On the face of it, Raw Shooter Essentials is a newcomer raw image-processing program, yet it has excellent credentials, because its chief designer is Michael Jonsson, the man behind the original Capture One program.
Raw Shooter Essentials is currently for PC only and will be available for a limited period as a free download from the Pixmantec website. Raw Shooter will eventually be sold as Standard and Professional saleable versions.
It is a sophisticated program that offers some useful tonal editing controls, including a fast, dynamic image preview, customisable layouts and a slideshow viewing mode. And more importantly, the raw conversion times are fast and there is support for the new DNG file format.