RAW v JPEG

There`s 4 of us in this marriage tech !!

Tony

I don't understand the point! I believe that most of us would agree with Gwyn's statement. At least, the entries in the Gallery and Your Photos contain very few, if any, manipulated images.

I don't think Photoshop necessarily leads to experimenting with extreme image manipulation! It's a tool that you can be as subtle or as blatant with as you wish. I just do a bit of dodging and burning, cropping and straightening (:blush etc.

I have also tried Lightroom, but find I prefer PSE for the ease with which you can create layers, which gives a greater degree of control IMO.

I think I've barely scratched the surface of Photoshop, yet it's very easy to use, as long as you take it steady and work at your own pace. For instance, i have just begun to discover layer modes, which has opened up a lot of new possibilities.

I don't understand the point! I believe that most of us would agree with Gwyn's statement. At least, the entries in the Gallery and Your Photos contain very few, if any, manipulated images.[/quote]I also don't see the point. Very few people do this sort of replacement you're talking about, and even then I think it is usually a rare thing. As long as people are open about it it seems fine to me. In fact I recall John Riley doing it with a competition entry of his (the sunset over the shipwreck photo). He stated exactly what he had done from the outset - so was that cheating? I don't see how.

PS iPhoto can open RAW photos. If it's a very recent camera you may have to wait for an update, although if I recall correctly the K-x and K7 updates were released quite recently.

PPS If you have been satisfied with jpeg output then I doubt very much you'll be bothered about which RAW converter you use. They all work, and all produce similar results. I switched from Aperture 2 to Lightroom 3 a few weeks ago, and I can't tell the difference between their two RAW importers.

Tim - I run iPhoto 8.1.2 which is iPhoto09. I checked for ' RAW' cameras supported and it gave a huge list BUT against the K-x were 2 asterisks - and when I checked at the bottom of the page this is what was stated

Hmmm, bummer! I wonder if that applies to both PEF and DNG? Also what version of OS X are you using?

I thought I had seen the K-x mentioned in an iphoto update but obviously now I can't find it. It looks like I may have confused it with the DCR 3.2 update, sorry.

I'm still banging the drum for PSE, since they use it at college, and you actually already own it!

But re the iphoto issue, can you get around that by saving your RAW files as .DNG rather than .PEF? I know I know - too many acronyms! But DNG is supposed to be a 'universally compatible' RAW format.

I'm on 10.6.4

Oh Aperture would fit in nicely with iPhoto , so I expect I'll go that way

Hmm seem to have missed that DCR 3.2 update - interesting - wonder how that slipped past me.

OK - seem to have something more up to date than that , according to the installer

Time to experiment I think

I know that the RAW plugin for the GIMP only understands DNG files. Not much of a problem but it's a good job that I found this before I ended up with a card full of images in the wrong format!

oh I'm not rushing - if I change over it will be done over the summer and before the next term

Just had a thought - I don't think PSE6 will support the Kx in ACR as you can't update it to the right version of ACR.
SO forget what I said earlier about playing in ACR and PSE6. Sorry .

You are forgiven Gwyn

As I said - I'm not rushing

I wonder if you're referring to the Pentax software based on the Silkypix engine, which does unfortunately get called "Silkypix" sometimes when people see the logo on the CD?

Silkypix Developer Studio is vastly superior and is compatible with all makes of camera. It's just as popular with Nikon users as Pentaxians.

I expect you will have to do the bulk of the learning by yourself anyway with whatever program you choose. Good luck with whatever that will be.