Panasonic Lumix LX3 & Photoshop CS

[RSGulp]

I'm new to the PH photography forum (usually spend my time at the Porsche forum) but have been looking to buy a very good compact digital for some time. I need a good quality camera which is compact enough to carry around in my pocket. My budget is around £300.

After some research I'm about to purchase a new Panasonic Lumix LX3 - probably tomorrow lunchtime.

I currently have Photoshop CS and use an Apple iBook G4. Am I correct in thinking if I shoot in RAW mode I won't be able to open the images in this version of Photoshop. It seems after a little internet research I'll need at least Photoshop CS4 to use the latest Adobe Camera Raw plug-ins?

Is the only alternative to set the camera to save straight to Jpeg? And therefore will image sharpness/clarity/quality suffer?

Does the camera come with any editing software which is mac compatible?

This is the last hurdle before handing over the credit card so any advice would be much appreciated.

Edited by RSGulp on Tuesday 24th February 21:27

[andy-xr]

My TXZ came with an Arcsoft CD, which to be honest I havent done anything with other than put it back in the box so I dont know its capabiities

After a bit of Googling it comes back as PC/Mac compatible.

I dont know if there are any issues with the version of PS you have vs the RAW files the Lumix would generate, but there are RAW viewers and converters around some of which are free. Irfanview can do some basic stuff, but if your eligibility for later ACR's is limited by your PS licence, Elements might be another option

[Holst]

andy-xr said:

My TXZ came with an Arcsoft CD, which to be honest I havent done anything with other than put it back in the box so I dont know its capabiities

After a bit of Googling it comes back as PC/Mac compatible.

I dont know if there are any issues with the version of PS you have vs the RAW files the Lumix would generate, but there are RAW viewers and converters around some of which are free. Irfanview can do some basic stuff, but if your eligibility for later ACR's is limited by your PS licence, Elements might be another option

Panasonic in there infinate idiocy have made the lumix use a different RAW format to every other manufacturer.
This is because the lense needs some distortion correction in software which they try to hide by using there own RAW software.
Adobe only support this format with the lastes versions.

The windows software that comes with the camera (silkypics) works ok for me, but I have no idea on MAC compatibility (sorry)

EDIT - the silkypics software does work with a Mac

The poor RAW support isnt a big problem for me as I shoot JPEG and RAW and only use the RAW if im printing big or cant get enough info out of the JPEG. It might be annoying if you like to do alot of post production.. but if you do then you might have CS4 anyway.

Edited by Holst on Tuesday 24th February 22:45

[VxDuncan]

Although it sounds you need the later versions of PS to support the later ACR, you should still be able to download the latest version of adobes RAW to DNG converter (can't remember the exact name of the tool, but it's bunched with ACR). With that you can convert to DNG (digital negative) and process in ACR as you would any other RAW file. For what it's worth though a direct RAW converter maybe better (ACR isn't the best in the world).