[er1kksen]

I need to add something else - the only reason to use RAW is to give yourself extra processing power over and above what you camera will do.

Except, oh, maybe if you prefer the "look" you get from a particular RAW converter to the camera's jpeg engine.

The camera takes a raw image and converts it to jpeg. If you have a well exposed shot in raw, then the camera is likely to generate a better jpeg than you will do in the freeware discussed above.

Unless of course you've learned to use the software to its fullest capabilities.

But if you have under or over exposed, or set the wrong colour balance, then a raw image will give you the power to correct these faults, provided you have the correct software - none of the freeware mentioned above, nor Turbophoto, will give you the power to correct these faults that you will get with the professional level software that comes with the camera or with the expensive aftermarket stuff like Photoshop.

Have you actually used any of the programs you're denigrating? I can state from extensive personal experience that RAWTherapee wipes the floor with Pentax's supplied software, both in terms of advanced manipulation capability and potential quality of final output.

So using freeware to convert raw images to jpegs is largely a waste of time - if you shoot in raw, then you must use a good quality editor and that wont be free.

"It can't be good unless you pay money for it", right? RAWTherapee (I can't speak for the other editors) was produced by people who wanted a high-quality RAW processor with advanced options and didn't want to pay, say, $300 for Lightroom. And the result is a piece of software that, while it has its niggles to work around, provides an amazing range of advanced processing options (deconvolution sharpening? color vs. luminance highlight recovery?) while doing an excellent job of extracting detail, on par with the "big boys." It falls short in operating speed and things like noise reduction, but it is nonetheless a very competent program that deserves more respect than many, like you, seem willing to give it.

It's often said "you get what you pay for" but when you educate yourself on the process of creating something and create it yourself, rather than paying someone else to, you often get something that is very high quality even if it didn't cost a cent of actual currency. And that's essentially what the makers of RAWTherapee did, and then they were nice enough to share it with the rest of us. For free. If they made it a little faster and charged $80 for it people would bring it up in discussion the same way they bring up Bibble or DxO.

[simico]

the camera is likely to generate a better jpeg than you will do in the freeware discussed above.
...
none of the freeware mentioned above, nor Turbophoto, will give you the power to correct these faults that you will get with the professional level software that comes with the camera or with the expensive aftermarket stuff like Photoshop.

So using freeware to convert raw images to jpegs is largely a waste of time

Sorry, you're talking utter bullshit here. Writing this kind of nonsense is the real waste of time.

[jlaubza]

Anybody who understands the difference between raw and jpeg images would understand that technically it is not possible to have the same editing control over a jpeg image as you do over a raw image. It has to do with the amount of data in each format.

Next, the Pentax KX has garnered some good mentions in the review sites for generating good jpegs and as a user, I can support what the reviewers say. This is why I also said that a well exposed image will get a good jpeg out of the camera and further work is a waste of time. I have also met a few professional photographers who say that they dont have the time to do raw editing and rely on their cameras' ability to generate a good jpeg, on the understanding that the photos they take are decently lit.

The faults I referred to, e.g. white balance and over-exposure, cannot be corrected as well in jpeg as they can be corrected in raw - it is a physical impossibility related to colour depth, quantity of available information, lack of compression of data (and loss of data) etc. Yes, they can be corrected to a degree but in comparison, not as effectively as the raw format permits.

The freewares I mentioned all convert raw to jpeg i.e. 8 bit format (you do understand what this means, don't you?) before they apply corrections. A Raw converter such as Silky Pix on the other hand does all corrections in the raw space before converting to jpeg. Consequently, the range of control over the corrections is more extensive and allows for more subtle control over luminance and chroma.

It would appear from your use of unnecessary profanity that you substitute the certainty of ignorance for the open mindedness of real knowledge.

[mattdm]

The freewares I mentioned all convert raw to jpeg i.e. 8 bit format (you do understand what this means, don't you?) before they apply corrections.

This is absolutely not true. All internal processing in Raw Therapee is done in a 16-bit-per-channel native working format. You can then output to 8-bit JPEG or 8 or 16 bit PNG or TIFF.

It would appear from your use of unnecessary profanity that you substitute the certainty of ignorance for the open mindedness of real knowledge.

Yay irony!

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Last edited by mattdm; 08-06-2010 at 10:30 AM.

[er1kksen]

Next, the Pentax KX has garnered some good mentions in the review sites for generating good jpegs and as a user, I can support what the reviewers say.

As a fellow K-x owner, I can certainly agree that it is capable of turning out good jpegs. HOWEVER:

This is why I also said that a well exposed image will get a good jpeg out of the camera and further work is a waste of time.

