Best raw conversion software?

KZ do you shoot in PEF or in DNG?

Just to add to this thread:
I downloaded and tried DxO Optics Pro 6 as this promised better noise control.
Yuck! I took a fairly high ISO image from the K20D and it looked like utter mush - all smeary and horrible. Compared it with Silkypix Developer Studio Pro and that brought out so much more detail while still reducing the noise. The difference was unbelievable!

Saved me £70 as well

Matt

Ok, so if I use CS4, and ACR to convert my DNG's from the K7, which came after CS4. Do I have to update the colour profile for my DNG files from the K7?

Totally agree with you there! UGH!

Been playing with LR v3 beta as well, still seems rather limited in comparison with SP Pro, but the IQ is pretty good now. But it lacks many useful tools that I regularly use in Silkypix Pro, plus some of the tools it does posses are clumsy in operation compared with SP Pro, the one that readily comes to mind is the CA correction facility, nothing compares with the SP eyedropper tool!

LR's only advantage as far as I can see is it's cataloguing ability (as SP Pro now has the ability to do non destructive editing and print directly with correct printing profiles), but then I use IDimager which is superb and can load any collection directly into SP when required. But if SP Pro didn't exist, I think it would be my preferred choice.

Haven't tried Bibble 5 beta yet, but the last versions kept crashing and the output IQ wasn't to my taste either.

Even though there is still room for improvement in SP Pro , IMHO it's definitely the leader of the pack at the moment.

The latest version of ACR (5.5) that works with Bridge/CS4 supports the K-7, you should have "Camera Standard" profile available in the choices offered, as well as "Embedded" and "Adobe Standard" if you open a camera generated (native) DNG.

For K-7 PEF's you will only have "Adobe Standard" and "Camera Standard"

Just make sure that you keep ACR updated - link

The K-x isn't currently supported, so probably just offers "Beta" with PEF files (as in LR3 beta). I don't have any K-x camera generated DNG files to check with, but I suspect that "Embedded" would be available as the profile should be contained in the DNG format, AFAIK only Adobe use the DNG embedded data with their Raw converters, other converters use separate sidecar files.

You can see the list of supported cameras here: link

THank you RIchard

Looks like SilkyPix seems to be coming out favourite?

If that's the case, as a 'newbie' to this sort of software, would I be better off going for v4 or jump straight in with Pro?

I tried both PEF and DNG. Lightroom recognises K200d in both cases as a "Camera", no more.
KZ

Okay KZ, I shoot in PEF and convert it to DNG while importing with Lightroom. It shows the camera model... could it be you have altered some options maybe?

I'm a bit clueless here.

It seems I do the same, but with different result. Theoretically, if it depended on the different settings, it would not show the camera model of the other system either. Maybe K10D is supported, K200D not.... Anyway, tomorrow I will check all the settings of LR.
KZ