Which is best ARW/RAW converter for Alpha 100?

[marktuma]

I use Capture 1 and like the results, but I haven't tried the others.

[David Kilpatrick]

I have just been re-archiving all my raw folders. I was amazed at the amount of surplus rubbish left behind by Capture One Pro - sometimes doubling the overall size of the folder. I saved over 20GB just by deleting all the stuff left behind by C1 Pro on the relatively small number of source folders it had been allowed to process.

I've been having major problems with Bridge, showing the wrong thumbnails and previews for raw files. Hopefully a recent transfer of all these files to newly formatted HDs will solve what seems to be a directory/filename related issue. I'll still stick with Bridge because nothing does the job I need to do any faster, and the latest version with camera profiles has solved the poor colour issues.

David

[Jian]

Running Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, after trying the native Sony RAW converter, and a few free, simple ones that I didn't care to remember.

If it matters to you, there's only two issues with AL 1.4 which is :

(1) ...The limited gallery customizations in the WEB 'module,' which, in my opinion, is just a simple excess not really integral to the process.

(2) ...The mythical 'I can't rearrange in gallery/thumbnail view,' problem, but you can, you simply have to have a certain setting checked, and be in the appropriate module... and the answer is online, if you can't figure it out.

Other than that, the only noise issues with Raw files have been very low-light files being brought up in contrast/fill-light/etc, which is to be entirely expected.

If you're familiar with photoshop CS3 (especially over the years,) then you should be able to play with the controls you're not even familiar with, to a certain success, and such, without even reading a tutorial or such; exploring what you're bound not to know can be fun, with a new roll (I mean 'set,' 35mm veteran here,) and time to play with it.

[Vidgamer]

If you want "free" as much as "best", I have found 3 that are pretty good: UFRaw, Raw Therapee, and RawHide. I've used UFRaw for a while, and while it is not the easiest thing to set up and figure out the first time, I like the results. I haven't used the other two enough to draw too many conclusions yet.