This is the part that's wrong. If you want more control over aspects like saturation and sharpening, or want to do any more extensive editing of the image or simply prefer the "look and feel" that a particular converter gives images, not to mention the much-greater detail extraction, RAW conversion is well worth your time. Lighting correction and white balance correction are not the only reasons to shoot RAW.

I have also met a few professional photographers who say that they dont have the time to do raw editing and rely on their cameras' ability to generate a good jpeg, on the understanding that the photos they take are decently lit.

I know a few myself. And they shoot jpeg because it gives them results that are good enough while allowing for quicker shooting and workflow and decreasing needed storage. They acknowledge fully, however, that a good RAW workflow, even in a free-but-highly-capable program like RAWTherapee could give them higher quality. The extra quality is not worth it to them, however.

The problem with your statements (aside from the senseless bashing of a program you seem to know nothing about simply because it's not widely used and doesn't cost money) is the idea that RAW shooting is a "waste of time." It's perfectly fine if you state that RAW shooting is a waste of time for yourself, or perhaps a pro photographer who needs to shoot and process quickly, but everyone needs to determine their own level of compromise for themselves. RAW shooting is absolutely worth it to me, and most professional landscape photographers (the ones who use digital, anyways) talk about shooting RAW and managing RAW workflow as well.

So make your own statements about your own preferences and needs, but don't presume to apply those statements to the needs of others.

[jlaubza]

Here's what I said about Raw Therapee:

"RT is very good for resolving fine details and also for shadow lightening but is very slow. Noise reduction is not very good, especially Chroma noise.

I also had a problem with my KX PEF files and had to convert to DNG in order to use RT.

I tried the new v3 beta RT but it crashed my PC."

Explain how this equates to "senseless bashing"?

For the record, RT is the best free raw processor. But it is clearly not a well polished product yet.

[jlaubza]

Thanks for the correction Matt.

[er1kksen]

The precise portion that Simico already quoted paints the program in a negative light simply on the basis that it is freeware and that results are likely to be inferior to in-camera conversion, again, with an emphasis on the fact that it is freeware... sounds an awful lot like baseless freeware bashing to me. The only thing the camera conversion does better is noise reduction.

And the line about it being inferior to the "professional" software included with the camera. The software I recieved with both my K20D and K-x was rather crude and nothing that I'd call "superior" to RT. That's why I continued using RT, despite its little quirks, until I got Lightroom.

So we have negative statements with seemingly no factual basis, which is what I refer to as "senseless bashing." The "waste of time" comment has already been covered...

Obviously I was not referencing the post you quoted.

[grhazelton]

I sent this post to Pentax User, a British forum to which I also subscribe. Here's the link for their thread: K10 RAW Files and Photoshop

Please note that I have NOT tried RT on PEF files! When I decided to "go RAW" I decided to use DNG for future compatibility.

Here's the entire post I just sent to Pentax User:

"I've now had some time to work with RAWTherapee 2.4. I thought playing around with a Beta would be foolish, not knowing what the program was supposed to do in a stable version.

"It seems to do a fine job with DNG files from my K10d. I haven't tried the PEF format with it or with PSE 9. I'm still working on interfacing it with Elements 9; thus far it seems that the best way is to load new files into RT, massage them, and then pick them up in PSE 9 for organizing and further tweaking.

"I found that selecting images for RT in PSE 9 (as I had done with 9's raw converter) resulted in multiple instances of RT being opened - a waste of computer resources. Thus RT entails a revision of my work flow.

"RT is much more versatile than PSE 9's raw converter, its resources will take some time to master. It does seem slow, and this on an Intel core 7 running at 2.67 with 12 gig of RAM. Anyone else find it slow, and compared to what?

"I've had occasional freezes, although no crashes as others have described."

Now some comments on this thread in Pentaxforums:

One thing I've notice on this thread in Pentaxforums - to my chagrin - is the overly combative nature of some of the posts! To characterize another member's opinion as "bulls**t" is uncalled for! I would hope that the administrator would deal with this sort of nonsense. I hope such excesses don't occur on other threads or in the future.

Our colleagues across the pond seem able to disagree in a much more mature and civilized manner. How many people are deterred from posting on Pentaxforum for fear of being flamed?

[Lloydy]

I always shoot RAW and after trying a lot of programs, I have been very impressed with the freeware FASTSTONE image viewer. It is very fast and makes viewing PEF very easy. One thing I like doing is select the first file, enter, the piccy is full screen, I and up comes piccy info, select histogram, then use left and right arrows to step through the pictures with the histogram changing for each picture. Use the left mouse button to pixel peep.

Then save any ones I like after adjustments with a compression ratio that delivers the file size I need. Very impressed with this program.

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

Faststone is excellent, very intuitive and fast.