I have a Nikon D80 and it came with Picture Project…this software seams to work fine but I am wondering if there is better software to manipulate RAW fotos?

There are quite a lot of RAW software apps - Adobe Camera RAW (part of Photoshop), Capture One, Bibble to name just a few.

Hi Canadianscott,

Picture Project is truly awful and there's a huge amount of options for RAW manipulation.

As Mark said in his reply, if you have Photoshop you can use its built-in RAW converter and save the result or continue to make edits in Photoshop.

If Photoshop isn't an option you should get Nikon ViewNX which will let you do basic exports of RAW files, and it's free! I expect Picasa from Google also supports the RAW files from the D80, and that too is free.

For some more serious work and for a bit of an outlay you can't go past Adobe Lightroom. It's an essential tool for me and is something of a hub for all my imaging plus it's very easy to use while being very powerful at the same time.

Cheers, Patrick

I use both Photoshop CS3 and adoble lightroom. Both wonderful tools. You can try adobe lightroom 2 beta version free for 30 days to give you some idea of how you'd like it. The new beta has some newly added features that will allow it to do so much more. Give it a shot.

Andy

I have mislaid my Canon 400D DVD - which contains all the RAW imaging software I should be using - anyone care to email me a copy at all? However, I just d/loaded Bibble and Photomatix, and made my first pseudo-HDR photo from the RAW. I can only remark as to how adaptable and convenient this format is, allowing major changes not available in jpeg - and the detail increase is amazing. Unless I hear to the contrary about the quality and features of these two packages, I may well be purchasing them.