JPG vs. RAW
This is the photography equivalent of the PC vs. Mac wars, but the versatility and control available with RAW ends 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 I shoot RAW about 99% of the time, but on occasion I do use JPG for the snapshots where I want to immediately share them with family and friends.
RAW Conversion
| Lightroom 3 | www.adobe.com |
| Photoshop CS5 / 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 | After Capture One, I tried Bibble and liked the product, but unfortunately they took too long to respond to the challenge from Lightroom. www.bibblelabs.com |
| Photoshop Elements 9 | Before Lightroom, I'd use PS Elements for its Organizer capability. Now with layer support, it'll meet 80% of your image editing needs at a reasonable cost. |
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 2 | www.niksoftware.com |
| nik Silver Efex Pro 2 | www.niksoftware.com |
| Noiseware Professional | www.imagenomic.com |
| Noise Ninja | www.picturecode.com |
| iCorrect Edit Lab | www.pictocolor.com |
| Topaz Plug-In Suite | www.topazlabs.com |
All plugins are highly recommended. Color Efex provides photographers with a wide-range of "digital filters." Noise Ninja/Noiseware/Topaz Denoise perform 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 |