My Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS60 gives me JPEGs that are 4896 x 3672 pixels, but RW2 (raw) files that are only 1920 x 1440 pixels. My understanding has been that the sensor's true resolution is the higher number (about 18 megapixels). I've searched the advanced manual for the camera and can't find anything referring to this, and have gone through all the menu options with no better luck. Searches on the web indicate that the sensor has about 18 megapixels.

Am I wrong, and the resolution of the raw file is the actual true resolution of the sensor, with the higher JPEG resolution resulting from in-camera interpolation? Or is the actual sensor resolution the higher number, and the raw file's resolution is "downgraded" for some reason? If that's the case, why?

Any help/thoughts/speculation is welcome.

My main system is Linux and I've downloaded and used some functions in all the programs you mentioned for photo manipulation. I'm no pro, but here's my two cents:

Raw Therapee - This seems to have the most flexibility of the three, with options that I haven't explored. I've gotten good results by sticking to the defaults, especially with things like lightening shadowed areas. It's sharpening function is more subtle than the other two, and I haven't had as good luck with its color correction, but that's probably because I haven't taken time to really try all the options and learn what each one does. It allows saving your image in whatever location you choose and several different formats; in JPEG format, you can choose the compression level.

DarkTable - A little simpler to use than Raw Therapee, not as many parameters/options to the functions that I've used. I like its color correction capability, very intuitive. I have not found a way to save the output with the compression I want, but it may be there; I've just used CTRL-e, which saves the output as a JPEG into a subdirectory of the image's that you're working on, with some default compression level.

Both of the above do a good job of lightening dark areas, which is one of the main things I use them for. I don't believe either one have GIMP's ability to do things like cloning or drawing on the photo -- they're more geared to algorithmic changes.

I'd suggest getting both and trying them out, see which works best for you. I've found that, in a couple of cases, GIMP's tools in the Colors menu provided the best results.

Nice shots! Were these taken as Raw and post-processed, or are they JPEGs straight from the camera?

If anyone is considering renting photo equipment, I highly recommend LensRentals.com. I recently rented a Nikon D850 with a Nikkor 24-70 zoom lens from them for a 5-day rental. Because I told them that there might be a risk that nobody would be there to sign for the package on the day the rental period started, they voluntarily shipped it about 4 or 5 days early, no extra charge! The gear was in great shape, well packed in a sturdy padded case, everything you might need included (manual, charger, etc.) and the return logistics couldn't have been easier -- even the packaging tape was provided! Great communication all the way through. Not only were their prices excellent, they just emailed me a discount coupon for 10% off of my next rental!
One happy customer! This was for an annual event, and I'll definitely be using them for from now on, plus any other photographic rentals I need.
Oh, and they give you a discounted price if you decide to buy the equipment.

I'm assuming you mean to reduce the size after it's on your computer, from within your photo processing program: I'm not familiar with Photoshop or Lightroom, but fundamentally there are two ways to reduce size without cropping: Resizing to a smaller pixel size (e.g., from 4000 x 3000 pixels to 2000 x 1500 pixels -- User ID already posted how to do this), and increasing the JPG compression level (e.g., from 95% to 75%), which would reduce the quality of the image. Your programs should have options to do either, or both. The above numbers are just examples, not recommendations.
Good luck.

I've shot some 3d images and viewed them by shrinking them, displaying them side by side, and "walling" my eyes; I've never tried the anaglyph method because I don't have a pair of those glasses. I'd think that the colors would be pretty adversely affected -- is this not the case?

Wow! I'm not a professional photographer, not even a good amateur, but those look amazing to me! I'd say you've hit on a winning combination. Keep it up, and thank you for posting!

One other suggestion, not a photo op but an enjoyable place to eat: Across the bay from Eureka is an old lumber crew cookhouse called the Samoa Cookhouse. Lots of old lumbering artifacts in the building, red checkered tablecloths on long tables, and you eat whatever they're serving for that meal -- all you want of any item. They started me off with two big slabs of fresh homemade bread, soup and a home-cooked style main course with vegetables and salad, cake for dessert. I think the dinner was about $17 - $18.

