Originally posted by DW58 Being a newcomer to the world of digital photography and have no experience whatsoever in post processing is the silkypix software that came with my K-50 a good place to start? Other options/recommendations? Thanks.
There's a lot of confusion around the bundled software that comes with various Pentax cameras. You should have got an older/locked version of the full Silkypix with your K-50 - version 3.0 I believe. The commercial product ( popular in Japan apparently ) is at version 6 currently.
The software has been modified so that it will only process photos from those Pentax cameras that it comes bundled with ( K-30, K-50, MX-1 and K-1 I think ). This is inconvenient if you happen to also own say a K10 or a K200D, and want to use the same converter for all your RAW photos. The commercial version that you can buy or upgrade to will process RAW files from any camera.
Otherwise, this program is fully functional. If you're accustomed to using Adobe products, you might find their implementation of some functions unusual, but it's just a different design. There's nothing magically "correct" about the way Adobe chose to design their product. Some functions have odd names because it's a Japanese product and things have been translated - for example, what would normally be called a "crop" function is called "trim" in Silkypix. Once I got used to it, I found that there were certain aspects of the design I really liked. It suits my workflow much better than a lot of other products - in fact, it may have the best ergonomics of the products I've tried, but I'm not 100% happy with the output.
But hey, it's free. One nice thing I've seen with Silkypix is that it is easy on system resources. It will run just fine on older, underpowered computers that slow to a crawl when running Adobe software.
Sometimes, when people see "Silkypix", they think you're talking about PDCU ( Pentax Digital Camera Utility ). That's a different program, which is based on a Silkypix engine, but it has a clunky interface. This is the software that comes with most Pentax cameras. Why Pentax chose to bundle the "real" Silkypix with a certain subset of their cameras is unclear, since PDCU will process the RAW files from any Pentax DSLR ( obviously, you need the most recent version to handle files from the most recent cameras ).
Some users who are prepared to work with the shortcomings of the interface find that they really like the output from this program. In my own experience, it comes the closest to emulating the qualities of the JPG engine in the camera. Because it can do this, and because it can correctly interpret all your camera settings stored in the EXIF, I suspect that PDCU is actually very close to the software that's actually inside the camera. They just bolted a clunky UI onto it.
Despite spending a fair amount of time messing with settings, I was unable to exactly replicate the output of PDCU using Silkypix 3.0. There's always a subtle difference. Both programs may be based on software designed by Silkypix, but there's some pixie dust in PDCU that does something special for Pentax RAW files. This makes sense since PDCU is designed for Pentax cameras. The Silkypix 3.0 you get with the K-50 is locked to only handle RAW files from certain Pentax cameras, but it was originally a generic RAW converter that would handle RAW files from any camera.
For occasional use, PDCU is not bad, but if you wouldn't want to process vast numbers of photos with it. Even if you didn't get a copy with your K-50, it's possible to download the software from the Ricoh site. There are instructions in the forum for how to install it.
Bottom line is that your Silkypix is not the same as the PDCU that comes with other Pentax camera, and you have to be careful when reading comments in this forum because some people use the two interchangeably ( often because they don't actually use
either program ).
For more on this topic, see various threads in the Digital Processing, Software, and Printing section of the forum.