Hi Kirk.
You're probably right Kirk. I read a bit about dcraw being the basis for many editors and thought it might be worth a look. After reading more on dcraw, I can see that at best it might form the front-end for an editor and not a fully standalone editor (which is what I really want to find).
I should explain, because I sometimes mentally jump over the details and confuse people with where I'm going in a post.
Back in the days of tape players, one could get a package with a radio and a turntable as well. Audiophiles soon discovered that these combination systems tended to be average at many things and really good at nothing in particular. They also couldn't accept other components that might be better at a particular function. So; they voiced their opinion and before long we had component stereo systems in which the user could mix and match components to meet his/her needs, quality requirements and budget.
Similarly; these days photography seems to be going the way of the all-in-one stereo system. Every time I find a decent editor, it seems to come with other software components, often none of which are stellar in functionality and an implicit workflow that I don't need or want.
What I really hope to find (one day) is a set of discrete workflow components each of which fulfill a particular function, do it very well and that have a somewhat standard interface paradigm, such that they "play nice together".
I know this is a tall order and I may have to settle for less. Surprisingly; I've been successful at getting all but one of the components I need.
I chose Photo Mechanic because it is a great front-end for ingestion, metadata embedding, culling and ranking. It also has a logically independent portion of the design that is good for the back end of the workflow and getting things out in a publishable format. (If it ends up getting a DAM element, I do hope it's designed such that one could either use or not use it without affecting the independent use of the other functionality). I've got the Adobe DNG Converter, which does RAW to DNG conversion well and nothing more. What I'm missing is a decent DNG-capable editor, that's essentially just an editor. ACR seems to be the only one I've seen so far that seems to fulfill the editing function alone, but I'd like to see one or two others before being forced into a subscription to get one element of a package. I should note that I also use a standalone version of Noise-Ninja (which I've had a few years and works very well) to address any noise issues.
Anyways; that's the rationale behind this post. Let me know if I've not been clear. I'll try to be clearer in future posts.