I would second one of DanielB's suggestions (Fern Canyon) and add one that I didn't notice anyone else suggesting (Shelter Cove).
Fern Canyon would be a detour a bit north of Eureka, but I think it's worth it. A beautiful little canyon about 15' to 30' wide with vertical walls covered with ferns, trickles of water coming down the walls here and there, a little stream (unless it has recently rained, in which case it's a BIG stream -- bring wading footwear) meandering through a gravel bar that is the floor of the canyon. Redwood forests on top provide shade, and the canyon is pleasant even on warm days. Lots of Roosevelt elk in the area.
Take a detour off 101 at Redway and head out to the old fishing village of Shelter Cove. It now has a lot of timeshare homes on cliffs overlooking the ocean. Quaint and relaxed, and near the Lost Coast, which someone else suggested.

patman1: In my experience, the reason a lot of conapies use Macs for creative work is that management has come to realize that creative people often don't want to get involved in the internals of the OS -- they don't mind the OS being more closed and the computer making many of the OS decisions for them. Also, the companies *prefer* computers that are harder to misconfigure (because they're more "closed"), as a technically-inept sort of person can cause more headaches for tech support on an open system by choosing poor configuration options. I once took a video editing class that used Macs because they ran a program only available on the Mac -- Final Cut. Great program, but a very frustrating OS -- I couldn't get "under the hood" to configure it like I wanted to.

As far as an example you mentioned in one of your earlier posts, something about changing the lighting on a basketball, the only difference between the editing a Mac and PC can do is in the software. The hardware just accepts commands from the software and carries them out. If a Mac can do a photo-editing procedure a PC can't do, it would have to be because it's running software not available on a PC, not because the hardware is any better. If equivalent software is available on both, either will be able to do the exact same manipulations. I'm not familiar with Mac and PC software equivalency, so can't speak to that end of things. Given equivalent software and cost of hardware, the PC could do the job faster, because you can get faster PC hardware for the same money. But if one is better at photo manipulation, it's due to better software, not better hardware.

When I see someone that loves their Mac, it's usually because they're more creatively-oriented, not as interested in molding the UI to their preferences. Great, more power to them! They're willing to pay more money for less performance, and their system works better FOR THEM. But it's not better hardware, it still can only do what the software tells it to.

[quote=Fabulous1too]...Seems my computer shuts down intermittently when launching and completing tasks in Topaz Studios....

Does the computer shut down when running other programs that put a heavy load on it for a long period of time, or just with Topaz Studios? I'm not familiar with Topaz Studios or how robust it is, but it's possible that your shutdown problem is caused by a hardware component starting to go bad. Others have suggested the graphics card; I would also suspect the motherboard, or maybe even the CPU.

I have a high-end Falcon Northwest Mach V gaming desktop with an Asus motherboard, and had to have the motherboard replaced after a couple of years. The new motherboard is also Asus, and is again starting to show problems. I've had better luck with Gigabyte motherboards, and will go that route if I need to replace it again. You didn't mention $$ goals, but if you can afford it, Falcon Northwest (https://www.falcon-nw.com/) is an excellent company to deal with, great support even after their long warranty expires. I've also had good luck with Dell computers, especially their Precision Workstation line, although their service isn't as personalized. Either place will allow you to customize a system the way you want.

You'll get recommendations for Macs from this group; before you decide to go that route, try one out in a store or rental place and be sure you're OK with their OS. It's enough different from Windows that it can be frustrating, depending on how you like to interface with your OS.

Too bad, it looked promising. The same programmer wrote many other utilities -- maybe one of them would do what you need. You might want to check his web site, NirSoft.com. I've found that people that write freeware are often helpful to folks that use, or would like to use, their software, so he might even be amenable to writing such a utility if he doesn't already have one. It couldn't hurt to ask! You might also search the HowToGeek web site -- they've got a lot of good tips. Be as specific as you can in your searches to narrow down the list of results to sort through.

