Originally posted by fevbusch I have the K100D camera and Adobe Photoshop 7. Do I need more than this to process RAW shots. If so, what software can I use that's easy to understand and easy on my low budget. Appreciate any help, ...Freddy
Freddy,
I can't answer the question about Photoshop 7 as I don't use it. You do need to understand that there is no such thing, really, "Raw", at least not as a practical matter. In theory, a Raw file is any file that preserves all of the data that your camera's sensor collected during the exposure. But in practice, there are many different types of Raw files: NEF (produced by Nikon files), PEF (produced by Pentax cameras), DNG (the "digital negative" file format invented by Adobe and intended as a common standard), etc. What it means is that, whatever program you use, it needs to be able to read PEF files, since that's the Raw file format used by your Pentax K100D. So when you look at a program, look first to see if it supports your specific model.
That said, you have lots of options, especially if you're on a PC. Some of the following may be available for Mac OS X, too, but I can't say about most of them. The software that came with your camera (the Pentax Lab) is not too bad and of course you've paid for it already. Not a bad place to start. Not sure about Photoshop 7, but the latest version of Photoshop (CS2? or is it CS3?) comes with two ancillary programs - Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Bridge - that help you process and organize Raw photos in a variety of supported formats, including PEF and DNG.
Anyway, the main Raw photo processing program options seem to be:
- Adobe Camera Raw + Bridge
- Adobe Lightroom
- Adobe Photoshop Elements
- Apple Aperture
- Bibble
- Digital Light & Color's Picture Window
- Lightcrafts Lightzone
- Phase One's Capture One
- Silkypix
All of those programs are commercial products that cost money. Bibble is the least expensive - and it can do just about everything the others can do. There used to be another excellent option - Pixmantec's Raw Shooter - but Pixmantic was purchased by Adobe last year and their programmers are now working on Lightroom.
Most of the options above are first and foremost image editing programs. They are best used with individual images, although all of the options above include photo browsers. At least two of them - Aperture and Lightroom - are designed to be start-to-finish post-production workflow programs, designed not just to help you fix problems with individual pictures but equally to process hundreds of images at once.
There are many other options. Picasa (Windows only) is a free program from Google that has a great photo browser and organizer with a pretty decent and easy to understand set of image adjustment tools. Not as powerful a tool as those mentioned above, but that's not a drawback: it's not trying to compete in that league. Picasa can read and display your PEF files and you can make adjustments to them; unfortunately, at this time, it can't read the EXIF info from PEF files. I expect that will be remedied some time soon. Anyway, Picasa is excellent for organizing your photos. And did I mention that it's free?
Another free program that's much more powerful than Picasa as an editor is something called The Gimp. I can't recommend it, partly because I've never used it, but partly because it doesn't respond to your "easy to use" criterion at all. It's crazy powerful, though.
And there are many more commercial options, including image editing programs from ACDSee and Corel that are more or less like Photoshop.
All of these programs have free demos available.
Will