software to support RAW shooting

richieg

I am currently a mac and iphoto user with a D90. I have decieded to start trying to shoot in RAW and was wondering if iphoto is sufficient to support my photot amanagemnt and editing requirements or should I move to something else and if so what?

I suppose I am not that clear on the uses and merits of the different programs such as Aperatue 2, lightroom, photoshop elements.

Could someone explain the merits or benefits over iphoto and which would be better for photo workflow management and editing of RAW images on mac.

Also is there any others I have missed?

I have done a search but did not find the naswers I am looking for

pete4130

You'll need something like Photoshop (probably CS3 or CS4 to support RAW with a D90) or Nikon's own CaptureNX softwar. There might be other 3rd party software that you could use such as GIMP.
I know you can download Nikon's viewer called ViewNX (It is the viewer that accompanies CaptureNX) and you can view and do slight editing of your RAW files to the extent of exposure and white balance before you save it as a tif or jpeg to edit in your normal software. ViewNX is also easy to batch convert to tif or jpeg too.

kumate_champ07

Lightroom 2 is what I use on my mac, you have much more control than iphoto and the final image quality is better.

there is free nikon software which is considered not easy to use but you can do alot with it

CabanSail

Moving this over to Digital Darkroom.

It really depend what you want to do with the images.

If you just want to convert RAW to Jpeg's then just about any RAW Engine will do that for you. If you want to do Post Production then you will need to consider your needs there.

diamondphoto

I have an iMac and have had no problems reading any of the raw files. OSX has no issues and nor does iPhoto. I bought Aperture 2 a while ago and have to admit that I'm still on the fence on this one. It can be a fantastic organizing tool with the keywords etc. and you can do a lot of editing in there as well and even get Nik plugins for it. I don't think you will have any problems reading your raw images with it. Before I moved over to CS3 and now CS4 I had Elements 3 & 4 and had no problems working with my RAW files through that too.
I don't have any experience with lightroom but I know a lot of wedding photographers use it and find it very good especially in batch processing.
As CabanSail said, you'll need to consider what exactly your needs are.

Good luck

Fergul

KarmaGarda

I use UFRaw myself. It's free and really easy to use. Allows for adjustments directly on the raw files too.

petercox

Lightroom 2 and Aperture seem to the be two leading candidates in terms of price/performance.

I think Lightroom has the edge, and it's what I use myself although many people like Aperture - try demos of both and see which you prefer.

Photoshop is too expensive for casual use and Lightroom is powerful enough that most folks wouldn't need anything further. It's also really good at organizing your files.

The only reason to shoot RAW is if you're going to be doing postprocessing (as you're not getting the 'out of the box' postprocessing the camera performs on JPEGs). So if you want to do it, you're better off getting a powerful and easy to use package. iPhoto is fine for managing snapshots and making very simple adjustments - but if you want to get the true potential from your images then you need something better.

Cheers,
Peter

richieg

I have been trying the demos of both. I find aperature much more intutitive to use. I struggled to figure out on lightroom how clean up images such as brush out shines or defects, aperature flet more natural. i also like the fact that aperature works directly with your ipod or apple tv.

petercox

There's your answer then!

Peter