Sorry that there doesn't just seem to be a magic solution to your problem (where's Harry Potter when you really need him?!) I'm afraid I've pretty well exhausted my store of ideas, but can answer general computer questions if needed. If I run across something that might help, I'll post another reply to this forum thread.

Here's wishing you luck!

GA Hiker, you're very welcome! I threw a lot of things out there for you to try, and am glad that you had some success.

As far as bulk editing of the dates is concerned, I did a search in DuckDuckGo.com (a search engine like Google, except it doesn't track you; Google would probably give you similar results) using the term "program to edit Date Modified", and the first two links it found were these:
https://www.howtogeek.com/203154/how-to-change-created-or-modified-timestamps-for-files-and-folders/
https://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-change-the-last-modified-date-creation-date-and-last-accessed-date-for-files-and-folders/

I've used HowToGeek.com before and found them to be pretty reliable, so I think you could trust their advice, especially since the second link endorses the same program, Bulk File Changer. I didn't read all through either article, but at first glance it looks like it may help with your issue.

Also, as HarryO suggested, you may be able to get some satisfaction using an EXIF data editing program (I searched for "EXIF data editor" and got several hits.) I use a simple one in Linux, exiv2, but I don't think it will do bulk time changes, and I'm not even sure if it's available for Windows. There may be others that will do that, though -- something to have in your back pocket, anyway!

You're probably aware of this, but just be careful about what you download and run on your computer, so you don't get a program that contains adware or spyware or worse. You might want to look for reviews on any program you're considering downloading. On a related subject, if you don't already have something that guards against things like adware and spyware, check out MalwareBytes' AntiMalware program; I use it on my Android phone and used it on my work Windows computer before I retired, and it sometimes caught malware that the antivirus programs didn't catch! (If you're already aware of all this, sorry for the unneeded advice; I can't help it, I'm paranoid!)

Again, good luck with all this!

I do have Windows 10 on a dual-boot laptop, so booted that up and did some checking. My ZS60's MP4 files only have two of the dates you referred to: "Date created" and "Date modified"; the "Media created" field is blank. You didn't say how you transferred your files from the camera to the computer, so I'm wondering if the software you used to do the transfer entered something in the "Media created" field at the time of the transfer, and there was a clock synchronization problem at the time. I transfer my photos by plugging the memory card into the computer (or into a USB card reader if the computer doesn't have a memory card reader) and using a file manager such as Windows Explorer to copy them over.

One other thing that *could* confuse the issue is if the computer is set to store the date internally as Greenwich Mean Time and translate that time to your local time zone. Earler versions of Windows haven't worked this way, but I'm not familiar enough with Windows 10 to know if it does. It's something you could check, both in your Windows settings, and in your computer's BIOS/UEFI settings.

One other thing to check is your settings in the camera for both local and destination time zones, and if you have programmed travel dates into the camera to tell it when to switch zones; make sure those are all correct.

In Windows Explorer, you can have the files sorted by any field, so, as a workaround until you find the real problem, if you sort your photos and videos directory (folder) by Date created , the files would be in correct order.

Since Windows isn't my usual OS, and I change my camera time manually rather than using different local/destination times, I'm kind of shooting in the dark here, but you might want to check the above things. Good luck.

I just went through my ZS60's motion picture menu and can't find an option to put a time stamp on the video itself, so I'm assuming you're referring to the time stamp of the file on your computer.

One thing I can think of that might cause that problem is a disparity between the camera's time and the computer's time. It also could depend on how you transferred your files from the camera to the computer: i.e., did you use a file manager to just copy them from the camera's memory card to a directory on your computer, or did you use a photo management program that does more than just copying, maybe doing something different to photos than to videos? You didn't say which time was the correct one, the photo time or the video time; knowing that might give you another clue.

Since I use Linux instead of Windows, I'm kind of shooting in the dark here, but maybe this will give you some things to look at.