Developing RAW to JPEG

[DCK]

I have been using the default JPEG images output from my camera, but am considering shooting and then developing RAW to JPEG.

I am not a photographer, and don't know anything about this process. In what software is the developing usually done? Is there freeware available that will do the trick? Is it an idiot-proof, automated process, or does it require me to make image-by-image judgments?

Thanks for any help.

[chunk]

No photographer either but PixelWrench2 from TetraCam might do the trick for you, but not sure if they work for any old RAWs or just ones produced by TetraCams (or if there is even a difference  )

On the file menu there is an button to "Build tif from DCMs and RAWs" but I haven't got any RAWs on this computer to try it!

http://www.tetracam.com/PWversion.htm

[David Cockey]

"Developing" RAW files to JPEGs or TIFFs is generally a simple process, with the option of working with individual images or doing batch processing. Typically there are automatic options for the required settings. Camera which shoots RAW usually come with software to do the conversion. I also use Lightroom and Optics Pro. RawTherapee is free. There are numerous other software packages available.

[DCK]

Thanks David. Do you happen to know whether RawTherapee developing is 'lossless'?

[David Cockey]

Thanks David. Do you happen to know whether RawTherapee developing is 'lossless'?

I assume by "lossless" you mean no information in the image is lost by compression, etc. That depends on the output format, not on the software used.  JPEG always has some loss of information, even when quality is set to 100%. Higher JPEG quality results in less loss but larger files. Uncompressed TIFF is lossless but at the cost of considerably larger files. TIFF with LZW compression is lossless but I don't know if it works with PhotoScan.

All "development" software I've seen can output in both JPEG and uncompressed TIFF formats. I have been using uncompressed TIFF for PhotoScan but for a recent very large project I used JPEG with 100% quality to reduce the file size.

[ozbigben]

i use LZW TIFF for most applications including Photoscan.  I'm just using Bridge, setting Black 0 and Contrast -20 on top of the usual white balance etc...

[mitchfx]

Just FYI, from tests I've done the jpg compression from Photoshop/Bridge/Lightroom is far superior to most other applications.  When set to the max quality (12), it exhibits far fewer compression artifacts than ACDSee, Nuke, XNview and a few others that I've tried.  I still use TIFF for anything super-critical, but for most things I just convert to jpeg to save drive space.