[shuttertalk]

Anyone heard of RAW Magick?
http://www.rawmagick.com/

Apparently it produces the most precise results and highest quality rendering because "All calculations in Raw Magick Lite are performed in floating point ( as apposed to integer maths ). This minimises errors such as posterisation due to rounding. Errors do not accumulate through each successive operation. This means that you have smoother tones and better detail."

From reading some comments it would seem that there is a speed vs quality tradeoff, and that it is also quite cheap compared to the others.

[noisynoodle]

Looks like it might be interesting. I'm downloading the trial version at the moment so will report back after've tried it (assuming it will read Pentax RAW files - it might not!).

Jan

[noisynoodle]

Well I gave it a try, but in some ways I think it's too complex for my tiny brain. I couldn't work out intuitively how to use it properly and the "mouse over" help only seems to work intermittently. The plugins for levels, black and white point and sharpening are all missing though they're meant to be included, so the lack of those tools made it hard to judge the final result against C1 and ACR, and theydon't seem to be available for download separately. One thing I did find very annoying is that the final output image looks very different outside this program, so you don't get what you think you're getting...that alone makes it a non-starter for me. The problem seems to be with the colour management. No matter what profile I set it to it always output in something called "beta profile"..presumably there's an inbuilt beta colour management profile and for some reason setting it to use anything else just doesn't work. The other issues I had with it are firstly, that there's some sort of conflict between it and Zone Alarm and most importantly, it's VERY slow. At $35 it's very cheap compared to C1, but I'd rather spend the extra and not have these problems, and as ACR is free if you have PS, there's really no comtest.

Off to uninstall now!

Jan

[shuttertalk]

Wow, thanks for being the guinea pig, and thanks for the review!

Sounds like it's not very friendly "out of the box"...