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Free RAW processing software

Fardringle

Fardringle

Diamond Member
I don't have and can't afford Photoshop at the moment so I'm unable to use the Adobe Camera Raw utility that I understand is the general concensus as the best option in for processing RAW photos.

My S6000fd came with the Fuji FinePix Studio which does a moderately decent job of handling RAW files as long as they can be fixed using the settings already built in to the camera, but it doesn't allow any manual adjustments of exposure levels or white/black points. It also outputs all files at double the in-camera resolution (6mp becomes 12mp) which I suppose is cool if you want to create really large prints, but the 12mp JPEG output files are the same size as the camera's internally processed JPG files. I haven't done any detailed tests yet but that makes me concerned that the RAW>JPG processed pictures won't be as sharp as the files created directly by the camera.

I played around a bit with Google's Picasa, and while it seems like a really nice way to handle photo albums and basic photo management like cropping and rotation, it has even fewer (and less useful) options for processing of RAW photo files.

Are there any free RAW processing programs that are worth the effort? Since I'm using GIMP (it's free 😉) a plug-in for GIMP that works the way ACR does in Photoshop would be ideal, but it's not required. Or, should I just let FinePix Studio do what it can with the photos and then adjust color temperature and white balance on the JPEG files in GIMP?
 
UFRaw is almost exactly what I was working for. Multiple Google searches gave me nothing at all so I appreciate the suggestion.

I'd still like manual control of the white and black points on the histogram, but so far it has done a really good job with the half dozen photos I ran through it. Thank you very much! 🙂
 
If you are willing to pay a little, try Bibble. It's supposed to be pretty nifty and work well as a Raw converter as well as for general purpose editing. Has Clone/Stamp tool, exposure adjustment, distortion/CA correction. Plus it comes with Noise Ninja. At $70 it's probably a better deal than anything else. PSP has terrible raw processing and I dunno about any of the PSE's.

For free...if not UFRaw, try Raw Therapee.
 
Come to think of it, if you want something super-excellent to hold you over for a month till you can save up some money, go to Adobe's site and download Lightroom. You can get free 30-day trial that has, AFAICT, full functionality. It does better Raw conversions than I've ever seen and it's really pretty easy to use.
 
does it *have* to be free? there are a couple good programs available for <$100:

Corel PaintShop Pro

Corel also makes PhotoImpact; I'm not sure what the diffrences are.

bibble

bibble is more of a RAW converter than a general-purpose image editor; if you go with this, you could use something like GIMP for general editing.

Nathan
 
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