 appears to work, but it is slow as a dog compared to Aftershot, and I have a very beefy computer.
I love the speed of Aftershot compared to anything else I tried, though I dislike its lack of lens profiles of limited camera support.

I tried Lightroom CC before. It was a lot slower than Aftershot too, but more full featured. And not as slow as ON1. I hate its subscription model, though. My trial of Lightroom expired, also. Will it allow opening K-1 II DNGs without hacking with exiftool ?

[thazooo]

Maybe have a look at ACDSee Ultimate. RAW, Catalog, Editor. I've used ACDSee for 10 years or better and it has always opened Pentax DNG without problem. It had some artifacts with K10D files but nothing since. You'll probably have to create a preset to get your starting colors correct. Doubt it will work with the pixel shift option. Has the ability to move files to external editors also.

[madbrain]

Maybe have a look at ACDSee Ultimate. RAW, Catalog, Editor. I've used ACDSee for 10 years or better and it has always opened Pentax DNG without problem. It had some artifacts with K10D files but nothing since. You'll probably have to create a preset to get your starting colors correct. Doubt it will work with the pixel shift option. Has the ability to move files to external editors also.

Thank you. Just installed ACDsee . Indeed, it can open the K-1 II DNG . However, the photos are way underexposed. This is also true with my DNGs from other cameras.
When you say create a preset, do you mean create a preset that I will apply on every photo ?

The program seems to be reasonable in terms of speed and has lens profiles. The dual monitor mode is actually helpful. Now I have to figure out how it is managing meta-data.

[BigMackCam]

For RAW development, Darktable for Windows. In most ways it's as good as Lightroom (at least for RAW development) - in some ways, it's actually better, and in a few it's lagging. But a fantastic piece of software... and free

It loads K-1II files just fine (I've tried) and there's a Pentax base-curve available that will give you a good starting point for colour and tone.

I'm still looking for a suitable cataloguing system, but there are plenty to choose from...

[thazooo]

Thank you. Just installed ACDsee . Indeed, it can open the K-1 II DNG . However, the photos are way underexposed. This is also true with my DNGs from other cameras.
When you say create a preset, do you mean create a preset that I will apply on every photo ?

The program seems to be reasonable in terms of speed and has lens profiles. The dual monitor mode is actually helpful. Now I have to figure out how it is managing meta-data.

By create a Preset, YES apply to every photo. I believe this can be done by using a drop down menu and setting preset as 'Default'.

Meta Data - Once you click an image, the program immediately catalogs the Meta Data to it's Data Base. No import needed. You add ur key words and such from there.

If you go here Forums - ACD Systems International - ACD Systems International Lots of knowledge.

Good Luck

[SharkyCA]

I have been using Corel Aftershot Pro for a while, as well as DXO Optics Pro 11.4 (free version they had last year).
Unfortunately, neither of these programs can open any K-1 II DNG files.

I know I could use exiftool to "fix" the header files in those DNGs and probably make it work with both programs. I was wondering if there is any other option that didn't need such hacking when a new camera comes out. ON1 Photo RAW 11 appears to work, but it is slow as a dog compared to Aftershot, and I have a very beefy computer.
I love the speed of Aftershot compared to anything else I tried, though I dislike its lack of lens profiles of limited camera support.

I tried Lightroom CC before. It was a lot slower than Aftershot too, but more full featured. And not as slow as ON1. I hate its subscription model, though. My trial of Lightroom expired, also. Will it allow opening K-1 II DNGs without hacking with exiftool ?

Doesn't Aftershot Pro 3 allow for raw editing? I thought the latest version did?
RAW Photo Editing Software & Raw Converter - Corel AfterShot Pro 3

[AndrewN]

I’ve been using Raw Therapee with my K3 and I’ve found it quite good at the filing and the developing. And it’s an open source free one, like Darktable.

[thazooo]

Doesn't Aftershot Pro 3 allow for raw editing? I thought the latest version did?
RAW Photo Editing Software & Raw Converter - Corel AfterShot Pro 3

ASP does RAW editing BUT treats every DNG file as proprietary, ie has to develop a profile for each camera. Takes Corel 3 months to a year to do this.
I dropped ASP when it took close to a year for a K-50 and KS-2 profile to be created. Nice software, as was Bibble, but if you can't use it................

[Oakland Rob]

The latest version of Lightroom (both Classic and CC) works fine with K-1ii DNGs. Even will open the dynamic pixel shift ones.

Other alternatives are RawTherapee and digiKam, which might be good as a database-driven cataloguer.

[madbrain]

Doesn't Aftershot Pro 3 allow for raw editing? I thought the latest version did?
RAW Photo Editing Software & Raw Converter - Corel AfterShot Pro 3

Yes, it does. It has been a RAW developing app from the first version. I upgraded each time. I love its speed. The main issue is the need for new camera profiles, which can take forever.
It's not the most stable program, also. It crashes a lot when importing images. Most likely race conditions as it doesn't crash when reducing the number of threads to 1, but then it doesn't take advantage of the 6 cores/12 threads of my 5820k CPU ...
Still, I love the workflow with it when it works. Going from one image to another is instant, and there is no separate "develop" module. You can make adjustments like exposure and color instantly. No need to switch to a separate "develop" module like in many other applications, including ON1 and ACDsee. That switch in ON1 is intolerably slow, and even though I like the program, I just cannot see myself living with it long-term due to this slowness. In ACDsee, the switch is more reasonable.

Aftershot program also has some strange limitations, like the complete ineptitude of the print option, which cannot print borderless at all for example. For prints, I always have to export to TIFF and print in another application, such as Paintshop Pro which does a decent job.
Really wish there was one app that could do it all reasonably fast.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:31 PM ----------

The latest version of Lightroom (both Classic and CC) works fine with K-1ii DNGs. Even will open the dynamic pixel shift ones.

Thanks. Both of those are only sold as subscriptions, though ...

Other alternatives are RawTherapee and digiKam, which might be good as a database-driven cataloguer.

I have tried RawTherapee, but it appears to be way too complex for me.

I had not heard of Digikam. Thanks for the pointer ! I love open-source software, as a former open-source developer myself.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:36 PM ----------

ASP does RAW editing BUT treats every DNG file as proprietary, ie has to develop a profile for each camera. Takes Corel 3 months to a year to do this.
I dropped ASP when it took close to a year for a K-50 and KS-2 profile to be created. Nice software, as was Bibble, but if you can't use it................

Yes, this is a big issue. Another is that it doesn't seem to automatically detect lenses per the EXIF data on any of my DNGs from the K-30 . You have to select it manually from a very long list, which is tedious to do for each image. And unfortunately, even after you do that, the vast majority of them turn out to be "uncalibrated lens", which means it doesn't do anything at all in the program. The number of actually calibrated lenses is very limited. This is a big usability issue. This means pretty much that I have never used lens profiles in Aftershot. I still don't know which of my lenses have profiles in Aftershot and it's impossible to tell from the drop-down list.

I think DXO OpticsPro 11.4 deals with lenses the best of all the programs I have tried so far. Unfortunately, it still needs a camera-specific profile. And OpticsPro does not do catalogging.

In ON1, the lens profile is detected automatically in many cases - but not in others. Manual selection is a pain.

ACDSee takes an interesting approach - the first time you load an image with a given camera/lens combination, and make a manual lens selection, it allows you to associate the EXIF data with that lens profile automatically in the future, so you don't have to make a manual selection again.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:37 PM ----------

By create a Preset, YES apply to every photo. I believe this can be done by using a drop down menu and setting preset as 'Default'.

Can the default preset be associated with a particular camera ? My collection includes photos from many different cameras.

Meta Data - Once you click an image, the program immediately catalogs the Meta Data to it's Data Base. No import needed. You add ur key words and such from there.

If you go here Forums - ACD Systems International - ACD Systems International Lots of knowledge.

Good Luck

Thanks for the pointer. I need to see if it's able to recognize any of the existing metadata from existing XMP files from aftershot.

[thazooo]

Yes, it does. It has been a RAW developing app from the first version. I upgraded each time. I love its speed. The main issue is the need for new camera profiles, which can take forever.
It's not the most stable program, also. It crashes a lot when importing images. Most likely race conditions as it doesn't crash when reducing the number of threads to 1, but then it doesn't take advantage of the 6 cores/12 threads of my 5820k CPU ...
Still, I love the workflow with it when it works. Going from one image to another is instant, and there is no separate "develop" module. You can make adjustments like exposure and color instantly. No need to switch to a separate "develop" module like in many other applications, including ON1 and ACDsee. That switch in ON1 is intolerably slow, and even though I like the program, I just cannot see myself living with it long-term due to this slowness. In ACDsee, the switch is more reasonable.

Aftershot program also has some strange limitations, like the complete ineptitude of the print option, which cannot print borderless at all for example. For prints, I always have to export to TIFF and print in another application, such as Paintshop Pro which does a decent job.
Really wish there was one app that could do it all reasonably fast.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:31 PM ----------



Thanks. Both of those are only sold as subscriptions, though ...



I have tried RawTherapee, but it appears to be way too complex for me.

I had not heard of Digikam. Thanks for the pointer ! I love open-source software, as a former open-source developer myself.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:36 PM ----------



Yes, this is a big issue. Another is that it doesn't seem to automatically detect lenses per the EXIF data on any of my DNGs from the K-30 . You have to select it manually from a very long list, which is tedious to do for each image. And unfortunately, even after you do that, the vast majority of them turn out to be "uncalibrated lens", which means it doesn't do anything at all in the program. The number of actually calibrated lenses is very limited. This is a big usability issue. This means pretty much that I have never used lens profiles in Aftershot. I still don't know which of my lenses have profiles in Aftershot and it's impossible to tell from the drop-down list.

I think DXO OpticsPro 11.4 deals with lenses the best of all the programs I have tried so far. Unfortunately, it still needs a camera-specific profile. And OpticsPro does not do catalogging.

In ON1, the lens profile is detected automatically in many cases - but not in others. Manual selection is a pain.

ACDSee takes an interesting approach - the first time you load an image with a given camera/lens combination, and make a manual lens selection, it allows you to associate the EXIF data with that lens profile automatically in the future, so you don't have to make a manual selection again.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 02:37 PM ----------



Can the default preset be associated with a particular camera ? My collection includes photos from many different cameras.



Thanks for the pointer. I need to see if it's able to recognize any of the existing metadata from existing XMP files from aftershot.

If you use several cameras it's best to create a profile for each. I did and named them by camera.

I know from moving images to a new computer that xmp files that are embedded, will transfer info. IIRC you use batch and some other command and the info pops up.
Any data base you create needs to be embedded also. Save a copy or backup too.

[madbrain]

Other alternatives are RawTherapee and digiKam, which might be good as a database-driven cataloguer.

I tried Digikam briefly. Unfortunately, lots of problems with this program. One of them being that even the largest possible preview size in the image browser is way too small on my 4K screen. Another that the program nearly locked my computer while trying to import my library. Even task manager took several minutes to bring up. Only to show that CPU usage and disk usage were both very low. Not sure what it was doing. I had to kill the process. Afterwards, when I restarted it, there was no way to resume the import process. Even selecting "refresh" didn't help. It was only through 2010-04 and refresh didn't find any other folders beyond that. The only way to "remove" the folder in the Digikam album view would have deleted the actual folders on list. Trying to read the missing ones didn't work either because of duplicates. Just so much frustration ! I probably didn't give it a fair chance, but I was so aggravated with it that it had to go.

Emailed Corel about the K-1 II yesterday, and they responded today that they will be adding an Aftershot profile for the K-1 II, but couldn't give any timeline.
Also asked them about RAW files from my Galaxy Note 8, and they weren't aware that this smartphone could shoot in RAW.
I had asked about this on their support forum in January, but clearly no one read it.

Also emailed ON1 support about the speed issue. They said they are aware of the problem when switching between browse and develop, and going from one image to another within the develop module, and plan to address it in their 2018.5 update. If this means a May release, then maybe it could be the program for me. Also emailed them about a few bugs I found in ON1 with metadata search.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 04:52 PM ----------

If you use several cameras it's best to create a profile for each. I did and named them by camera.

But then that means you have to manually select the profile for every image from that camera, right ? Or can it be automated / done in batch ?

I guess that is why other programs have specific profiles for each camera ...

I know from moving images to a new computer that xmp files that are embedded, will transfer info. IIRC you use batch and some other command and the info pops up.
Any data base you create needs to be embedded also. Save a copy or backup too.

I have good backups. Nightly incrementals in Acronis to my NAS. Kind of have to especially when trying multiple photo managing apps at the same time. Even though I only open one at a time, some seem to step on each other's toes a bit with the way they manages the metadatas.

[thazooo]

Have your folder open, select images to process, click batch, develop, pop up box with select preset.

ACDSee keeps a back up of all meta date, your xmp, catagory, keyword.

[madbrain]

Have your folder open, select images to process, click batch, develop, pop up box with select preset.

ACDSee keeps a back up of all meta date, your xmp, catagory, keyword.

Thanks, will take a look. My photos are generally organized in folders by month of shooting, not separate folders for each camera. Hopefully I can filter down based on camera name to apply a specific camera preset.

Won't be able to try soon, as something is going very wrong with my main PC right now, disk corruption on the boot SSD that couldn't be fixed after rebooting win10 multiple times. Trying to restore it right now from backup. It may be time for me to shop for a new SSD / SSD pair. These are Sandisk Ultra II 480GB in RAID 0. Looks like they are still under the 3-year warranty, with about 5 months to go .. Not sure how long their warranty turnaround is. I don't have spare SSD. Perhaps only one of these 2 SanDisk is actually failing, I will find out if I undo the RAID 0. The whole SSD array was running very slow, under 10 MB/s before the unfixable corruption occurred.

[SSGGeezer]

Have your folder open, select images to process, click batch, develop, pop up box with select preset.

ACDSee keeps a back up of all meta date, your xmp, catagory, keyword.

Which version of ACDsee do you have? IS it useful in cataloging your images in a useful fashion? Their website is pretty slick but does not answer the question of how many computers can you install it on, or is it a per machine license? If that is the case, it gets expensive quickly.

---------- Post added 05-03-18 at 07:35 PM ----------

I tried Digikam briefly. Unfortunately, lots of problems with this program

I also had issues with utilization on an 8 core AMD FX and 24GB of RAM when it would freeze and cause me to force restart my computer if I tried to do any inpainting. Many of the tools were not very intuitive either, just another example of getting what I paid for it I guess!