PENTAX PHOTO Laboratory 3

Anyone here using this software?
It's got some cool stuff in it... but I cant belive how slow it is! Or is it just my computer? Its running on an iMac G5 1.8Ghz 1.5GRAM
I pull the slider over on something simple like Sharpness and she just chugs away.
Any thoughts?

It is known for being slow. It is based on Silkypix, you might be better off going for the full version. It's OK, on my Pentium 4 2 ghz, 1 gig Ram PC, not superfast, but bearable. I batch process and go off for a cuppa tea.

I periodically try other software and always end up concluding that I like the Pentax lab interface better. It is a tad slow but I don't find it too bad on my dual Athlon 1.6 (1900+).

Hi Joshua,

I'm guessing you mean that you've zoomed in on the image, and you get the 'busy' message for a while. On my AMD 2400+ with 1Gb RAM it takes about 6 seconds to update when I make a sharpness adjustment. Is that the sort of 'chugging' you get?

I use Capture One, and the changes are practically instantaneous with this - I guess it's the same with Silkypix too. I noticed a big difference in image quality when I went from Pentax Lab 2 to Capture One, and it's quicker to use too. Matt and several others here have apparently found a similar jump in quality going from C1 to Silkypix 3, but I couldn't get on with it. Of course, you do have to pay for both of these.

Dan

Hey Dan,
That's exactly the "chugging" I mean! lol
I recently purchased Aperture and find it do be quite fast for all my images from the *istD... unfortunately they haven't included support for the K10D yet so I decided to give the Pentax software a try until the update for Aperture.
I also tried the trial of Silkypix but found it too slow as well. Havent tried Capture One, but since I've already invested in Aperture it seems a little redundant... but I hear many great things about C1.
But since Pentax Lab is so slow I'll just be shooting in DNG and using ACR.
I just wasn't sure if maybe something was wrong with my version of P-Lab...but I guess not. Too bad, it has some cool lens correction features.

ACR works fine, as long as you shoot DNG format. I run them through the DNG converter (converting DNG to DNG) and get smaller files, but ACR handles the files. You just need to make a custom setting.

Eventually Thomas Knoll will make a profile for the camera.