Goombah6 Posted December 18, 2008 Share #1 Posted December 18, 2008 Advertisement (gone after registration) I just bought a used M8, which came with OEM software, and capture 1. I tried to install capture 1, but I think the product code must have been registered with the original owner, and therefore my registration fails. Wondering what I should do now, and whether there is any better software for handling the RAW files from my camera. Any recommendations? Is this stuff available by download only, or can I (should I) purchase on CD? Your thoughts and advice will be most appreciated. Another question I just thought of after seeing a different thread: my camera has firmware version 2.0. I assume that I am to use SDHC cards, rather than SD? Can anyone confirm? Thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 18, 2008 Posted December 18, 2008 Hi Goombah6, Take a look here New member with RAW question. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
ho_co Posted December 18, 2008 Share #2 Posted December 18, 2008 Welcome aboard! And congratulations on the M8 Firmware 2.00 does accept SDHC cards. You can download the current firmware from Leica at Leica Camera AG - Downloads. With dropdown menus, choose "Rangefinder cameras" >> "M8" and near the bottom of the page choose "Download" for both "Instruction Firmware Update" and "Firmware 2.002." You don't need to use Capture One for the M8's DNGs. Current versions of Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop (as well as others) will work fine. Some or all of these are available both as boxed packages and as downloads. People's preferences differ. Photoshop is "the standard" but is expensive and has a steep learning curve. On the other hand, I don't find any of the products intuitive. Lightroom and Aperture (the latter only for Mac) are designed more as workflow software than Photoshop and aren't as powerful as image processors, but will do much of what you need for less money. Capture One may give the best results in terms of simply converting the DNG, but it is more limited than the other programs and you may decide you want one of them as well. My suggestion is whatever you choose, get the latest version. Capture One, Aperture and Lightroom are adding functionality with each new version, and the newest versions of ACR (Adobe Camera Raw, which comes with Photoshop and is built into Lightroom) do not work with older versions of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted December 19, 2008 Share #3 Posted December 19, 2008 Welcome to the forum! To add to Howard's reply you might like to try Irfanview, which is very popular freeware that contains some basic tools until you decide what you want to do. Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goombah6 Posted December 20, 2008 Author Share #4 Posted December 20, 2008 Pete and Howard, Thanks very much for your helpful advice, and for taking time to post. I checked out the Lightroom info at Adobe's sight, and it wasn't exactly clear to me whether Lightroom was a photo management software product, or a photo processing software product. If I understand your post correctly, it sounds like it does have some image processing functionality. I guess I wasn't too clear whether one might need to have CS4 + Lightroom, or whether Lightroom would suffice on it's own for image processing. My previous digital experience has only been with my Olympus E1 SLR, using olympus software for proprietary RAW development, and then flowing into Photoshop Elements for image enhancement, printing, etc. Regards, David Johnston Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted December 20, 2008 Share #5 Posted December 20, 2008 David, Lightroom is a combination of both photo management and photo processing software. Photoshop CS4 will offer significantly more flexibility in processing because, for example, it offers layers and because it has been the market leader for many years but Lightroom also offers a lot of latitude. Many people use Lightroom as a RAW or DNG processor for colour balancing, exposure correction, contrast enhancement, input sharpening, de-vignetting, dodging and burning etc, which much of the time is all that you'll need, and then pull it into PS CSx if more intense or more artistic processing is required. The photo management side of Lightroom is very good and offers a great deal of flexibility with metadata and filtering. It's not clear from your posts how practised you are at processing so my advice would be to go with less expensive Lightroom for the time being, become familiar with it and decide at your leisure whether you need the extra processing capacity and need to unlock the BIG vault to buy PS CS3/4. Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goombah6 Posted December 21, 2008 Author Share #6 Posted December 21, 2008 Pete, Thanks for your note. I'm not well versed in the more sophisticated uses of photoshop, such as using layers, etc. (someday will take a course on this). I think I'll take your advice and go with Lightroom, which is probably all I would be able to use in the near term anyway. Thanks for clarifying things. ---David Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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