Looking for RAW pluging

[Guest]

I'm looking for the RAW plug-in for PS7, so I can use the .CRW files from my canon digital camera

It used to be on the adobe site but not any more

[HaraldHeim]

I guess Adobe wants people to upgrade to Photoshop CS, so they don't sell the RAW plugin seperately anymore. An enhanced version of the previous RAW plugins is now part of Photoshop CS.

[ChellQ]

I have & love using PSP 8 & don't want to buy PS CS (WAY too expensive for me!). I have a new Olympus c-5060wz which I love, but the Camedia software is essentially useless. I want/need software that will read the 5060 ORF (Olympus Raw Format) files and allow me pre-conversion editing of white balance, exposure, sharpening, etc. I would like this to either work as a plug-in w/ PSP 8 or as a stand-alone. Harold, do you want to write this software? Do you know anyone else who is? C1 doesn't work w/ Oly, at least not yet, Bibble needs PS, etc. HELP!

[HaraldHeim]

Here's a quote from the May 2003 issue of the Plugin Newsletter:

Paul Dempsey offers an Olympus RAW File (.ORF) import plugin (for Windows) as well as a standalone application at his web site. The plugin offers options for Color Balance, Gamma Correction, Auto Levels, Inversion and B/W. The standalone ORF.exe program is a much later development than the plugin and therefore includes many more features. ORF.exe offers separate histograms and more scaling (color balance) options. There is also an accompanying ORFDump tool for recreating thumbnail (.THM) files and extracting EXIF information to a text file.

http://www.dcnicholls.com/plugins/

You may also want to try the RAW import plugin (Win/Mac) that is offered by Olympus itself. It allows you to white balance photos by selecting a color from the preview, but you can also automatically apply the camera settings or import the photo without any adjustment. Download the most recent version from the Olympus Web Site at

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_secti ... nloads.asp

Both should work in PSP 8, but they don't offer very much functionality. Anyway, if you want to do serious editing of RAW files, you need Photoshop 6, 7 or CS. PSP doesn't offer a 16-bit mode, so you are forced to edit RAW images in 8bit mode. By doing that you loose the biggest advantage of RAW files. So to have some advantage of RAW files, the software that imports the RAW files into PSP 8 would have to do all the editing in 16 bit. Otherwise it would be more conveniant to shoot JPG files if you intend to edit your photos in PSP 8 only.

[ChellQ]

Paul Dempsey's software hasn't been updated since 2002 & the 5060 hit the shelves in Nov. 2003. Unfortunately, the 5060's format is different from the 5050, the E-10 & E-20 & the E-1 & the ORF converters for those cameras don't work properly w/ the 5060. Even Olympus' raw converter plug-in is the same as the one for the 5050 (orf2rgb.8ba) & doesn't work properly (a lot of discussion on this in the Olympus forum at dp.review.com). The Camedia Master is bad because it doesn't recognize the settings the user puts in & only uses camera defaults, which are waaay oversharpened (see dcresource.com review of 5060). There is a 5060 resource page put together by Alfred Molon that discusses some of the RAW issues at http://www.molon.de/5060.html#RAW . Alfred Molon says you can change sharpness in Camedia Master, but I haven't found this to be the case.

While working in 16 bit w/ RAW files may be preferable, I don't think that is the main advantage. This is discussed at http://www.dlcphotography.net/RawFormat ... Format.htm . For me, shooting in RAW allows me shoot faster than TIFF, change wb & satuation & sharpness, etc. after the pic is taken & before it is finalized as a TIFF & have an uncompressed TIFF file as my output before I start editing.

Currently, I'm taking advantage of the 5060's rather unique capability to convert to TIFF from RAW in-camera. This alows me to preview (with a bunch of junk on screen messing up the view) the settings on the LCD monitor. The problem is, this takes a LOT of flash card space & a LOT of time, just to get a decent TIFF, working mostly in the blind, out of the deal.

Probably more than you wanted to know, huh? It IS a great camera tho. It sure would be nice if Olympus could write some half-way decent software. I wrote them an email but have not had a response.

[HaraldHeim]

Sorry to hear about the lack of support for the 5060 RAW file.

I still think that 16-bit editing is the major advantage of RAW files. White balance and saturation can be adequately adjusted in JPG files and the sharpening setting can be set to a low setting in most cameras (certainly in the 5060), too. So I wouldn't see that as an advantage of RAW files.

[Andrew B.]

Someone told me that Capture One works pretty well, despite having an unusual interface. I can't vouch for it myself, though.

[steve4god]

I freely download it from either Adobe CS site(I use it in PS7) and also form Nikon D& download page. Hope it helps!