Nikon Capture or ACR for processing RAW?

[Spooky]

Just curious whether people use ACR for CS or NC to process their raw images.

I will have quite large amounts of images from shoots to process soon and i have used NC in the past and while I have found the WB and exposure controls good to use I found NC slow opening and saving images.

Is it better to use PS for all processing? Is it quicker and is the result as good?

Does anyone use Dr Browns image processer?

[MHD]

I use the GIMP

I have a plugin called viewRAW which is based on dcRAW

[Frankenstein]

I'm an absolute novice as to playing around with raw files, but over the last few days I've played around with both Nikon Capture and Rawshooter Essentials, and so far Rawshooter is my pick - it seems easier to use and has (to me) better tools and options, as well as being quicker (but I'll still try both of them for a while as I get used to a raw file workflow). I haven't tried ACR.

Frank

[kipper]

I'm still trying to find this side by side comparison that I saw of Nikon Capture vs ACR. Showed you closeups of images produced in both and the loss in quality in ACR. Anyway heres one that I found along the way by Thom Hogan.

http://www.bythom.com/raw.htm


While looking, I also came across some things about Adobe. I was interested about Adobe Plugin development and have found out that Adobe stopped releasing the SDK with the product since Adobe Photoshop 6.0. You now have to subscribe to some program and if approved you get the SDK. So Adobe in some ways are just as bad as Nikon. In my opinion, if you release a program you should release the SDK with it and have the choice of installing with the program.

[stubbsy]

I generally use NC as I find the results are as good as or better than ACR. Plus I can then work exclusively in NEF (smaller files than PSD) until I want another format for printing or posting to the net. I also have Nik Color Efex Pro for NC to round out my arsenal.

Only time I use PSCS is if I want to do cloning or layers.