![]() According to Lane, XnView is IrfanView’s only competitor for the Mac. It’s also compatible with Mac OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Irix, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. It’s compatible with Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, Vista and 7 as well as Windows 3.x. XnView – Like IrfanView, XnView is free for non-commercial use. IrfanView – This software is described as “a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista and 7.” It quickly converts RAW images to JPEGs and facilitates viewing images as thumbnails. Downloading is neither complicated nor intrusive. It’s also compatible with Mac OSX 10.6 32-bit and 64-bit machines. According to Lane, it does just about everything Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom can do. RawTherapee – This free open source software is compatible with Windows and Linux 32-bit and 64-bit machines. The downside, according to Lane, is that PhotoScape is less than ideal for converting RAW images into JPEGs. With PhotoScape, you can edit a photo’s size, brightness, color etc., edit multiple photos with the Batch Editor, use multiple photos to create an animation, split a single photo into several pieces and a whole host of other things. PhotoScape – PhotoScape is free to download, although you’re encouraged to donate and “support future development.” The current version, 3.6.2, is compatible with Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista and 7. Terry Lane, in his article for the Sydney Morning Herald, reviewed what he thinks are the top photo-editing software programs available today. I get the best of both worlds that way - if the jpegs are good, I keep them and if they are bad, I play with the raw files to improve the image.Whether you love or hate taking photos, you probably don’t care too much for the photo-editing process regardless of what kind of computer you edit them on. My practice these days is to shoot both raw and a smaller, 6 mp jpeg with my KX. So using freeware to convert raw images to jpegs is largely a waste of time - if you shoot in raw, then you must use a good quality editor and that wont be free. If you have a well exposed shot in raw, then the camera is likely to generate a better jpeg than you will do in the freeware discussed above.īut if you have under or over exposed, or set the wrong colour balance, then a raw image will give you the power to correct these faults, provided you have the correct software - none of the freeware mentioned above, nor Turbophoto, will give you the power to correct these faults that you will get with the professional level software that comes with the camera or with the expensive aftermarket stuff like Photoshop. The camera takes a raw image and converts it to jpeg. I need to add something else - the only reason to use RAW is to give yourself extra processing power over and above what you camera will do. It has a noise reduction routine which you cannot control - sometimes it works OK but the real issue for both FS and Photoscape is all adjustments are done in Jpeg mode - Silkypix on the other hand does all adjustments in Raw mode, giving you much better control over the end result. I prefer the free Photoscape as it has additional functions such as fill in lighting effects and more effective colour adjustments than Faststone but it also cannot handle highlight recovery, although is makes a good attempt. I like the sharpening function in FS but it has no noise reduction function. The problem though is that you cannot do any highlight recovery in Faststone. I tried the new v3 beta RT but it crashed my PC.įaststone must be used with preferences set to show a full sized image after raw conversion - don't use the half sized (faster option) as this uses a lesser quality conversion algorithm. I also had a problem with my KX PEF files and had to convert to DNG in order to use RT. Noise reduction is not very good, especially Chroma noise. RT is very good for resolving fine details and also for shadow lightening but is very slow.
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