Best RAW Photo Editor?

rbbecker · Jul 18, 2016

Hi All,

Looking for feedback on good programs for editing RAW photos. I had been using Picasa but hate that it saves as JPEG and compresses my photos.

Interested in both free and paid programs. Thanks!!

unpopular · Jul 18, 2016

I like Silky, but it's a bit expensive.

480sparky · Jul 18, 2016

What camera?

rbbecker · Jul 18, 2016

480sparky said:
What camera?

Using a Canon EOS Rebel T1i currently.

480sparky · Jul 18, 2016

Have you tried Canon's software?

Ysarex · Jul 18, 2016

Free: DPP, Raw Therapee, DarkTable
Expensive: Capture One, DXO, Silky Pix
Modest: Lightroom, ACDSee, PhotoNinja
Odd: Helicon, AfterShot

Joe

Edit: If I had to pick only one: Capture One
If I ran a business: Lightroom

dennybeall · Jul 18, 2016

For 10 bucks a month I use the Lightroom/Photoshop combination. We don't actually edit raw files. A software program has to read the raw data file and give us a photo file that we can work with. That edited photo data can then be written to disc in many different photo formats.
Personally I shoot raw with my Nikon and then load if from the camera with Bridge and edit with Photoshop, then store in tiff or psd. Many people now use Lightroom in place of Bridge.

unpopular · Jul 18, 2016

Odd and free - Lightzone

Peeb · Jul 18, 2016

I like dxo.

donny1963 · Jul 19, 2016

rbbecker said:
Hi All,

Looking for feedback on good programs for editing RAW photos. I had been using Picasa but hate that it saves as JPEG and compresses my photos.

Interested in both free and paid programs. Thanks!!

One of the best RAW editing tool around that i like is Lightroom, however, a couple things you might want to consider before getting it, is what your have for a computer if using a computer.
If using Windows OS, you would want to have at least an I5 system to use Adobe Lightroom , because Lightroom can be kind of sluggish if your using an older system.

You can go to the Adobe website to check out the system requirements and what the recommended hardware is..
It does cost, but the cost is very reasonable in my opinion, they have plans you can choose from to basically lease it by the month or by the year.
It's very cheap only $9.99 for the photography plan which includes Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop both.
you can check out there plans here Adobe Creative Cloud

Lightroom works great, and it has many features that make it easy to perform post-production on your images.
both beginners and serious photographers use Lightroom, and does render outstanding results.
As i said before you don't want to be using an older system to use it because it can be a bit demanding on hardware performance depending on the size of your images your working with.
the best part of this plan is when they come up with updates or the next version,
you automatically get it.

I use an I7 36GB of ram, and 4 2 TB SSD Drives i use Drive 1 (C Drive for my OS and software and Drive 2 (D Drive for my images to work with them in post, and Drive 3 and 4 are use to mirror drive 1 and 2..
they are very fast pretty much like working in memory and they are reliable , No moving parts like you would have with a hard disk drive with spinning disks. they are a bit expensive, i paid around $630.00 for each of them, you can get 1 TB drives for about $250.00 each.

For backup i use a quite expensive but awesome Qnap 871T, it uses the thunderbold 2 and it's fast as lightning, faster then SSD drives..
it holds 8 drives and i have 4 4TB Seagate NAS drives in it, it holds crazy amounts of data, you can even use it to edit 4K video..
they install very quick and easy just slide them in the slot and your ready to go..

putting my images on it is fast and easy.. This is where i store my images, i don't use them as working space..
this is probably the best backup system you can get for storing your images very reliable i never had a problem with them and they are designed to run continuously..
the Qnap cost about $3,000.00 but i got it for $2,000.00 deal,
The NAS drives are more costly but better drives arond $200.00 each..
you can check out the QNAP here TX-500P :: QNAP

Hope this helps..

AceCo55 · Jul 19, 2016

... wowsers!!!!!
That is some sweet setup you have.

john.margetts · Jul 19, 2016

I use UFRaw. It offers a choice of demosaicing algorithms, lens correction for most current lenses, wavelet denoising, saves as either 8 bit JPEG or 16 bit Tiff and other joys I cannot remember off the top of my head.

donny1963 · Jul 19, 2016

AceCo55 said:
... wowsers!!!!!
That is some sweet setup you have.

Well it's ok, and it works for me, i'ts nothing special, i have friends who have systems that would blow mine out of the water for sure, one friend of mine has $20,000.00 into his system..

rbbecker · Jul 20, 2016

donny1963 said:
I use an I7 36GB of ram

36 gigs of ram?? holy cow

I have an i5 with only 8 gig of ram (it's a 8 yr old laptop, which was darn impressive back then).. been needing to upgrade to a tower system. Also I agree with the NAS for back-up. I've been planning on going that route. Thanks!

donny1963 · Jul 20, 2016

rbbecker said:
donny1963 said:

I use an I7 36GB of ram

Click to expand...

36 gigs of ram?? holy cow

I have an i5 with only 8 gig of ram (it's a 8 yr old laptop, which was darn impressive back then).. been needing to upgrade to a tower system. Also I agree with the NAS for back-up. I've been planning on going that route. Thanks!