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Anyone here use Rawshooter Essentials? Thought I'd throw it in your direction... some of you may come to love it... .gif) Digital Photographer mag reviewed this months back saying that they would give it top marks even if it cost a substantial amount of money. I've used it since then and after about 4 months of use, I have to say I agree. It's become a consistent, early stage of my digital workflow. In fact it's the first thing that gets cranked up after I transfer my RAW files over to my hard-drive. And it saves me a shedload of time. It takes a while to initially process all the RAWs you may have (I tend to import a gig at a time), but once it's got all the thumbnails present and correct, selecting, rating, batch editing and batch converting to tiff or jpeg are so intuitive I don't quite know what I did before I found it. It's totally free (they have a pro version but I honestly cant see what I would need from it that i cant get with this), so it's a no loss situation. Give it a try. Edit: The interface is so simple, that at first glance you might not know how to do anything (I had the benefit of the DP article and tutorial). Post here if you need help and I'll see what I can do. Edited by BraveArse at 17:13:12 09-02-2006 Edited by BraveArse at 17:14:51 09-02-2006 |
Digital Workflow - freeware (and top notch to boot)
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MrCarrot 3,524 posts
Seen 3 weeks ago
Registered 17 years agoIt really is a fantastic bit of software. The shadow/highlight constrast sliders are surely the best things evar, and its batch processing is superb.
I actually bought the full version on release and even though the extra features dont sound like much, on paper, they've pretty much let me cut Photoshop out of my workflow; the Rawshooter downloader pulls the pictures off my memory card and generates its thumbnails while it's doing it, so there's no waiting around at all once they're downloaded. Then once I've processed everything I can can crop and straighten shots in RS and only need to open PS if there's dust spots to clone out. It's proper good! -
tbh I've never used bridge Otto - because i discovered this before bridge. My understanding of bridge is that it's more of an image browser than an editing / workflow tool though? whereas this is an ... um... editing / workflow tool. EdIT: Just checked out Lightroom - it actually looks very similar to rawshooter in some ways. Potentially a reaction to it... or maybe just convergent evolution...
@MrCarrot - I might end up purchasing the full version eventually. But I tend to use photoshop as my replacement for the darkroom. I use the burning and dodging tools an awful lot along with the history brush - so straightening etc is something I would do at the same time. Got to be one of the best freebies for photographers ever though.gif)
Edited by BraveArse at 13:18:05 11-02-2006 -
Just to add to this, that the new version of the freebie is out now... Rawshooter Essentials 2006. The additions make it worth the download
Linky -
Looks like Adobe thought it was the danglies too. 
Premium is being discontinued and integrated into Lightroom. Essentials (the freebie) is still available for now. -
MrCarrot 3,524 posts
Seen 3 weeks ago
Registered 17 years agoDear Adobe,
please FOAD,
kthxbye
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It's quite difficult to explain, but here goes... you may regret having asked 
In a nutshell... digital workflow is the management and processing of large amounts of image files in a strict order which enables you to work with those images in a managable and, most importantly, repeatable way.
Out of the nutshell....
In the old days it would would have just been called a day's work, for a photographer... you know... shoot the pictures, develop the film, print them up, stick em up to dry, go to pub.
But these days, with digital cameras usurping film in almost every way (not quite in terms of detail imo)... you're dealing with digital files on a PC. Not only that but, because the expense of paying for film is gone, you tend to shoot 100s of shots and edit down later (something film photographers have always done, but now it's really really ridiculous).
So first off - you have many many more images to deal with than you would ever have had if you just went the film route and got say 5 or 6 films developed. Not only that but these images are in formats - some type of RAW (a very versatile digital image file ) file generally. First step for me is to go through every RAW file and rate them from 1 to 3 (1 is best, 3 would be ok but needs a reshoot) and delete the ones that don't come up to scratch for purely technical reasons.
Then I'd go through all the 1s first and adjust them to bring the best out of it in terms of colour and contrast etc, before they get converted into whatever generic file format you are going to use. Which you then do the rest of your image adjustments on (cropping, image rotation, burning in those moody skies, dodging out some detail in the shadows ) in an image editor that for the purposes of this we shall call PotatoShop. After that you might export a final image, change your mind, go back a few steps, create another version and export THAT as well...
Trouble with all of that is, that THEN you have multiple, perfectly usable versions of the same image. And you might do this for 100s of original images. So how the hell are you going cope with all of these files and make sure that you can find the exact image that you need within seconds. That's where the final part of the workflow comes in - I use an image database (Iview Media Pro) which which allows me to quickly attach descriptions, keywords and categories to each file. Then I can use those keywords to find the images later if I need to.
It's all very complex and hideously confusing - I still haven't quite got to grips with it. I long for the days when all I needed to know were things like what the chemistry did to my film if I left it in a little longer.
Edited by BraveArse at 12:46:22 30-06-2006 -
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How does it compare to the Bridge? Or Lightroom?
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