Adobe has increased the role of CS3, offering an expanded version suitable for digital imaging, but integrates 3D and motion graphics, as well as image measurement and analysis. This expanded version could well be significant for SoJo's and multi media photographers. Both CS3 versions should be released on 27-March.

The first thing I have to say regarding this software is that I am blown away by it and that is not because of a cheap price tag either. The reason why I am so impressed is that it is fast and high quality and workflow is an absolute blast.

 

RawShooter essentials only works on Raw images and has optimized white balance for D2x, currently it is only available for Windows platform. The Dutch company Pixmantec are bringing out a new premium version soon, I personally can’t wait to see what this has to offer over the free essentials version, yes it’s totally free (not even parrots get that sick)

The main beauty of RawShooter essentials is that no adjustments are ever made to the original raw file, instead it keeps a track of display information, when assigning categories on images all the originals stay in the same file none are moved.

 

The program can be fine tuned in its preferences and things like exposure can be adjusted for individual preferences, computer equipment and cameras, in addition to the exposure controls in the program. I.e. if you found you constantly need to add ½ a stop to the exposure to your images, this can be added in the preferences negating the need to constantly adjust the exposure slider for every image.

 

The first operation in its workflow is locating your folders and this is in a tree view mode, folders containing Raw images are highlighted with a little astrix* to make it easier to find the right type of images open your folder and you then have the option of working on one or many images, or better yet for those that do assignments a slide show, which allows you to sort the good from the bad by clicking on a marker for flagging and quality levels from 1-3 as well as for those that need to be marked for binned/deleted; after this you go back to a thumbnails view and click on a  quality number and all you images are there ready for adjustments, i.e. all the number 1's

You can select from a variety of views to suite your current workflow needs, making this ideally adaptable for all. The next stage in the workflow is making image adjustments, and here Pixmantec have been very clever, no adjustments are made to the Raw image file, only to the preview you are viewing, you cannot save the adjustments to the raw file either so the Raw file always remain intact and undamaged by processing (the Raw file should be regarded as an undeveloped negative, in film terms) and output is saved to Jpeg or Tiff formats.

 

There is the option for auto correction of exposure and white balance or both and I found this very reliable, even though images that had a lot of white sky in it seemed to be too dark but I just altered the slider to its default position and it was all fine.

 

The first correction is white balance and tint and is adjusted with sliders, the preview changes in real time with no re-sampling needed to see what affects you are making to the image.

The next change is appearance and here you can chose from indoor and outdoor with categories in both covering normal medium and strong as well as one setting called flat look. Flat look is the default level and viewing the image with a variety of setting is a good starting point in defining the overall look you want form your image, the strong settings are very vivid in colour and contrast where as the flat look looks most realistic, this control reminds me of being able to select different types of film for the final look, high contrast, low contrast and films that were rich in colour that I used for sport or more natural colour film for portraits etc..

The next step is exposure compensation witch has sliders for highlight contrast, fill light, and shadow contrast, there is also a histogram viewable at the bottom right hand for an appraisal of the changes you make to the exposure. Saturation and hue controls are next for further fine tuning

You then move on to sharpening, here I found that the default settings worked fine for the D2x, especially if you are wanting to sell images through a stock library as they often don’t like sharpened images preferring to leave that for the client to sort, as printing methods vary and the amount of sharpening depends on its final use.

There is also a detail extraction tool and this differs from the sharpening tool as it works on edges more, to make the most of this tool the in camera sharpening is best turned of or to minimum. This tool allows for easy adjustment of the soft Raw image files and when it comes to converting images in the batch settings it can be de selected as can the sharpening leaving the copy unsharpened for your stock library. Both these tools can increase or decrease sharpening/detail if you need it

There is also a noise reduction and colour noise reduction sliders. But as yet have had no suitable images to try this on and are best viewed at 100% as with sharpening

Changing the size of the image and thumb nails is a doodle and it’s easy to flick from 1:1 and fit to screen to see the overall effect

Some additional tools worth mentioning is there is a option for showing clipped pixels in both highlights and shadows as well as a previews of before and after that is called snapshot tool that can be opened a variety of times for when you can’t decide which tuned up Raw image you prefer (you can get 30 plus variations using the snapshot)

 

Clicking on batch convert brings in new workflow options for saving the image output where file type, bit depth, dpi, can all be set as well as naming options and EXIF data can be turned on or off. There is also the option to save the image in Tiff or Jpeg and automatically open in another editor program like Adobe Photoshop CS for cropping and other manipulation Batch processing is very fast and if you have queue up a lot of images it can be paused which is a godsend to any one using a slower PC. I also found converting my Raw Files to Tiff came out to be 70 Meg’s and 36 Meg’s if in HSC (shot in high speed crop mode) which is ideal for high quality stock library needs (like www.alamy.com)

 

Some things I found I missed in this version is the ability to convert to a Black and White image it’s a very messy job in Photoshop or requires you to buy a plug-in filter for your software and at the moment I use Nikon Capture for this a print button would be a good option, for previewing your work, but I guess, the biggest difference in this workflow compared to a professional workflow is that its missing the ability to input Keywords, captions and copyright information and embed them into the image which I hope will be in the premium edition as I feel with this added I could stop looking for that software that I can do everything with as its almost here.

The user guide is informative and also gives sugestions on how to set up your camera and was writen by Wildlife photographer Andy Rouse