Free Raw Converters - Reviews and Opinions

Anyone out there using Free Raw Converters such as SilkyPix, or Raw Therapee, or others?

Thinking about downloading them tonight to try them out. Just seeing if anyone here has experience with them, or opinions... or finds them useful.

SilkyPix is not free, except for a free trial, but has lots of great features. Raw Therapee looks promising but is still extremely slow.

DPP and RawShooter Essentials are free and really good in my view.

You get what you pay for in life. IMO, this applies to RAW converters as well. Having used those converters that you have to fork out some cash for and then going back to the free ones (namely RSE) I just can't stick with the free ones. It's not that they don't do the job but the other ones just do it so much better, more controls for you to tweak if need be.

We all have access to DPP and while I don't like their user interface, it does do a very good job of the conversion. RSE is good unless you happen to have a more recent body that is not supported. If you have CS2 then you always have access to ACR which is ok as well.

My converter of choice is C1 Pro and it does a great job and allows me to tweak to just about anything. I figured if I am prepared to put out thousands for camera gear that I am not going to cheap out on the software side.

try the Lightroom beta

I used Lightroom room also... like it better than the raw plugins for photoshop.

NIKONUSER wrote in post #2451294
I used Lightroom room also... like it better than the raw plugins for photoshop.

CS3 beta is now available with the same ACR engine used in LR.

rfreschner wrote in post #2451696
CS3 beta is now available with the same ACR engine used in LR.

I heard people saying it looked the same... if it is the same, who is Adobe planning to market Lightroom to?

davidcrebelxt wrote in post #2452450
I heard people saying it looked the same... if it is the same, who is Adobe planning to market Lightroom to?

Lightroom is far more than just acr. Check it out. The only thing that really competes with it is Aperature, its a total complete package that addresses a lot of functionality not yet met together in any program.

And as far as the RAW abilities, its way more functional than the existing ACR, offering far more flexability and options than the current version. ACR 4.0 in cs3 beta is similar, but is just one aspect of Lightroom

Bodog wrote in post #2450921
SilkyPix is not free, except for a free trial, but has lots of great features. Raw Therapee looks promising but is still extremely slow.

Just tried SilkyPix... the version I dowloaded said "Developer Studio 3.0 Free" and doesn't seem like its a trial version...

Has a few interesting "tastes", such as sunset, nostalgic toy camera, etc... reminds me of Picture Styles, as it changes a number of settings apparently. (the toy camera one even darkens the corners of the picture... so I don't know if that's a processing parameter thats adjustable or not...)

Also a number of color settings that I guess are simulating different film emulsions (is that the correct term?)

Anyway, looks interesting... didn't try it out long enough to get a good impression of it, mainly seeing if it was trial version or not, but looks interesting enough to play around with.

Tried Raw Therapee briefly too, and it is a little slow reprocessing every time changing a parameter, but interested to see where it is headed.

If I get more time using either of these, I'll be sure to pass on my impressions. Don't have alot of time lately, and not much to shoot around here in the winter anyway.

Thanks for all the replies, hopefully someone can find these tools useful too!

coreypolis wrote in post #2451257
try the Lightroom beta

Yeah, I've tried it, and I'm impressed. I think Adobe's got a winner there, esp. since Apple doesn't seem interested in developing Aperture for Windows.

I'm trying not to invest too much time into it until I know how much it will set me back.

coreypolis wrote in post #2451257
try the Lightroom beta

Corey,

What hardware are you running Lightroom on? I've downloaded beta 4.1 but am nervous to install it since I've heard that it could be close to unuseable on my 3GHz P4 laptop with 1 GB of RAM.

Bob_A wrote in post #2453342
Corey,

What hardware are you running Lightroom on? I've downloaded beta 4.1 but am nervous to install it since I've heard that it could be close to unuseable on my 3GHz P4 laptop with 1 GB of RAM.

similar, 3ghz p4 2gb ram. the more photos you have it manage, the more it will suck up resources. I use it on our laptop too, whihc is only 768ram, and as long as you don't ask it to do a lot as once its good to go.

coreypolis wrote in post #2453350
similar, 3ghz p4 2gb ram. the more photos you have it manage, the more it will suck up resources. I use it on our laptop too, whihc is only 768ram, and as long as you don't ask it to do a lot as once its good to go.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

By the way, have you used PS CS2? If you have, what do you see as the main advantages of Lightroom. Pricewise it's supposed to be between Elements and PS CS2.