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Dad Photographer
GIMP is free, so this is good to know.
GIMP can handle DNG afaik.
GIMP can handle DNG afaik.
My point is that they are dependent. I understand that you perform the two steps independently,
but to translate the benefits of RAW processing to your prints,
you must really have your monitor and printer calibrated to each other (if those are the correct words).
People who don't do that are , what? . . . throwing their hard work away.
(This also raises the issue of sending your files out to a lab for printing - who calibrates the lab?)
My general point is that the benefits of the RAW process are dependent on your hardware and its calibration,
as much as the quality of your software (8-bit GIMP is a serious limitation in this case).
Unless you do the whole RAW process correctly with the right equipment, I think you are wasting your work.
That's the way it seems to me anyway.
EDIT: I don't think that we disagree on the printing issue.
I don't believe that's true. GIMP is an RGB component image editor, not a raw converter. There's another app that you use with it—UFRaw http://ufraw.sourceforge.net—to do the raw conversion and output to 8-bit RGB to edit with GIMP. UFRaw can work with DNG files.
G
There's a UFRAW plugin for the Gimp, so if you're in the Gimp and ask to open a RAW file, it will do so using the UFRAW plugin.
The Gimp itself does not open RAW files. You then export the file from the plugin into the Gimp for further editing.
But again, the Gimp degrades it to 8-bits.
G,
Thanks for the very helpful and succinct tutorial.
I assume if one uses a commercial printer then you can use their color profile for the final stages and the export a jpeg or tiff based on the lab's specifications.
The thing I don't like about RAW is that my images look like crap (flat, boring) before I go in and tune them. On my GXR, in order to have the screen show black and white, you have to shoot RAW+JPEG. As a result, pictures look great on screen, crap as RAW, but I also have a fairly nice looking JPEG file which I generally don't use.
I wish the camera could save RAW metadata. Can Leicas do that? Fuji's X-series?