A900 with 9 different RAW converters

[douglasf13]

I actually sold most of my Macs right before the A900 purchase, because I've begun building all of my own computers, so I never had a chance to try RPP with A900. All that I have left is an old G4 laptop for web use, and I can't do much photo processing with it. Iliah recommended Raw Therapee to me as a substitute for RPP, and it does a very good, albeit slow, job. He also said that his RAW Magick Lite will be available at the end of the month for A900, and I may give that a try.

Iliah is a big proponent of doing most adjustments in PS, with only very simple things being done in the RAW converter itself (he has numerous, valid reasons that I won't get into,) and he disapproves of the direction that RAW converters are going, now that they are attempting to become "do everything" boxes. While I'm not as much of a perfectionist as he is, in C1 I mostly just use a linear tone curve, tweak exposure a bit, and maybe add a bit of clarity, and then everything else is done in PS (unless it's just family photo album stuff.) RAW Therapee may have slightly better output than C1, but C1's file management and other options are much better, albeit not quite up to Lightroom. It's too bad that LR is so far behind all of the other converters in regards to actual output.

p.s. I agree with Jono that mac vs. pc arguments are usually bad vibes all around. each works very well.

 

[wayne_s]

Looks like RPP can be used as a plugin for Lightroom and Photoshop.
Too bad you got rid of your Mac stuff or you could have tried it.

 

[douglasf13]

Yeah, maybe, but there are a few converters that are equally as good, and Borg's own RawMagick will probably be the best of the bunch, if one is interested in slow converters of the highest quality. It's PC only, so I would have had to dual boot if I stayed with Mac. Ultimately, I'm finding C1 to be a nice combination between quality and speed.

 

[edwardkaraa]

Yeah, maybe, but there are a few converters that are equally as good, and Borg's own RawMagick will probably be the best of the bunch, if one is interested in slow converters of the highest quality. It's PC only, so I would have had to dual boot if I stayed with Mac. Ultimately, I'm finding C1 to be a nice combination between quality and speed.

A quick visit to raw magick page shows no updates since Nikon D2H. Or is there another webpage that I've missed?

 

[douglasf13]

I emailed Iliah, and he said that he expects a new version by the end of the month.

 

[jonoslack]

It's too bad that LR is so far behind all of the other converters in regards to actual output.

p.s. I agree with Jono that mac vs. pc arguments are usually bad vibes all around. each works very well.

Hi Douglas
I'm afraid I'm not such a perfectionist as most, but I agree with you about lightroom, especially with the less popular cameras.
On the otherhand, Aperture's output is pretty good, it works well with the A900, and although it probably isn't the 'best', the rest of the functionality makes it good all round compromise (IMHO of course!).

 

[douglasf13]

Oh yes, Jono, Aperture appears to do a very good job as well. It seems that the better the color separation, the worse that LR handles files, so that's why it's having so many problems with the A900.

 

[edwardkaraa]

I emailed Iliah, and he said that he expects a new version by the end of the month.

Thanks Douglas! Will be looking forward to trying it.

 

[kuau]

So even shooting low iso 200-400 Lr is not the way to go for the A900?
To bad I really like the workflow of LR oh well in terms of workflow, does C1 compare? I tried the demo of DXO on my Quad Core Vista64 PC with 8gb of ram and it is so slow. I also downloaded Raw Therapee and for me it crashes all the time.
Bottom line then should I be learning C1 for the PC?
Thanks
Steven