Dan, what converter are you using, i threw away the canon software that came with each of my cameras in favor of a 3rd party called breezebrowser, pretty good tutorial, and you can preview each effect in a larger view before converting
they also offer a program called downloader pro, i have it set up to open when i put a card into my reader, then i start it downloading, i have it set up so it downloads to one of my hardrives, which i keep seperate from mthe drive i put the converted images on, i have it set so it puts all the images into folders seperated by date, very good for me when i come back from a trip with a lot of images from different places, so i can process and upload to my image gallery all of a particular day at a time
i find the breezebrowser converter works very well, i can set exposure compensation in very small increments, ie, 0.2
it didn't take a long time to get the feel for using it