Best Workflow for Raw images uses DXO, CS Pro and Noise Ninja

With all these plugins around for photos that do the same thing, it is a little confusing what to use. Here is one fellows view on what to do

Bluejake: Westside, Looking Northeast from 31st and 10th

I use DxO Optics Pro to correct lens distortion (but I don’t use
the other features). This fixes all my lenses’ barreling and pincushioning really well. I save files in DxO as .dng files.

From there, I bring them into Photoshop, using Photoshop’s RAW importer. I really like PS’s RAW tools, for white balance. I use it to set shadow
and highlight points, add contrast, etc.

I do the rest in the main part of Photoshop. In PS I make a lot of use of Fred Miranda’s plug-ins, especially his CS Pro (for sharpening), WP
Pro (to shrink to Web size), and BW Workflow Pro (for really flexible conversion to black and white). That sharpening plug-in is better than
the high-end tools I’ve tried, and I compared side-by-side. “Fred Miranda”:http://www.fredmiranda.com/shopping/350DCSpro actually does special tools for different cameras, that makes snes since there are differences. It only costs $20

For noise reduction, I use Noise Ninja Pro. “PictureCode”:http://www.picturecode.com/ makes Noise Ninja and it is $80 for a Pro bundle of the standalone and the Photoshop plugin. The Pro bundle aloows 16-bit support for scanned imageds and multiprocessing support.