Sounds like a long hard road, I sympathise. Anyhow, it is never about the kit it is how you earn your living, and you just need the best tools to let that happen. Also you need good support from the manufacturer when it matters.

Thanks for your patience and advice Peter and Algi; Algi you have an encyclopaedic resource for useful links! The redred link comparing software processing of K1 pixelshift showed LR to be better than Silkypix and Capture One, nothing about RawTherapee, and sliding the sharpener much higher than I normally use. I left the RawTherapee sharpener at default which is quite high but to be honest I couldn’t effect much change. It turns out that LR version 6 and later can process PS successfully, it was only the previous versions that couldn’t.

I am tempted to try the Silkypix but I am well used now to LR and I already have more than enough software for special applications.

Sorry, me again. I just took two identical shots, downloaded straight from the camera. First is a single shot, second is a PS shot opened in Lightroom, and third is the PS shot opened in RawTherapee and exported as a tiff file to Lightroom, and finally a jpg directly from RawTherapee. All three have identical sharpening and cropping but no other processing.

single shot

PS straight to Lightroom

PS opened in RawTherapee & exported as a tiff to Lightroom

Exported from RawTherapee as a jpg

Looking at these on the screen I would say they are almost too close to call but the PS direct to Lightroom has the edge for clarity and sharpness, but there is no discernible difference between the single shot and the PS shots that I can see; tell me if I am wrong.

Oh dear. I just opened a 270MB Pixel Shift RAW image from two years ago in RawTherapee, and very unsharp, using the pixelshift default and other sharpening sliders made hardly any difference. Guess what, in Lightroom it was miles better from the outset, really nice and sharp. Is it better than a single image? Cannot say but I am thinking that other factors like the lens quality will have more effect. Both exhibited the same odd artifacts where blades of grass where moving. I tried PS on a coastal scene last week but it was hopeless, the waves were blurred (naturally) but not in a nice way and a tiny figure was walking along the sand so in four different positions. PS might be worthwhile in a few very restricted applications but I am struggling to find any that couldn't be done better another way, like stitching a series of images together. Silkypix DS Pro 9 is £134.14 to buy or £66.94 to upgrade; I really don't like or use the version that came with the camera so won't be spending the money.

I tried again to download from the RawTherapee website but the software was unresponsive. I then found using instructions in the Mac App Store where you copy and paste a string into a command line resulted in a useable download, although the file search still won't show peripheral hard drives. Anyhow, right-clicking on an image opens in RawTherapee with useable editing functions so a result. Now just need some pixel-shift images to try out!

Ps By copying the software onto my portable SSD where the photos are stored I can use it on my laptop as well without having to go through the download procedure again.

Thanks, by ‘real time’ I meant seeing the changes on the image as they are applied, on my version I have to guess the changes then click on the image to apply them and then wait several seconds to see the result; totally unworkable.

Hi Algi, I tried this last night but it wouldn’t find or open the hard drive with my photos on, nothing showed except photos on my desktop, kept clicking on the search and folders icons and tried dragging folders in but nothing. Having a fairly short patience span I deleted it.

Ps also tried right clicking on an image to get ‘open with’ but Rawtherapee wasn’t even on the list of software options so something not right. Might try again later.

Does it work in ‘real-time’? And can you export into Lightroom as a RAW file afterwards for further processing & printing?

As there is nothing on the telly I decided to try DCU version 5 which was bundled with the K1, only because I gather that it is best for pixel shift, but otherwise it is useless. First up, hovering the cursor over the control pictograms does not reveal their functions so you have to guess. Next, any changes made in the controls don't register on the image until you click on it, and then it takes quite a few seconds to effect the change so real time processing and fine tuning is impossible. Is this because I am using a Mac, or is it just as bad on Windows? Given that Lightroom apparently does not process pixel shift images that well (I don't understand why, it is a single RAW file after all) I am unable to make use of this major function. What do others experience?

As someone who routinely rejects my own surfer photos if there isn’t pin sharpness on the body I like the fresh approach in the closer action shots, probably because they have motion blur rather than just being out of focus and they work rather well. Inspiration for my next Cornwall trip!