Processing RAW images

[Indigo November]

What do you use for processing RAW images?

I got my D90 a few weeks ago and I shot some important stuff in RAW without really knowing what I would do about processing.
I know, I know, stupid, but I needed some more flexibility for PP with these images, and it was a once a year kind of shoot.

I use gimp, fastone, and *cringe* photoshop 5, do any of these process RAW images?
What do you think is the best for processing RAW? Are there any free programs for processing RAW images? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Tornado]

Gimp does. I'm not very good at it, but it does. You may need to go to Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu if that is what you use and put RAW in the search box. It should bring up a RAW add on for GIMP. Install that and then GIMP will open up the RAW image properly. Prior too that Gimp opened it up for me, but the image was only thumbnail sized.

When you first open the image it will come up with Gimp but it will look a bit different. The page it brings up allows you to adjust some levels and stuff. Once you have done your playing there and hit ok (you can just hit ok and not change anything), it goes to the Normal Gimp tools and stuff where you can then get tricky if you know how.

You can either read the GIMP User Manual in the Help menu or Google some tutorials for it. I'm trying to educate myself in the ways of image editing using it at the moment. It's a coincidence that you are also on a similar path right now.

Hope this has helped.

[Indigo November]

Thanks, tornado! I've used gimp for jpegs before but wasn't sure if it could do RAWs.

[Tornado]

I think when the Raw first opens up, you play with a few base levels. Once you hit ok I think it then goes to JPEG or something and then you touch it up more. Whatever happens I had to use Synaptic Package manager to get a RAW add on for Gimp for me to be able to do anything.

[Indigo November]

Do you remember the name of the RAW plugin, by chance?

[jorf]

FYI photoshop elements 8 - relatively cheap (not compared to GIMP ) includes Adobe Camera Raw for CS4. It's not exactly the same (watching the Lynda videos about ACR CS4 there are some differences) but it's good. If you just dbl click it'll open the image in a pared down PSE version but if you cmd-R it'll open in the CS4 version.

[Tornado]

gimp-ufraw

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Tornado

gimp-ufraw

I used to use UFRaw all the time, but you may want to try RawTherapee. You can do quite a bit more with it. It has a nice thumbnail view, and I think it's denoise stage is much better than UFRAW. It doesn't seem to soften the image up as much. However, if you batch process with it, it will get very slllloooooowww.

[Indigo November]

Originally Posted by RLucas

I used to use UFRaw all the time, but you may want to try RawTherapee. You can do quite a bit more with it. It has a nice thumbnail view, and I think it's denoise stage is much better than UFRAW. It doesn't seem to soften the image up as much. However, if you batch process with it, it will get very slllloooooowww.

OK....... already downloaded UFRaw, I'll try this too, it's a plugin for gimp, right?

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by artofindigo

OK....... already downloaded UFRaw, I'll try this too, it's a plugin for gimp, right?

No, it is not a plugin, but it will detect gimp when you install. You can use it as a standalone to do basic shot editing, i.e. exposure adjustment, color corrections, white balance, etc... If you need to clone or do any heavy manipulations, it will export directly to GIMP with the click of one button.

Just to give a brief synopsis of how I chose it. I started using GIMP by itself, when I shot nothing but JPEG, to do basic crops, and some cloning and such. Then I decided to start shooting RAW, which led me to ufraw. It worked for awhile, until I started really analyzing my images, and noticed that I didn't like the way it rendered my colors. Even with the camera profile downloaded from their website, it just never looked right.

So from there, I downloaded the trial version of Capture NX2. I absolutely loved everything about it, except for the way it catalogued, and how slow it became. I then went back on the hunt, and downloaded Lightroom3 beta. It did a much better job of cataloguing, and color rendering, but I just wasn't and am still not ready to pay the price for it. So I then started doing a little more research and came up with Raw Therapee, which ended up giving me everything i needed, and it was free! The GUI may seem odd to some, but I got used to it fairly quickly. You can tag, add metadata, and star rate just like the big boys do!