Parko wrote:

Can't offer any insights into Canon's propriety firmware, however...

Have a crack at using Darktable - it's in the repos - for RAW image
editing and conversions. It leaves the raw data untouched and creates a
sidecar xmp file for the image edit info. It has an active NG/mailing
list at gmane.comp.graphics.darktable.user. Highly recommended.

I hadn't tried that for many a moon (three years back at version
0.7.1, which was clearly a beta version).

It has matured nicely. For anyone who wants a do it all in one
program, that looks pretty nice.

It also has an advantage in that they've done a very good job of
making use of multi-core systems. I tried it on an 8 core
system and got virtually the same speed for a batch process
of 10 NEF files as I got with the very efficient batch
processing system that I use with UFRAW.

Of course since I am not at all familiar with it I can't attest
to how it works in a production environment with a practiced
operator, but nothing I saw suggested it would not work quite
well. (The big question I would have would be what happens when
it is used on a folder with say 500 raw files. But given how
well other parts are implemented I would expect that to work
smoothly too.)

I'm not enthused about the specific tool functionality, as I am
very much in favor of a core set of primatives rather than a set
of "magic box" functions. Most people would probably do well
with as many magic box tools as possible though.

And the one tool I used with a "curves" functionality was
extremely difficult to use, as was the histogram provided.

I certainly didn't see any reason that I would switch over to
using it, but from now on when someone asks about what is
available that will be added to the very short list that I
think are worth looking at.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)