Which image editing program works the best

I have Lightroom (1.4 I think?) and CS3. I only got them as I can buy them at a bargain price through work. Had I had to pay full price I would probably have investigated cheaper options. Although Lightroom is slow it is excellent and I do 99% of my work there. The main thing I find easier in CS3 is cloning things out. Because one edits the files non-destructively, you aren't really aware that you have a separate "RAW conversion" stage. When you have finished tweaking you just click "export" and choose size etc. then. You have to do that whether you are working on jpegs or RAW.

Software is a very personal thing, and most of the packages mentioned will do most of what most of us want!

Best wishes, Kris.

I use ACDSee Pro 3. awesome piece of software.

Photoshop vs. Lightroom

http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/columns/digital-horizons/lightroom-vs-photosh...

I have started using Lightroom 2.5. Much more stable than Elements 7 (Organiser). Still use editor in Elements sometimes but generally not needed.
bb2

I'm a Linux user. For simple editing, my favourite image browser, gthumb often suffices. It will resize / crop / rotate / adjust brightness & contrast and has a simple 'enhance' feature that usually works well. It doesn't accept raw files, but these can be converted to ppm with a (free) command line tool called dcraw. Another useful feature of gthumb is its ability to create simple web albums.

For anything more complicated, I use the GIMP. This is available for Windows as well as Linux, and is also free. It doesn't have all the Photoshop bells and whistles but is a very sophisticated image editing program.

http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
http://www.gimp.org/

Tried downloading the update for raw converter to my plugin folder but had no luck. After following the process (on my mac) i tried to open a DNG file with no success. Any thoughts out there?

Well seems like I might be better off lashing out and buying elements v 8. I'd probably find having this new fresh program with raw conv and all the features i require, will be perfect for me. Any ideas where one can purchase online for a decent price, ebay put aside of course.

I second that

ACDSee pro 3 is quite good, and I use it now for every editing I do (RAW or JPEG), and it is an excellent viewer

http://www.faststone.org/

I like Faststone, it does RAW and is quick, easy and free. A great deal in my book.

Re Picasa: I was all set to try it, having d/l-ed and installed it until I read their terms of service. I'm no lawyer, but I was unhappy with those terms. It seemed to me to say that Google gained the right to use any picture that was processed or catalogued by Picasa, and that was unsatisfactory to me, though it may be that I did not understand their document correctly.

I'd recommend reading the terms carefully before using Picasa.

Well it looks like the best software out there is the one that your happy using? I think that the OP has drawn plenty of good replies and left most people better informed.

Happy New Year

I use cs2 with my K7 so you should be able to use your current software - have you set the camera to save as raw dng files? pentax are one of the few companies that have the feature to save raw files as .dng in the camera - i then open in cs2 with no problems

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

The paragraph above is taken from the parent company site - Google - I have always used Picasa and find it adequate and very user friendly.
Perhaps they are more controlling over the photos uploaded to the Google map sites - I have a few around the world.