JPG vs. RAW
This is the photography equivalent of the PC vs. Mac wars, but the versatility and control available with RAW end the debate for me. My reasoning comes down to this - I'd rather shoot in the native format of the camera and rely on image processing software (i.e. best of breed) to convert the data to its final format, instead of having the camera perform that conversion for me. Therefore for my "serious" photography I shoot RAW, but on occasion I do use JPG for the snapshots.
RAW Conversion
| Lightroom 2.4 | www.adobe.com |
| Photoshop CS4 / Camera RAW | www.adobe.com |
| Capture One LE | Arguably, still one of the best RAW converters. I transitioned away when Lightroom was released. www.phaseone.com |
| Bibble | www.bibblelabs.com |
| Photoshop Elements 8 | Before Lightroom, I'd use PS Elements for its Organizer capability. |
Ninety percent of my work is done in Lightroom with some cleanup performed using Photoshop. I initially used Capture One for RAW conversion due to its reputation for producing better conversions, but Photoshop/Camera RAW saves a few steps in the workflow.
Plugins
| nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 | www.niksoftware.com |
| nik Viveza | www.niksoftware.com |
| nik Silver Efex Pro | www.niksoftware.com |
| Noiseware Profession | www.imagenomic.com |
| Noise Ninja | www.picturecode.com |
| iCorrect Edit Lab | www.pictocolor.com |
All three plugins are highly recommended. Color Efex provides photographers with a wide-range of "digital filters." Noise Ninja performs wonders on high ISO images, and iCorrect EditLab is a real time saver if you're in a hurry. These plugins need to be used appropriately as you can quickly create some horrendously poor images if you're not paying attention.
Miscellaneous
| Breeze Browser and Downloader Pro | Downloader Pro is my favorite image ingestion application, especially with the Geotagging support. www.breezesys.com |