What is a good raw converter?

[shootermcgavin]

Big mike I agree. Before I came to this site I thought a laptop would be great. My boyfriend bought me a nice one I guess. It has 2x the memory and all those other creative words involved with computers lol

Well now that I know more I want a desktop. My boyfriend had a good idea which I did want to ask on here. What about a docking station? I'm pretty sure the monitors we have can be calibrated.

I also have cs5 Dave said my laptop can support it BUT Dave is lazy and I'm not good with comps like how he is so I'm waiting for him to install it.

I would guess your graphics card in your laptop is pretty poor, which will affect the image and make a huge difference on speed. But I'm sure hooking up an external monitor for awhile would help.

 

[KenC]

That's exactly what I'm looking for bigmike. A way to just flip thru my photos that are raw with out having to open lightroom.

I have a lot of snapshots of my kiddo that I like to flip thru and just use the windows opener or just glance thru the thumbnails. I noticed my raw pics don't show the specific image for the thumbnail.

Your camera manufacturer's software will allow you to do this, even if you decide not to use it as a raw converter. When I plug my camera into my computer, the manufacturer's software comes up automatically and I can view the images as soon as they are uploaded to the hard drive. They are stored in separate folders by date.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Thanks for the tips on trying to recover my pics. Dave is a whiz when it comes to computers and he downloaded every recovery program he could find. I even had a friend who works for the police dept for finding illegal stuff in computers and he couldn't get them back.

BuT with the family living far away besides fb I also made my family monthly CDs so they copied them for me. I saved a good chunk except! 14-15 months old.

 

[Everglades1]

I am deathly affraid of picasa. Long story short I deleted it in my old computer and it was attached to every folder of pictures I had and it deleted all 10,000 pics I had of my son from pregnancy,birth up to 1 1/2.

When I was a kid (and to this day) I love looking thru the pics of when I was younger and I was absolutely devastated I did that! Literally i called my botfriend im hysterics over photos and cried for days. I'm ready to cry just thinking about it. I was able to recover some and thankgod for crappy fb bc I moved far from my fam so I was uploading a lot for my family to see so I had something left.

Long story short me an picassa dont get a long lol

I sent you a PM.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

I never even installed my cameras stuff into my new laptop I'm actually looking at the cd right now too! I'll pop that in tonite

 

[KmH]

Considering your apparent computer knowledge, Lightroom may be your worst nightmare.

You have CS5, so you also have both Bridge and the Raw converter ACR (Camera Raw). Bridge can be used to import, organize, and and export your photos.

ACR is one of the best raw converters available, which is why Adobe also put it in Lightroom's Develope module.

You don't need Lightroom.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

I had purchased lightroom bc I was having a hard time learning cs5 now that I learned lightroom I think I'm ready to put my big girl pants on and start using that program again

 

[shootermcgavin]

I had purchased lightroom bc I was having a hard time learning cs5 now that I learned lightroom I think I'm ready to put my big girl pants on and start using that program again

youtube.com I have probably 15 links saved just incase I don't do something for awhile and forget how, I've only had one technique I can't find but other than that it is amazing how well so many people do step by step tutorials on youtube.

 

[Big Mike]

Laptops aren't great for photo editing. For one, the location (lighting) and viewing angle probably aren't going to be consistent. Secondly, 99% of them use a TN type monitor, which isn't idea for proper calibration & accurate display.
So for serious photo editing, a desktop would be better, or at least an external monitor for your laptop.

Someone mentioned the video card...and I'm not sure if that is an issue. Video cards mostly take care of the processing needed for changing the display. So videos/movies & video games are where you'll really benefit from a better video card. For still image processing, a faster CPU and more RAM is really where you'll see the most benefit. Although, the last couple versions of Photoshop do take advantage of the processing power of the video card, more then before. I'm not sure how LR approaches this.

As for importing all your photos into Lightroom. You might consider using smaller separate catalogs, rather than just importing everything into one catalog. On the plus side, this makes it faster/easier to open & browse a catalog, but on the down side, you can only have one catalog open at a time....so you can't search for something that is not in your currently open catalog.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Yea I had joined this forum after Dave bought me the laptop and kicked myself in the butt afterwards

 

[Everglades1]

Sent you a reply back.

 

[thomas30]

I prefer to save my pictures in RAW format rather than JPEG. RAW pictures can be edited and saved in any format later. The other advantage of using RAW format is that it does not occupy extra memory.

 

[AntwanRTTG]

I'm sure I am stating the obvious, but backing up should be the first thing you do when you connect your camera memory to your PC. I have 3TB of external HD space just for backing up files. As soon as I insert my memory card into my PC I just copy the entire card and just use file names to help me keep track.

Then I start importing. Unfortunately I am still in search of a RAW converter myself. I am currently using UFRAW and getting quite confused. I think I'll just try and use my camera's software and see if it makes life any easier.

Thank you, everyone. There is some good info in this thread.