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38 The A77 II in a Nutshell

1.3 SOFTWARE FOR YOUR CAMERA

Sony cameras usually come with two programs to help edit and tweak your
images: Image Data Converter and PlayMemories Home™. Historically,
these programs have not been too popular among Sony’s customers, but
they are free and they have two things going for them:
1) I find the PlayMemories Home program handy because it can import
both movies and pictures in one fell swoop (they’re actually stored in
different directories on the memory card, and different movie types are
stored in different places). It can also show me some of the more
esoteric aspects of the camera’s settings in the EXIF information (such
as whether I had Multi-Frame Noise Reduction turned on).
2) As of this writing, the Image Data Converter software (which is
actually quite capable) is the most universal way to open the RAW file
format, since not all popular image editing programs can be counted on
to know how to read them). (IDC tends to be too aggressive in noise
reduction in my opinion, though… See the section on Demosiacing in
Section 14.3.)

Sony has placed a copy of PlayMemories Home installation files
permanently in the A77 II – all you have to do is attach it to your computer
via a USB cable, turn the camera on, and watch as not one but TWO drives
appear on your computer: One which contains the images and movies
you’ve taken (“Removable disk”), and the other containing the installation
software for Play Memories Home (“PMHOME”). Double-click on
PMHOME.EXE and the software will install itself on your PC.
As for Image Data Converter (for reading RAW files), that software is only
available by download from Sony’s Japan website:
For Windows: http://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/imsoft/Win/idc/us.html

For Mac: http://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/imsoft/Mac/idc/us.html

Contents of this book Copyright © 2014 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved.