Originally posted by csa I've never shot RAW, rather jpegs; and am most happy with the results, including enlargements! I use FastStone imaging; and it works very well for me; and it's Free!
I think Faststone is excellent and I use it frequently, but it has two fundamental flaws for me:
1. I can't get the dynamic range out of its raw conversion that I can from my ancient Photoshop Elements, or On1, or... really any of the commercial programs. I know there are differences in things like highlight recovery capability between those commercial programs too but for me they are all in one category and Faststone another. That doesn't matter for a very low-contrast image, but lots of my images just barely squeeze into the histogram.
2. It doesn't have selection feathering, which is a fatal flaw for editing.
Otherwise, it's amazing for browsing and previewing. Maybe an expert would find flaws with color or lighting adjustments, sharpening, etc. but to me it seems like it does a good job with those, along with cropping and resizing and other editing functions.
---------- Post added 10-23-2020 at 09:52 PM ----------
I'd second the suggestion for batteries, but also suggest at least a couple of inexpensive travel chargers. I don't keep one in my camera bag because I want it as small and light as possible, but I keep one in both pieces of luggage I usually take on trips. That way I don't have to remember to pack one that I use at home. And if I leave one at a hotel ... I still have another one left. One thing about owning a Pentax vs. a more popular brand is that if you ever lose/forget something model-specific like a charger, you probably won't find one you can buy anywhere. And sometimes you'll find that having something shipped to you when traveling is problematic due to retailer security concerns - I've experienced that when I left a tripod QR plate behind (not a common Arca plate.)