One of the reasons I went for the G12 was to get into playing around with RAW images. Except I've run into problems.

I have CS2 but it won't open the CR2 files from the camera. I've updated Adobe RAW codec to the latest one, but it still won't accept the file. I've managed to open the file in DNG Converter but I have no idea what I'm doing here.

Any ideas? I don't think the laptop is going to run CS5!

Lightroom?

What about the software that came with the camera? Digital Photo Professional is a bit clunky, but does the job okay.

I'll have a look. It did come with some discs.

Downloading Lightroom at the moment, so will give it a bash.

What's Elements like?

Dunno. I have a full copy of Photoshop CS3, which rarely gets used as most of my photo processing is done with Aperture. Once you get loads of photos, using Lightroom to manage them will probably be beneficial. That's not something easily done with PS of any kind, really.

DPP does have some basic file management, but it relies on you being tidy-minded in the first instance. Lightroom and Aperture allow you to manage images in projects and so on. Best thing, I guess, is to try it and see how you get on. Everyone has their own preferred methods of doing it, too!

I have Apeture on the Mac and Lightroom 3 on my Windows PC.

I prefer Lightroom, but Apeture was a bargain on the Mac and I use that for a little bit of post and for syncing with my Apple TV and iPhone. but most "serious" work is done on the PC, mainly because it is so much faster and easier to use.

I used the free trials of both and wasn't convinced about either, until I had some colouration problems with some images and Lightroom made it so easy to do the colour adjust and make useful images out of my photos.

I've got hold of Lightroom 3. It happily opened the RAW files and seems simple enough to tweak the images. It's just frustrating that CS2 won't open the same images.

What did you do to update the RAW codec? I seem to remember having to manually move files around to update it at one point and finding the correct location was a bit of a pain.

I convert my CR2 files into DNG's as a matter of course. The converter is pretty straight forward to use:

In section 4 (Preferences) Click on Change Preferences. There should be a drop down for Compatibility. Select Camera Raw 2.4 and Later (this is the setting that is guaranteed to be compatible with CS2). I also have a full size JPEG preview and embed the original file (so I can just keep the DNG and extract the CR2 file later if I need to for some reason).
Then all you have to do do is point it at where the files to convert are stored on your hard drive (section 1), tell it where to save the DNG files (section 2 - default is to save in the same location) and tell it what to name the files. The file naming (section 3) is down to you. You can tell it to use one or more of the masks selectable from the drop down menus or specify your own. For example, I go for:

yyyymmdd (date) + _50D_ + 3 digit serial number (you can specify what the number starts from)
So basically shoot date_camera_serial number. Click on Convert and it'll churn through your folder of images, saving the files with the names you specify and appending the .dng file extension to the end of the name.

I downloaded the latest RAW codec for CS2 from the adobe website, then had to stick it in some folder. Still didn't work.

Turns out that the support for G12 is in the latest RAW codec, but is available only for CS5, not CS2. For me to look at pics taken from the G12, I have to convert from RAW to DNG and then open the DNG file in CS2.

I've tried out both Lightroom 3 and Photoshop Elements 9. With the latest updates, including RAW codec, they will open the CR2 file from the G12 directly without having to convert to DNG.

If I want to open RAW in Photoshop CS, my only option is to upgade to CS5. I don't have the have the hardware for it!

When I import RAW (NEF from Nikon) files to LR I automatically have them converted to DNG. I do this so that metadata is applied directly to the file rather than creating an additional XML file. It's done once and then the file is free to open by whichever editor I choose, which is fairly infrequent now I'm using LR.

What are the advantages of switching to DNG?

As I understand it, any adjustments you make to a RAW file are saved as separate data so each time you load a RAW, you load the image and whatever settings you fiddled with are then applied. Is this correct or have I misunderstood it?

There's a lot I need to learn about photo manipulation.

LR doesn't alter the RAW or JPEG at all when you make adjustments, changes are saved separately within LR. In PS a RAW file would be changed but would be saved as TIFF or PSD as a separate file.

DNG is, in theory at least, a less proprietary format (despite it being created by Adobe). Apparently Adobe has submitted DNG to the ISO to be incorporated into a future edition of the TIFF standard.
Adobe doesn't charge any licensing fees for using DNG and provides a free SDK to support its use so it should prove more long lived than individual camera manufacturers formats. Whether that turns out to be true in practice is anyones guess.