RAW Processing Resources

olli

olli

Super Moderator Emeritus
Location
Guangzhou
Name
olli
Since we have had a few threads recently on RAW processing and programmes I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread with links to resource materials for specific programmes.

If you use RAW and know of good resources for the programme you use please post them here with an indication of the programme and version you are referring to.

There is a separate thread for resource suggestions for JPEG processing.
 
I use NEF, Nikon's internal format, extensively, with Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw for post-processing. I can do pretty much everything I want to with these.

I used to use Bibble 4 LE, which worked pretty well from RAW as well and cost about a tenth as much. It was a bit quirky, though it had excellent batch-processing, e.g. for the time I did an entire shoot with the exposure compensation set down a stop from the last pic of the previous shoot. It came with a bunch of interesting plug-ins that not only put a pic into BW, but allowed you to simulate a particular film and even a particular printing paper.

Bibble Labs then brought out version 5, and since I was aleady a registered user of 4 I could use the beta edition for around 6 months. I liked it very much; however, when they released the product and my beta version lapsed the French version wasn't ready, the US web site wouldn't let me buy the US version (which I wanted anyway) and their local retailer here (Belgium or France, I can't remember) didn't stock it. So Bibble lost a customer.

I would very much recommend trying it, though. You can do many, many things, and that batch-processing really is good.

Introducing Bibble 5
 
There have been a number of discussion recently regarding RAW processing and a number of posts have recommended specific resources to help learn how to use Lightroom.

I've collected these suggestions here in this post and added a few more of my own specific to Lightroom.

First, here are some free online resources:

Adobe TV - a series of tutorial videos from Adobe

Lightroom for Digital Photographers - more free video tutorials. You can also subscribe in iTunes.

Lightroom Killer Tips - tips and other information in a blog format plus yet more video tutorials also available through iTunes.

And here are some that have to paid for (or you can use your local library)

1. Books

Martin Evening - The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book

Scott Kelby - The Adobe Photoshop Lighroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers

David DuChemin - Vision and Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

2. Online/Downloadable

lynda.com: Photoshop Lightroom 3 Essential Training There is also an advanced course.

Video tutorials by George Jardine

Video tutorials by Michael Reichmann

Of these I have subscribed to and use all the free resources and also have the books by Evening and DuChemin. I have never used any of the paid for material since I have always found more than enough help and insight from the free materials so can't comment on whether these are worth the money.
 
Fuddlestack said:
We cross-posted, Barrie - great minds!
Click to expand...

I'll second that John :D

I was perhaps lucky since I purchased Bibble Pro 4.9 and got my free upgrade to 5 when it came out. I've gone over to using Linux these days and Bibble is cross platform so it's very useful to me. The only windows I have now is 2000 and so modern Adobe products are denied to me, no doubt they are very good (I still run Photoshop 7 on my windows computer for printing purposes), but also quite pricey. I've made the small donation required to fully unlock the Andrea plug in on Bibble Pro 5 which gives a number of black and white film, developer and paper simulations, there's got to be some combination in there to suit your tastes for any particular shot.

Barrie
 
Olli, thanks for starting this thread as a one stop shopping kind of resource.

As an aside, yes Scott Kelby's sense of humor can be silly (or worse) but he seems to have toned it down quite a bit in the Lightroom book I have of his.

I know many find Victoria Brampton's site, pdf book and hard copy book to be very helpful: Victoria Bampton - Lightroom Queen

I have to confess that I have Kelby's, Evenings and yes...Brampton's. I need physical resources to refer to - and like to fold down pages, etc. I also like to call up my pal Don and get him to help me with some things, too.:D
 
grebeman said:
...
I've made the small donation required to fully unlock the Andrea plug in on Bibble Pro 5 which gives a number of black and white film, developer and paper simulations, there's got to be some combination in there to suit your tastes for any particular shot.

Barrie
Click to expand...

It's amusing to think that these plugins essentially degrade camera output to emulate printing papers originated maybe 50 years ago. Still, if the result is pleasing, why not?

Interesting that Bibble is cross-platform - I'd forgotten that, if I ever knew it.:redface:
 
Silkypix users will know how cryptic this prog and its manual can be. John Nevill published an ebook back in 2007 that uses plain English to demystify Silkypix somewhat. It was written for ver. 3 and afaik has not been updated to ver 4. The SE version supplied by Panasonic is ver 3 anyway. It costs about 3 GBP via Paypal. I bought it back then and found it helpful. LINK:
 
If you are going to use Lightroom, you need to buy into the whole database workflow model that it uses. I got Lightroom 1 for free because I had paid for the full version of a now defunct program called RawShooter Pro. Adobe snapped up the company that made that because they held several patents that Adobe wanted and also Adobe wanted several of the programers.

Anyway as part of that deal I got a free copy of Lightroom 1 which sat on my harddrive for 6 months with very little use because I did not buy into the whole database way of workflow, mainly because it was different than what I was used to and I never read or heard a good reason of why you would want to work that way. Then one day I was killing time in a bookstore and looked over a copy of Scott Kelby's Lightroom book. Right off the bat he talked about the workflow and why you would want to work that way, using real world situations, and it all clicked in my tiny brain.

So I purchased the book and the Video tutorials by Michael Reichmann online, and now I can't imagine not working that way.

I upgraded to version 2 when it first came out but did not upgrade to version 3 until a few weeks ago. I mainly upgraded so I could run my RAW files from my Samsung TL500/EX1 without converting them to DNG files first, but I am AMAZED at how improved the noise reduction is. I can now get very useable files at 800 and 1600 iso with my EX1.

