PP software - RAW and B&W effects

Hi

I'm shooting (unofficially) for my neices wedding in about a week. My plan is to shoot RAW to give me flexibility on PP white balance and fixing blown highlights etc. I'd like to also do some good black and white effects too.

The question is at present I have no RAW processing software except the bundled Pentax one. I'd like to download a trial version of something. I'm on holiday following the wedding and can spend my evenings processing the pics and doing some B&W adjustment. I've heard Bibble has some good B&W conversion built in. If there is a RAW processing package with some B&W effects to look more like B&W film that would be great. Any recommendations?

Silkypix

It has B&W - in fact two Monochrome mappings.
I'm not sure if the free version has Mono modes (probably), but that'll cost you nothing!

If you want to do serious post processing, then the combination of either the Pentax software or Silkypix plus Photoshop Elements is really hard to beat.

There's a hundred and one ways to do B&W in Photoshop... but a few are on my website. Or I can give you specific ideas via this thread or PM
Matt

and of course there's a time limited trial of the full version, so if you're careful with when you set it up you can do all your neices wedding pics on the full version for free. Be a great way to evaluate the software too as I'm sure you'll have a ton of pictures to deal with.

yep Mongoose I was thinking the same thing. any idea how long the trial is, the website does not say that i can see.

I've got a feeling its 14 days. Seem to recall being surprised that it was shorter than the more usual 30 days.

It has just changed to 30 days.

Jim

There's a free RAW converter at http://www.rawtherapee.com/ that you could try

good luck
Bob