Good free RAW converter?

[photophorous]

Hi Everyone,

I have a friend who just bought a D40x and I was wondering if anyone can recommend a good free RAW converter.

I use Rawshooter Essentials with my D70s, but it is not updated for the D40x. My friend, being very new to photography, doesn't want to spend any more money at the moment, and the included Nikon software doesn't allow any editing. So, I'm not sure what to suggest for him.

Please let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks,
Paul

[Photo-John]

Interesting question. I had heard that Google's Picasa did RAW conversions. But I downloaded the most recent version in April and wasn't able to view or convert my Canon XTi RAW files with it. I ended up buying the newest version of my old standby, BreezeBrowser. It's relatively inexpensive, at $60 for the pro version. And they offer a free 30 day trial.

If anyone knows of any free RAW converters or has successfully used Picasa with RAW files, I'd like to know.

[KenB]

Try Gimp with UFRaw. I've used it pretty extensively and it works pretty well, especially for the price. Picasa handles RAW files but it treats them like any other image.

UFRaw also works as a standalone app, allowing you to save as an 8 or 16bit TIFF that you can open in any image editor.

You can find it here: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

[photophorous]

Try Gimp with UFRaw. I've used it pretty extensively and it works pretty well, especially for the price. Picasa handles RAW files but it treats them like any other image.

UFRaw also works as a standalone app, allowing you to save as an 8 or 16bit TIFF that you can open in any image editor.

You can find it here: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

Thanks for the suggestion, Ken.

I looked at the link and I'm just a little confused.

My friend has an old version of Photoshop, but I'd like to get him started with a RAW converter that will allow as much manipulation as possible before fine tuning things in photoshop. For this type of workflow, should he download both Gimp and UFRaw, or just UFRaw?

Thanks,
Paul

[KenB]

Thanks for the suggestion, Ken.

I looked at the link and I'm just a little confused.

My friend has an old version of Photoshop, but I'd like to get him started with a RAW converter that will allow as much manipulation as possible before fine tuning things in photoshop. For this type of workflow, should he download both Gimp and UFRaw, or just UFRaw?

Thanks,
Paul

He can do UFRaw all by itself. There's a save option in the app to allow him to save out to a TIFF which he can then open in PS. UFRaw is, IMO, between Adobe's CameraRAW 3.1 and 4 in terms of features/functionality.

Gimp is not needed but, if he wanted, UFRaw snaps right into Gimp.

[photophorous]

He can do UFRaw all by itself. There's a save option in the app to allow him to save out to a TIFF which he can then open in PS. UFRaw is, IMO, between Adobe's CameraRAW 3.1 and 4 in terms of features/functionality.

Gimp is not needed but, if he wanted, UFRaw snaps right into Gimp.

Thanks, Ken! I appreciate your help.

Paul