OK, before we begin there are 2 types of people that shouldn't even be thinking about developing their own RAW images

"Clickers" & "Pret-a-porter"

What's a "clicker"?

Someone who doesn't read requesters and just clicks them or someone who doesn't see anything happening so they click at dozens of different things until they crash the machine.

"Pret-a-porter"?

Ready to go/eat, someone who doesn't want to do their own cooking or preparation, they expect it handed to them on a plate already prepared and cooked for them.

If you are either of these types, my advice? stick to in camera JPEGs, far easier for you.

If however you feel you can break either of these habits, read on.

The first thing we need to understand is what is RAW? and what can it do for me?

Before I answer that what I will tell you is that it won't make you the world's greatest photographer, lots of people tout RAW as a miracle cure for all photographic ills, it isn't, the old photographic saying applies to RAW as it does everything..

Rubbish in, rubbish out.

RAW is exactly what the camera sees when you release the shutter, however your camera then does lots of little tricks to the RAW image and turns it into a JPEG that's "pret-a-porter" that's why it takes a few seconds from releasing the shutter until the image is ready.

Now why use RAW?, well go into a McDonald's sometime and listen to people ordering food, most people are quite happy with the burger as it comes, but once in a while you will hear someone say "I don't want any onions" or "I don't like pickles in mine" or "please don't put salt on my fries" in other words they are asking for their food to their own tastes and not the tastes of the McDonald's corp.

The same with cooking and following a recipe, people makes little changes so that the food comes out as they like it and not exactly as someone else likes it.

That's exactly what RAW is and what it can do for you, it allows you to develop the pictures to your own tastes,  you are starting with the basic unmixed and uncooked ingredients and are going to produce a 5 course gourmet meal from scratch.

Developing a RAW image is RAM, processor(CPU) and time intensive, it's not instant and many times you feel nothing is happening and need to click something (bad idea) and just like cooking, everything you change in the basic ingredients changes the final result, not only that, everything affects everything else, and just like cooking the amount of time and effort you put into developing a RAW image is reflected in the final image.

Still interested, then read on and I will take you through Silkypix step by step.

Now I must mention I have a full time job and won't be able to update this thread constantly, nor will I really be able to answer lots of questions, but if you have any, or any comments at all, please post them anyway and we will see what we can do

Maybe you already develop your own images from RAW?, maybe you feel you can add something here to help them? well please feel free, go for it.

Right, we shall begin in the next post.