I said all that to say that if you download the free trial of Lightroom make sure that you study up on the workflow part of it which is what really makes Lightroom a great tool. One other thing about Lightroom is that it also works great with JPEG and TIFF files and has the same workflow. So you can have RAW files from your DSLR or serious compact, JPEG files from your phone or any other digital camera, and TIFF files from film scans all together all side by side.
 
To add to Wally's remarks
The Video tutorial for LR3 by lynda.com is excellent and a fast way to gain speed with LightRoom
 
GIMP opened the Oly raw files from my E-P1 as well as the raw files from the LX3 with no problems. I'm still using CS3 so was a bit taken aback when I couldn't open the Oly file with CS3. The current GIMP version is 2.6.11. It takes some getting used to, but it is a powerful program and the price is right. GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program
 
Great idea BB. My preferred RAW developer is, um, RAW Developer by Iridient. Just the basics, but does them really well. The deconvolution sharpening is very effective. I also like how it converts to B&W.

But for B&W with character I love Silver Efex Pro 2. I'm also trying out Alien Skin, which includes both B&W and color emulations. Last night I even layered a SEP filter over an Alien Skin filter!

I tried Capture One Pro but found it very confusing. I've read that it works well for portraits and fashion, though, probably how it handles skin tones.

I still use Lightroom for some RAW development, but less and less.
 
Having been a long time Bibble Pro user I switched to AfterShot Pro when Corel bought out Bibble some time ago, running on a Linux platform. However I have always maintained an old computer running Windows 2000 and Photoshop 7 for its ease of printing photographs. That machine recently died and I rashly decided to purchase a PC running Windows 7 (tantamount to going over to the dark side for a Linux user). I also elected to obtain LR4 and Silver Efex Pro 2. My experience with the import/export and cataloging system in LR4 has been nothing short of disastrous, I have been totally unable to get to grips with it. Whilst Bibble and then AfterShot Pro support a cataloging system they also readily support opening files from normal folders stored on ones hard drive and have a treed system in the left hand pane much as per windows explorer, and this is what I have always used. I had purchased an e book for Silver Efex Pro 2 The Photographer's Guide to Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro 2.0, by photographer Jason P. Odell, Ph.D. and that indicated that as well as the supported plug in installation of Silver Efex Pro 2 in such as LR4 that it could support the import of 16 bit TIFF files from Nikon Capture NX2, although this was not a documented use for the program. I therefore decided to see if it would do the same for 16 bit TIFF files from AfterShot Pro and so loaded the windows version of AfterShot Pro to my new PC along with the stand alone version of Silver Efex pro 2. Having set the Preferences > External Editor in AfterShot Pro to Silver Efex Pro 2, 16 bit TIFF and Adobe RGB colour space I found that with a raw file selected in AfterShot Pro under Edit there was an option to edit with Silver Efex Pro 2 (shortcut Ctrl+E) and that Silver Efex Pro 2 happily imports a raw file from AfterShot Pro in exactly the same way that it does from LR4.

I am not aware of this being documented any where, so it might well be of interest to any AfterShot Pro users out there on the forum.

Barrie
 
It has been interesting seeing old posts about Bibble and Aftershot Pro 3. I started out using Bibble, then upgraded to Corel's Aftershot Pro 3 which I used for years, and still use it today off and on. Of course, ASP3 has not been supported by Corel for sometime as far as updates go. The software works fine if you have a supported camera. Today, I mainly use it for its slide show option. I wish Corel would do something with it but it does look bleak.
 
I'm still using Adobe Photoshop, ACR and Bridge after all these years. Too much learning time invested now to spend more time chasing (imaginary) rabbits ...

Now on the subscription model. It's actually cheaper than my CS5 and CS6 in the long term.

Upgrading my PC this coming Monday to run Windows 10 Pro 64 and everything else at a decent speed. My existing PC is over 10 y.o.

I'm looking forward to everything working almost instantaneously :D .
 
John King said:
I'm still using Adobe Photoshop, ACR and Bridge after all these years. Too much learning time invested now to spend more time chasing (imaginary) rabbits ...

Now on the subscription model. It's actually cheaper than my CS5 and CS6 in the long term.

Upgrading my PC this coming Monday to run Windows 10 Pro 64 and everything else at a decent speed. My existing PC is over 10 y.o.

I'm looking forward to everything working almost instantaneously :D .
Click to expand...
Now working (mostly). The new PC is very roughly 10 to 15 times faster than the old one. What took roughly 30 minutes on the old PC takes less than 2 minutes on the new PC. And that's while running three invocations of Bridge 2022, Photoshop 2022, FastStone Viewer, PIE Studio, Word, Outlook, multiple browsers with multiple tabs open. CPU usage got to around 93% on all cores, memory just over 50% of the 32GB installed. Temperature got up to 31°C. I don't think I will have to overclock it ...

When it's idling, most cores are 'parked', i.e. not in use.

It's an Intel I7-12700 clocking at 3.6 GHz standard speed, 12 cores, running 20 threads.
 

Similar threads

olli
  • Sticky
JPEG Processing Resources
Replies
5
Views
5K
agentlossing
agentlossing
Lensflare
Fuji Fuji RAW processing?
2
Replies
24
Views
3K
Piano
Piano
A
RAW processing problems from LX5
Replies
4
Views
3K
andrewh973
A
Back
Top