Posted by Jim Salge on December 15, 2006 at 11:24 AM
I'm feeling very limited recently with Canon's DPP, and don't have CS2, nor the money for C1Pro at the moment.
I was curious if anyone has had particularly good experiences with the free RAW editors that are available, and if so which ones.
Appreciate everyones feedback as always!
~jim
Posted by Les Barstow on December 15, 2006 at 12:11 PM
I've used UFRaw and have been pretty happy. It's not Nikon Capture, but it does a good job on the basics. I'll use it if I want a quick conversion of something that's not too poorly exposed. It's not up to D-Lighting (Shadow/Highlights in CS2, and Fill Light in CS3 Beta...), but it's got a reasonable set of controls.
Posted by Ed Dubois on December 15, 2006 at 12:35 PM
Have you had a look at Picasa Jim? It's a free download from Google. The other option might be to see if you have a copy of photoshop elements that came with any of your equipment. Lots of Canon products come shipped with a free copy of it: ie printers, cameras, scanners.
Try the Pixmantec's RSE (the free version), it's still downloadable from http://pixmantec.cachefly.net/RawShooterEssentials.exe (make sure you run an anti-virus before using it).
Adobe Lightroom 4.1 beta is also still available for download, but I wonder if it will stop working after they are out of their beta cycle; I haven't seen any literature about how long the free download will work.
Posted by Bill Chambers on December 15, 2006 at 1:51 PM
Instead of C1 PRO, have you looked at C1 LE? Much less expensive, and will do most everything the PRO version will do except batch processing I believe.
Posted by Don Grall on December 21, 2006 at 4:24 AM
I just got C1 LE for free last week by buying a 2Gb Sandisk Extreme III card from B&H. There's a coupon to activate C1 LE. Go to the Sandisk website for more info on this. The card cost 75.00 from B&H, whereas C1 LE on the Capture One website lists at ~135.00 if I remember correctly. I didn't need another compact flash card but the C1 LE made it well worthwhile. I've been using C1 LE and have been very happy with it. Processed RAW files look noticeably cleaner than from DPP.
Don
Posted by Jerry Greer on December 21, 2006 at 7:51 AM
The big difference between C1Pro and LE is the ability to up-rez the image. You cannot up-rez in LE but that's ok because everything else is close to the same. CaptureOne is the best RAW program available.
Posted by Rick Dunn on December 21, 2006 at 9:18 PM
There's currently a $20 rebate on the 2GB Sandisk Etreme III card, so you get the card and C1 LE for $55; you can also go with the 1 GB and C1 LE for $31. Pretty sweet deal....
Posted by Nathan Buck on December 23, 2006 at 1:24 AM
I love Pixmantec's RSE program. I sure wish that Adobe had not bought them... Though I am sure that this was a good deal for Pixmantec. I downloaded the free version of RSE 2006 so if you want me to get it to you some how then I would not mind doing that.
Nathan
Posted by Tony Kuyper on January 14, 2007 at 10:23 PM
Curious--Does C1 LE have aberration correction, like Lightroom?
Discussion
9 repliesI was curious if anyone has had particularly good experiences with the free RAW editors that are available, and if so which ones.
Appreciate everyones feedback as always!
~jim
Adobe Lightroom 4.1 beta is also still available for download, but I wonder if it will stop working after they are out of their beta cycle; I haven't seen any literature about how long the free download will work.
Don
Nathan