Capture360.Net

Hi

Several raw conversion apps can use PS as a helper so that when you finish conversion, you can open in PS.  Using the PS organiser (Bridge) is something I know little about since I have never used it as it wasn't part of PSE 3 for Mac.

I do know that Bibble can be installed as a PS plugin so you should be able to keep using Bridge.

Have you had a look at Adobe LightRoom?.  I think it is better than ACR (which I personally don't like).  Adobe has a free trial going.  However you will probably have to drop Bridge but LightRoom is fully integrated with PS.

I think the trial is worth a shot at the minimum.

Give some feedback on your impressions.  I am particularly  interested in how a workflow based on the LR library works.

Does capture one have a free trial download?  I used Rawshooter for a little while but it alone did not provide enough for me to change my workflow.  Lightroom seems to offer quite a lot, may even reduce the need to edit in PS for most pictures.

Buy a Sandisk Extreme 3 memory card and you can get a free activation code for Capture One LE.

will have to check that out this weekend in St. Louis as there are no shops in my area.

Makes sense to get another CF card in the deal. ;)

Zander, thanks for the info, will try and verify if I can

1 week update on lightroom.

It offers quite a bit of control over raw images including conversion to B&W.
when working with B&W you can still adjust the color sliders enabling control over contrast much like the use of filters in B&W photography.
Batch processing is possible, going to take several pics in the park and see how well the batch process workflow goes.
All of this is to be expected in a RAW converter.
what lightroom also does is continue on to presentation, 20 image contact sheets, 4 image proof sheets, and images sized for fine art matting.
It also is very easy to attach a printer profile to the image, and make web ready galleries and slide shows.  All of this makes presentation to the customer very professional with a personal touch if wanted.

Week 2 update,

I was not able to get out and shoot like I wanted last week to get new images to work with so I opened up some older Raw files and see if Lightroom would improve on the pics.

Tommorow  I will be posting an updated (re-converted) image of the lilly pad room pic in the gallery.

My biggest observation is the control I now have.  In addition to the temperature,tint,and saturation you also have an overall vibrance slider; hue, saturation, and luminance for 8 different color channels along with hue and saturation sliders for highlight and shadow channels.  Before, an adjustment in saturation changed the entire image now it is more targeted to the part I want to accent or mute in an image.  This is just one aspect of what Lightroom brings to the digital photographer.  Lightroom also works with curves allowing for finer adjustments to the overall image.  The most significant difference I have seen with editing images with lightoom as opposed to PSE5, everything I do in lightroom can be done in 16bit mode; in PSE5 for most filters along with layers needed for more controlled corrections you must convert to 8bit.

Since I am on the 30 day trial, I have not committed all of my files to LR library.  I have been doing the following with test images:

1)  Transfer files from CF card or file to an import folder on desktop.
2)  Import files into LR for editing and RAW conversion.
3)  Export to export file on desktop.  These can be as a PSD (8 or 16bit), JPEG, TIFF (8 or 16bit), or DNG.
4)  At that point I can import files of converted images into PSE5 organizer.

Now I am doing all this since I have not fully committed to LR yet, if I do I can import all PSE5 images and any tags that are on the files will be crossed over to keywords in LR.  I can also add keywords for any image, say cars, red, Mustang. If these keywords are entered in LR only Pictures that meet all the criteria will be displayed.  Another example could be,enter the keywords; People, Candids, Berlin, if when you imported the files you tagged them all for this system then all the candids of people in Berlin would be brought up.  This would be a very quick way to locate a particular image out of the thousands that may be stored on hard drives.