RAW conversion

I just switched from Mac to PC for my digital art work recently. Earlier I plan to purchase Lightroom 4 for my RAW conversion. Just today I found out that Corel Paintshop Pro X5 Ultimate can also covert RAW plus many other things. Haven't bought neither yet. Which is the better value and performance between those two? Thanks for the feedback.

If you're doing digital art are you working with Ps? If so you can just use the Camera Raw, which is the same raw processor as Lr.

eaglesnest wrote in post #15856125
I just switched from Mac to PC for my digital art work recently. Earlier I plan to purchase Lightroom 4 for my RAW conversion. Just today I found out that Corel Paintshop Pro X5 Ultimate can also covert RAW plus many other things. Haven't bought neither yet. Which is the better value and performance between those two? Thanks for the feedback.

It depends on what exactly you want to do. You need to understand that there are two separate parts to post processing. First is RAW development (making non-destructive adjustments to the RAW data to get the image looking the way you want) and second is pixel editing (drawing or painting digitally, cutting out part of an image, pasting part of another image... anything which actually changes the pixels in the image).

Some software, like Lightroom, is specifically for RAW development. It has no pixel editing abilities. Other software can do pixel editing but not RAW development. Some software can do a little of both - Photoshop Elements has a cut down RAW development system and limited (compared to the full Photoshop) pixel editing. Photoshop has the same full featured RAW development abilities as Lightroom plus a full features pixel editing package - but at a very high price. I don't know where Paintshop Pro fits in the spectrum.

Ultimately you need to decide what you want the package to do before you can decide which is best for you. Most of them offer a 30 day trial so you can download them and try them out.

Not strictly true. Lens correction, perspective distortion correction and image rotation all change individual pixel locations and redraw them. Heal, clone and local adjustments - brush, grad filter and radial filter - all operate on the pixel level. Even sharpening with the mask set to anything above 0 treats pixels differentially. As a matter of fact, because the Basic tonal sliders work on a curve and are operative within certain tonal ranges, not globally, they treat some pixels differently than others. Same for the parametric and point curve editors. HSL and Vibrance sort pixels on the basis of chromacity. Oh yeh, add vignetting and grain simulation to the list.

I also use the term "pixel editors" as a convenient reference to destructive RGB editors, but really, the description of Raw "converters" (also a poor name) as processing images while other editors process pixels is increasingly inadequate as converters compete by acquiring more tools and probably misleading for the newby who seeks more than a superficial knowledge of how the software works.

O.K. That was today's rant. Another one tomorrow.

Even when you compare cans of tuna in the supermarket it is not always as simple as choosing the cheaper one. Taste, quality and intended use are considerations also and the equation may be complex and subjective. Dan is right, try them both for a month.