What RAW converter do you find best in converting and editing the PEF format? At the moment, I'm using picasa which seems doesn't give me the quality i'm expecting in converting RAW to JPEG format. Reason why I said this is...i find a lot of jaggies to the converted files specially those resized ones even if the setting at maximum to preserve the quality.

Photoshop CS3 with Adobe Camera RAW 4 (or Lightroom if you won't do any drastic post processing).

Although Pentax Photo Lab comes out with the best color rendition, I just find ACR outputs a higher resolution image than everything else I've tried including Bibble, Picasa, RAWTherapee, etc.

I haven't tried Aperture though since I'm a PC person.

I stay with Pentax Photo Lab although I've tried Lightroom & CS3. One odd reason though is that some of my CS plug-ins are version specific, I cannot move up to CS2 or CS3 for that reason. Then again there's no compulsion to if just to process RAW files since I'm happy with the Pentax Photo Lab.

I've been using Apple Aperture and I'm satisfied with its RAW handling. :) I don't have any experience with others e.

Thanks for all the replies. Stupid me....I never bothered to check the other content of the DS2 box which I bought from Japan through eBay. Now I'll try that Photo Lab.

Thanks for all the replies. Stupid me....I never bothered to check the other content of the DS2 box which I bought from Japan through eBay. Now I'll try that Photo Lab.

Do check the version though, the current one for both browser and laboratory is 3.0. You can download the latest from here: http://www.pentax.co.jp/english/support/digital/photo310.html

Yup. I updated it immediately after I installed it. I like the color rendition, but the menu windows are crap. No choice....I have to work with this while my laptop is a celeron. Thanks again for the replies.

I'm still using a hacked version of Rawshooter Premium. I just prefer the controls and layout of RSP and I was lucky enough to find a hacked version that will work with Pentax DNG (still have to convert to Adobe DNG though).

If I'm in a hurry I just use Fastone Image Viewer to do straight conversions. I'm still using PSE3 for my PP.
Nols

Hmmm...it's nice to know that the Pentax Photo Browser can easily convert PEF to DNG. Now my option to work with RAW has expanded :) DNG file, however, is bigger which mean more memory space :(

Hmmm...it's nice to know that the Pentax Photo Browser can easily convert PEF to DNG. Now my option to work with RAW has expanded :) DNG file, however, is bigger which mean more memory space :(

Not if you run the DNG through Adobe DNG Converter. The DNG out of the camera is uncompressed while the Pentax PEF RAW is. If you run the DNG file through the converter, you'll get a similar file size as the PEF. :Grin:

Have i reached a point of no return? Hmmm...i may still shoot JPEG occasionally, but knowing what RAW can offer me...

2 samples of the test I've done the other day...nothing special about them...they just look more vibrant than the JPEG format (not bothered to post them)....DS2 with FA50/1.4....PEF then converted to DNG and then to JPEG....

http://www.pbase.com/explorer/image/83457810.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/explorer/image/83458338.jpg

Hi Nat,

The idea behind RAW or the Digital NeGative (DNG) is to mimic the darkroom in the digital realm; it is not merely a simple output format like JPEG. I used to shoot in JPEG owing to the fact that memory cards were still expensive then (I used 256mb + 128mb CFs on a Canon 20D) and that in the back of my mind, whatever PP RAW had to offer can be done with Photoshop anyway. That also assumed that I got everything "right" in the camera the first time I took the photo that whatever PP needed was only minor tweaking; I thought that any alteration in PP was "cheating."

Of course, I did recall that when we shot film, PP was done inside the darkroom in so many ways where the final output was tweaked whether to enhance a good photo or otherwise to salvage a badly taken one. We dodged, burned, tweaked the soup and played with the development times both of the film and the print. In that regard, I realized that PP isn't "cheating" at all and what Photoshop had to offer with a JPEG was very limited. RAW/DNG offers a much wider latitude that allows us to tweak a photograph.

Now with gigabytes of memory cards, I shoot almost exclusively in RAW (an occasional JPEG for snapshots) but with the intent that the final output will be in JPEG anyway. Part of my workflow is that the RAW files--as they are--are archived as what Jay Javier noted elsewhere as digital records of the actual photos I took, whether bad or good, in the same manner I keep my negatives (he said something like that in the Film Thread). JPEGs are the prints, so to speak, it is the output we finally show our audience and fans.

Cheers!

Bong