Digital Camera Utility 4 won't let me edit some images

I've just begun starting to "play" with Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 and hope to "clean up" a few exposure errors in a set of wedding photos. All taken at the same time, all more or less the same settings. The software will open all of the pictures, but for a reason I can't figure it will only allow me to edit some of them. Thought at first it would let me edit the landscape ones but not the portrait ones, but found a few exceptions to this. So far as I'm aware none of them are locked or unlocked any differently from the rest. I'm sure there is something trivial here I've overlooked, but the manual is not much help.
Anyone come across this before or know what to do?

Firstly is the PENTAX Digital Camera Utility 4 updated to lastest edition Dec 2011 ,
http://www.pentax.co.uk/en/news/1597/news.html
also PENTAX Digital Camera Utility 4 Update for Windows feb 2011,
http://www.pentax.jp/english/support/digital/util4_win.html
So your using a Kr, what size are the raw images?
Is your computer powerful enough, does it have atleast 4gb of ram and is it windows with w7 64bit?
As i had trouble with my windows XP 32bit with only 2gb ram would take 10 minutes just to load.

Hi Lee

I don't think the PC will be a limiting factor here. My old laptop running XP and with only 1gb RAM handled the files with no problem, even the large K-5 ones. Are you shooting some in RAW and some in JPEG? If you want to adjust exposure etc. you will need to shoot in RAW. Also, I found that if I used an earlier version of the software that came with my K-x, it would not handle the K-5 files, so I updated to the latest and it now works fine with all the files from all my cameras.

Hope this helps.

Regards
David

The computer is certainly powerful enough, 4Gb RAM, Windows 7. All the images load in seconds. But the puzzle is that all the images are JPEGs, none of them RAW. All about 5Mb size. Some of them it will let me change exposure, white balance, colour contrast etc. etc. and editing is really fast, only a second or two and I can save the edited picture just fine. Others the mouse just won't activate the pointers, drop-down menus or anything and the editing buttons are greyed out on the tool bar. Acts as if the image is read only but it's not. Other photoediting programs will happily edit these shots, just not the pentax digital camera utility 4.
It seems my version is not the latest, I'm on 4.30 instead of 4.32 so I will try the update, but to be honest I don't really expect it to make a difference after reading the "what's new in this version" blurb. But I'll let you know when it is loaded!

Best advice I can give Lee is to try shooting RAW and I think this will solve the issues you are experiencing. If you don't want to shoot in RAW then I would suggest using alternative software to make your initial edits.

Regards
David

Have you transferred the files to your hard drive and loading them from there, or are they stored on a CD or DVD, or are you reading them directly from the memory card?
I ask because anything written to a CD/DVD might become write protected and transfers off a memory card might just be slow.

Another quick thought, can you view the files OK in Windows explorer?

John

You can not download and process the files in Digital Camera utility after using another program on the files,you must download from the Camera or hard-drive,you should be able to download from a disk, but not sure as I have never done it this way.

Well I did the upgrade, made absolutely no difference! The files were copied directly from the camera to the hard drive and have not been edited with any other program. Yes I tried one or two shots to see if another program would work with them when the Pentax software refused, but there are still plenty of others which have never been opened or edited with anything else. And yes I can view them with Internet Explorer!.
So for the time beng it is an unresolved mystery.
I can edit with Photoshop or phtosuite instead, I just liked the Pentax program because of the close correlation between what it lets you do and the actual camera settings.
I've contacted Pentax support as a last resort and will wait to see what they say.
But thanks to everyone for your suggestions and help.

Mystery solved! A bit of detective work has led me to realise what happened. When I first copied the files to the hard drive, I quickly scanned through them with windows explorer, just to see which ones to keep and which to junk. The ones shot in portrait more I rotated so they were right way up on the screen. When I came to edit properly with the Pentax software, these are the ones that it refused to edit, even though it would display them and other editing programs were happy to process them.

Copying them afresh from the camera and this time doing the rotation in the pentax program as well as the editing, and they work just fine!
Clearly pentax software won't touch them if anything else has been done before, even something as simple as turning them right way up!

I'm happy to have solved the mystery as much as anything, and thanks again all those of you experts out there who offered your advice.
It is good to know there is a body of knowledgeable people that one can ask easily and who area so willing to help a "newbie"!

Windows explorer / photo viewer has destroyed many peoples photos. Why a 'viewer' needs to make permanent changes to a file just to rotate an image for display is beyond me. I hate to think what other changes it introduces (such as additional jpeg compression)...

I think it's more that Pentax software only wants to work on Pentax files. Once the file has changed, it is no longer a 'Pentax Image'.

Windows doesn't just tell it which way to display, it actually changes the file so it's "that way up"! In fairness, most people don't edit photos. They copy them and open them in Windows. If they then copied the file (say to a digital photo frame) and the rotation had reverted they would be prety annoyed

Ow no! Shouldn't there be a warning for this somewhere?

For a while i had a problem with unpredictable 'greyed out' options in Camera Utility 4.

It is probably Windows (Live Photo Gallery) that is the problem.

Even when i thought to use Pentax Camera Utility 4 first, i noticed later that the 'vertical portraits' etc were still wrong/on their side.

For e-mailing smaller photo-files, and for quick viewing, i still used Windows Gallery. I turned the photos, yes.


ARE THE PICTURES NOW 'LOST FOREVER' for Camera Utility 4 ?

The 'undo' option in windows Live Gallery does not undo the 90 dgr rotating.

Can i change the photos back to a 'Pentax file'?????!

Is there a non-destructive viewer that one can use for quick viewing?

(One that keeps the photos a 'Pentax file' for later use with Camera Utility 4 !!) [/b]

I want a warning in the Pentax Software for this!

To be fair, no software will give you warnings about what unrelated software might do.

Perhaps Photoshop will be your answer?

Hi Lee

Since Pentax has not provided a User Guide to PDCU4 our colleague Nigel has prepared a Mini Guide which is available on this Forum.

see

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/a-mini-guide-to-pentax-digital-camera-uti...

I now find this a very easy to use piece of software and use it all the time to edit RAW files

Good luck
Peter