K-5 IIs RAW Problem

have just taken delivery of a K5iis only to find its raw files are not compatible with photoshop 5 or photoshop 6 - can't be opened in Adobe bridge either. No information about this in manual. Pretty useless really. I can see the new camera being on ebay pretty soon.

No problem - go in to the menu settings and change the default RAW format to DNG instead of the Pentax RAW format.

What are you talking about? No problems with my RAW files in Adobe Bridge or any other software I own that can handle RAW. No problems with CS5 either as I know a very good Photographer with the IIs and CS5.

Which RAW format are you shooting in? If it's DNG you will not have a problem. If you want to sell the camera, let me know! It is a superb bit of kit and I would happily make you an offer on it.

Regards
David

thank you Percy, that has worked.

I think perhaps the Photoshop 5 & 6 referred to are probably Photoshop Elements, not CS.

Blame Adobe if you have an old Elements or PS that can't handle a new camera's RAW, it's their policy to force you to upgrade at
great expense. Use DNG as others have said, it's something you can do with a Pentax unlike Canon etc.

thanks all for speedy advice. pardon my strop, thanks to Percy, I can now open raw files in CS5 by converting them first to DNG. Very glad I can keep my camera, great results first time out (now I can see them)

It's not the camera manual you should be reading. But your software manual. Though Photoshop 5 or 6 are now very very old software.

I'm sorry, but Photoshop CS6. Bridge, Or more to the point Camera Raw 6.3 or later, is fully compatible with the processing of Pentax PEF raw files.

If you are using Photoshop CS5. You need to visit the Adobe website and free upgrade to the latest Camera Raw. 7.3 from memory. It's the latest version. Then you will have no problems using PEF or DNG raw files. It will save you a lot of agony and ebay seller fees....

The latest Adobe RAW converter only works in CS6.

My apologies.....So though the PEF recognition has been around for a while. The K5iis camera profile was only understandably introduced with 7.3. I hadn't realised that as I use CS6.

Glad to hear the problem's solved.
DNG format is pretty well universally recognised, and to the best of my belief there's no particular advantage to using PEF, so it just seems to be much less troublesome to use DNG.

Absolutely agree.....

Very strange reaction, being unhappy with a new camera because you're using out of date software on your PC Just follow the advice already given and I'm sure you'll keep it

Simon

The fault is 99.9% Adobe's - they issue a new version and immediately stop support on old versions. It would not take much effort for them to update previous versions but it does not generate revenues.

I have also noticed that they are rather slow in delivering compatibility for new Pentax cameras when compared to some other brands. Pentax deliver the software definition to Adobe (and others) very early in a development process - well before the first prototype has been built so there is no excuse.


The other 0.1% is with Pentax - because they improve the camera capability which is reflected in the .PEF definition. They could always leave the definition as is and not improve the capabilities of camera and imaging - but would you like stagnation?


As for DNG - that spec changes too and older Adobe software will not cope with newer versions too. I do not know which version the K5ii uses but you could have problems with older software that does not support that either.

And a question that I have been unable to get an answer to: Does DNG capture and fully store every piece of information or data that the camera produces and stores in the .PEF format? I have heard comment from a Nikon owner that one or two pieces of data in their format are not available or are truncated in DNG.