[Zig]

Whether it be music or photography, I'm a believer in getting the "front end" as high quality as possible, starting off with the highest-detailed file I can. I always shoot raw yet have not paid great attention to the actual raw converter.
Until now I've really gone on "feel" and general gut appreciation of whether the colour/tones are passable, along with how much control I have over highlight and shadow detail.
I started off with Canon's own converter bundled in their Zoom Browser, liking the batch conversion for simplicity.
I then moved to the excellent(and free), now discontinued, Raw Shooter Essentials, which I still use. Interestingly, for those of you who like Lightroom(and I don't), Lightroom itself came about because it was good old Adobe who bought up RSE(I don't know if this included the whole Pixmantex setup or just the "engine".
More often than not, I now use ACR within CS2 with occasional forays in Canon's DPP(very nice too).

What about you folks?
I've just come across the free(and very good) Raw Therapee(version 2.4.1 is currently the latest stable release)...and I was supremely interested in DxO: until I found the retail price to be £269! I guess that's about 500 colonial dollars...sheesh...

So...do you use the proprietary one that came with your camera...or a freebie? Or did you splash out bucks for a standalone? Or maybe you are not too fussed, sticking with the same tried and trusted one you started with? Or even, you might only occasionally shoot in raw anyway? Have you noticed a difference in converters...either in terms of quality or just ease of use with the interface?

[matthew]

I'm on the third version of Lightroom, so I suppose I've spent about $500 on it over the years. That's not a trivial expense, but if you ask me if I'd rather have that than a $500 lens, I'd take the software without question. (Note that I do also have an awful lot of lenses, so I could pick one or two to give up without too much pain. )

Yesterday someone asked me about buying copies of photos that I took in 2007. Going back to the jpg files that I was able to produce then, and comparing them to what the latest software can do, is amazing. These were images that were pushing my E-1 well out of its comfort zone, and it looks like the latest Lightroom upgrade is going to pay for itself.

But including Photoshop and Elements, which use the same base software, I've never used anything else. I have tried to develop images using the software provided by Sony and Olympus, but it was so painful to work with that I never even bothered to output a finished file. And as I tell people, Lightroom is a program that you marry - you'll never get much out of it if you're just getting together for casual dates. I can't imagine trying to move my entire process to something else, even though their are occasionally other programs at the beginning (vuescan, photoacute) or end (photoshop) of the postproduction sequence.

[Pavel]

Zig, I would echo Matthew's view about software being more valuable than an extra lens. I also agree with him that you really have to get to know your software to appreciate it fully. Understandably, there are divergent views on what software. I tried some freebees, Lightroom 1 (and now a little LR 3 trying to teach my wife). For a while, I used DXO as a preprocessor and it improved my photos considerably at a time. I now use Photoshop with NIK plugins. NIK can do for me what DXO did, except for removal of chromatic aberration (usually not needed) and distortions corrections (usually not relevant in my kind of photography). When this is needed, I do it in PS. I am entirely satisfied with NIK - I see it as somewhat of a miracle. Whether it is contrast control (4 different filters), color control, BW conversion (there can not be a better tool for bw conversion), sharpening or noise reduction or manipulation of selected small parts of images (veins on lotus flower, many little spots of sky between the leaves), there is nothing like it, I feel. Those that I know that tried it for a while are all blown by it as much as I am. I have heard great things about LR3 from many as well and they are as enthusiastic about it as I am about NIK. Strangely, I know few people that are truly masters in PS AND also produce photos I like.

[Irma]

My first raw converter software was Raw Shooter from Pixmantec, back in 2006...? Few months later we knew that it was bought by Adobe and we got the first version of LR for free. So I am using this software long enough to think about changing. I am very much used to it. At the moment I am working with LR 2.6 and I am very happy, I don't think I need anything else.

[Toad]

Lightroom 2 for me.

[Zig]

Thank you folks.
I confess that with a bit of hands-on, my initial glow with Raw Therapee has been replaced with annoyance.
Pavel, yes, I'm aware of Nik's excellence with post-processing but am a little confused in terms of their raw conversion... do they just cater for Nikon users?
I'm sure in terms of front-end raw conversion that I'll stick with DPP, ACR and Pixmantec Raw Shooter...I'm of course glad that I've an "old" camera that is still in theie database. I'm not sure I'd call Nik software a miracle, though it seems very good: with the exception of their grain filters, the monochrome effects seem to be just what can be done in PS, though admittedly a whole lot quicker and neater.

[Pavel]

Sorry NIK - as you probably know, NIK is a plug-in and does not do RAW conversion and THAT was the point of your inquiry. I was off topic. I use photoshop for RAW conversion. It is the same engine with similar interface to the one in Lightroom.

[Zig]

Ah, thank you Pavel; thought I'd missed something. That's a relief!

[Don Schaeffer]

Paintshop Pro X2 (or X3) (@ under $75) has raw conversion built in. It edits in raw and converts to compressed formats to save.

[NT73]

DPP when I use it. I mainly use in camera jpeg.

[Wedding Shooter]

DPP is excellent for simple raw conversion - actually I used to use it to edit all my wedding work. But now I use Lightroom 3. It is excellent software. I use photo mechanic to cull the photos down first though as it is insanely fast at viewing RAW photos at 100%.

This allows me to check focus quickly as I am quite often shooting at wide open apertures.

[Zig]

So...am I right in thinking that some of you actually use your RAW converter for getting the image close to output, ie, for radical image manipulation too?

[Wedding Shooter]

I use the RAW converter to get my wedding photos to proof stage. But to be honest I am only really using PS to retouch. Most of it is already done in Lightroom. That said - If I was producing something for a competition it would spend more time in PS.

When you are shooting a wedding frequently you simply don't have time to edit a 1000 or so photos every week in PS. So you learn to be proficient in the RAW converter.

[Zig]

Good point Chris. Most of a "batch" for me would normally span many a variation in lighting, exposure, colour temp. etc;