Originally posted by jimH Wheatfield is correct on loading multiple files into Pentax Photo Laboratory. You can stipulate the file type and compression ratio to save the converted files on the tool bar before you save the files. It converts the actual RAW file into either two variants of TIF files or one of five compression rates for JPG files.
OK, thanks. It wasn't intuitively obvious to me that it should work that way. You click on File/Open, then specify the multiple files in the directory list. Then a save operation will convert all the files specified.
Quote: You want to make sure you have the settings that you want for the conversion all set before saving the files because they will all receive the same adjustments when saved.
Sure.
Quote: Also Pentax Photo Lab will save the JPG files back into the same directory as the RAW files came from. When doing individual conversions you can choose the save directory at the time of saving. Batch operations don't give you that option. Pentax Photo Lab is really a quite capable piece of RAW conversion software. I like it better than Paintshop Pro Photo X2 Deluxe for RAW conversions.
I don't use X2 for this purpose because it doesn't seem to be capable of reading the camera setting for the white balance. I was happy that X2 supported raw but I found opening raw from X2 to be pretty useless in practice. I generally export to jpeg using the pentax software then edit the jpeg with X2 if I want to go to a specific (smaller) size e.g. for web.
Quote: Note: Pentax Photo Lab converts the actual RAW file and not just the low resolution JPG that accompanies the RAW file.
Yes, I knew that. Sorry, my post was confusing because I was talking about two pieces of software without being specific. The "extract jpeg" feature is in "Photo Browser" not "Photo Lab". What I didn't know was that I could open many images in Photo lab. I was expecting to use Photo Browser to specify a batch from the thumbnails and then launch Photo Lab to process them automatically.
My main annoyance with Photo Lab is that there's no context menu shortcut. I can make one manually with "Send To" but I don't understand why Pentax only provided a context shortcut to Photo Browser.
Thanks Wheatfield and Jim for your responses.
Rob