Section A.2. Raw Shooter

A.2. Raw Shooter

People from the original development team for Capture One have formed their own company, Pixmantec, and created a new RAW image processor that is really catching the public eye and imagination. It's really too bad (for Mac GX users) that it's a Windows-only product. (If your Mac has an Intel processor, you could use Boot Camp.) The best news is that it comes in two versions: Premium and Essentials. Essentials is an excellent program and does enough things differently from Camera Raw that, in my opinion, it's worth downloading...especially since it's free and always will be. It gives your images a somewhat differentand some would say better"look" to your images than Camera Raw. Nevertheless, it's still completely nondestructive, so you could experiment with the results from both programs and save the one you like best as a high-bit PSD file. And at any time you or your client has a mind change about the image qualities, you just reload the RAW file and reprocess it.

Now, here's the thing you might really seriously consider: Raw Shooter Premium. It does virtually everything Capture One Pro does and costs $300 less. Figure A-2 shows you the basic Raw Shooter Premium interface.

Figure A-2. The Basic Raw Shooter Premium interface.

There are quite a few features in RSP that are missing in Camera Raw. Many of these are nice, but optional. These are the ones that push my shutter button:

Direct download

You can download directly from your camera card or card reader into any folder, including a default folder for downloading all RAW files, but I'm not so sure you'd be able to find similar images quickly unless you also used another program, such as iView Media Pro, Photo Mechanic or Portfolio for actually organizing your work.

All adjustment tools in one panel

So you don't have to go flipping through tabs to find the command you want.

Combination Curve/Levels tool

If you've used Photoshop's Curves and Levels tools, using these will be just as intuitive, but faster because both command sets are in the same interface, so you can use both interactively.

Instant Magnifier

I'd like it better if it was a tool (rather than a command), but it works really well (see Figure A-3). Just press Opt/Alt-M to toggle it on or off. If you place the cursor in the image and Opt/right-click, you get an in-context menu that lets you choose the size of the magnified area.

Figure A-3. The Instant Magnifier shows a 100 percent magnified view centered anywhere you place the cursor.

Adobe Acquires Raw Shooter

This program, and the company that makes it, have recently been acquired by Adobe, and their code will be appearing in the released version of Lightroom and in Bridge/Camera Raw for Photoshop CS3.