Am I right in assuming Camera Raw is free image editing software? What I mean is after the thirty day Photoshop CS4 trial expires one can continue to use both Bridge and Camera Raw. I know Bridge continues to run just fine and Camera Raw should also if one uses Bridge as the host application for the Camera Raw plug-in. One can do that by opening files via Command/Control-R as opposed to Command/Control-O. Am I right or am I missing something?

Thanks

Ziggie

Methinks some people might slam you for that assumption but I can understand why you would think it. Don't think so.

Some initial tests on my behalf seems to indicate ACR does indeed continue to work. Of course if I deactivate my serial number and run in trial mode I have to wait 30 days test this and I really don't have the patience.

Whoops! wonder if adobe have spotted this yet.
I would have thought bridge would stop working as well.

I think you won't be able to export from the RAW file to a tif, jpg or whatever

Even if you can view the files in Bridge, and edit the metadata with ACR, without photoshop I don't think you can actually do anything useful with the file. You still have a RAW file that needs to be processed into a usable format, and ACR does that when sending the file to PS.

ACR has its own save functionality, and can save raw files to PSD, TIFF, or JPG; so it would depend on whether that functionality gets disabled or not when ACR is hosted by Bridge and you're past the trial period.

Jeff's right about that save functionality. As I look into the matter more though it does seem there is a built-in mechanism in the software whereby one cannot use Camera Raw hosted by Bridge unless a "qualifying product" (such as Photoshop) has been launched at least once. This may in effect prohibit the use of Camera Raw past the 30 day trial period.

Once the 30 trail days have expired, you will be able to open Camera RAW from Bridge, and do changes to RAW, TIF or JPG files and save them on their original format, but you will not be able save a RAW file on an other format (like TIF or PSD), for this you need Photoshop.

Umm, yeah you can, I do it all the time straight from ACR, it's a great way to batch run images. This was already answered just a couple posts above.

One month has passed, let's hear from Ziggie... But I guess that we will hear about the "qualifying product" issue...