Help with RAW

Hi Guys,

I've had my K20 for a while now and have always shot in JEPG. I recently tried shooting in RAW using the PEF capture mode.

I am struggling with how I can now edit these files as i'm not sure what program to use. I have an old copy of Photoshop Elements plus Photoshop 7 and Photoshop CS.

Do I need to purchase another editing program?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards
Mike

Hi Mike, not sure any of the programs will edit a K20 PEF Raw file,as the K20 was built I believe after updates for these were no longer available

Most Pentax's also offer DNG as a Raw file, presuming the K20 can also,( I've owned K10 / K7 and K5 and they can ) shoot DNG, then you'll be able to edit that in PS7 and CS almost certainly.

Cheers

You can still shoot PEF files on the K-5, so cannot see why you cannot process them
still...
Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 software that provides an amazing amount of control over massaging either PEF or DNG files

Each Model of camera has a slightly different format of PEF raw file. So the software makers have to issue updates for their programmes as new models are released. They stop issuing updates for versions of the software they no longer support. I fell foul of this with the K5 on CS3. The easiest way round it is to set the camera to use DNG raw which is a universal file format

As already said. Shoot in adobe DNG format and you'll be able to use your adobe software to fettle the files Mate :O)

I shoot in RAW the whole time and edit my sad results via the provided Pentax disc. Now somebody's introduced PEF when I've only just assimilated the fundamental bleedin' difference between JPEG and RAW.

Prey tell (for the benefit of this technologically 'Cretaceous period' individual)what the hell is PEF?

PEF Is the pentax file extension for its own raw files Mate.
DNG is adobes file extension for raw files.

I don't know anything about the k20 - but did you have a disk with the Pentax photo processing programme on it ?

If you have then you can edit and save the files already taken in PEF to JPEG or DNG.

Then if it's possible on the k20 get it to save files in DNG and you can then process them on most of the processing packages.

I only know this because I cocked up with my k-r when I started to use RAW and I couldn't access my photos because they were PEF and none of my processing software recognised it - except the pentax one that came with the camera.

Thank you for that bruv, but quite frankly your appreciated reply still hasn't clarified the question for this techno-dunce!

Update Betty...the penny has dropped.

As said, PEF is Pentax's own proprietary RAW format, and DNG is an open format which will open in any raw converter. Therefore, from now on shoot in DNG format! There's a setting for this hidden in the camera menu system.

Update- glad the penny had already dropped!

CLUNK!! ;O)

If you dont have the disc that charlotte mentioned you can download a converter that will convert the PEF files to DNG.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5389

There is a cheap price for Lightroom 3 in "Leads to Deals" section. I find Lightroom a great way to handle the majority of my RAW processing, with Photoshop rarely being needed (Lightroom will feed processed RAWs directly into Photoshop if required). You can download a trial of Lightroom from Adobe if you want to see if Lightroom approach fits with your working method.

Have also seen deals on more recent versions of Photoshop Elements that should read K20 PEFs (e.g Morgan Computers).

I used to just shoot DNG on my Samsung equivalent of the K20D, although the lack of compression in the DNGs compared to PEF was a small pain (Adobe DNG converter linked above can be used to compressed the Pentax DNGs if you want).

Lightroom. - It's cataloguing features alone are mandatory for someone like me who shoots many thousands of pics

Lightroom can handle both PEFs, and obviosuly DNG. LR4 works quicker with DNGs so I shoot in DNG format now