Processing RAW: Tools & Workflow

I've recently switched to shooting in RAW, and it's taken a while to get a routine that lets me get what I think/hope are decent results without spending forever on each shot. I thought it might be useful to compare notes with other RAW folks because I am just so new to this!

To start things off, here's what I'm currently doing and why..

The first thing to mention is I've installed the Canon RAW codec for my OS (Vista). Since it was created by Canon, I'm trusting that it converts the RAW data faithfully - I've heard that third party converters (even from big names like Adobe) sometimes produce different/inferior results to DPP. As a bonus, the code lets me browse RAW shots in Windows as though they were jpgs.

The codec is used by my main editing app, Helicon Filter. I've got it set to bring the image data straight in, without any default NR & sharpening. I then work on the brightness, color, noise reduction, sharpening, cropping and if necessary retouching pretty much in that order, though I sometimes end up revisiting certain stages and making tweaks. When I'm finished, I let Helicon Filter apply the the changes I made in a hopefully consistent and sensible order to produce the final image.

Before I settled on this routine, I tried DPP on its own. I found it a little unwieldy to use, and I felt it didn't give me enough control over things like NR. At the same time, I was also concerned that it didn't give me enough guidance about what might be a typical "ball park" level for each adjustment. While my monitor provides a vibrant, glossy display, it uses a TN panel (ie. color tones and brightness vary with the viewing angle) and it isn't hardware-callibrated so I'm aware that what looks great on my computer might look blummin awful on better, properly adjusted kit. I needed the flexibility of raw with a little guidance to help me avoiding screwing things up!

So I next tried using DPP to do straight batch conversions to TIFF only, and bought a copy of Noise Ninja to do the noise reduction phase. After that, I'd load up the TIFF image in Photoshop Elements (full PS is out of my reach financially at the mo') and went through the other stages. It didn't take long before I ditched this three-step routine. It took forever, and I grew to hate PS Elements: too slow even on a decent PC, and too restrictive when it came to the order of operations. After a lot of Googling I ended with Helicon Filter, which though a little eccentric and buggy at times, seems to do the job.