what is the advantage of opening the raw in regular pshop after the basic conversion and doing your standard adjustments (levels, curves, sharpening etc etc etc) to the raw file and then saving as a jpg or whatever vs doing the basic raw conversion, saving as a jpg from there and then opening the jpg to do adjustments?
I'll try and help you with this one :
Everytime you modify an image you lose some data. To see this in action open a jpeg file and watch the Histogram while you add a curve adjustment or a levels adjustment. You will notice small gaps in the histogram. These "gaps" are image data that is lost. With small adjustments you will be unable to tell that the data is lost, but with larger adjustments your image will suffer.
With RAW images you can make larger adjustments without losing as much data. AND- you can always go back to the original RAW image and start all over again, without losing anything.
Another advantage of RAW is you never have to worry about the White Balance setting as you can change it to whatever you need during RAW conversion.
RAW workflow is for making global adjustments to your image. Exposure/Shadows etc. Once you are done with your global adjustments and saved your image as a PSD, TIFF or JPEG then open it up in Photoshop and then do your local adjustments (lighten dark areas, darken light areas, clone, heal etc). Its best to wait and do sharpening in Photoshop as well. The Sharpening feature in RAW converters is not as good as the Sharpening available in PS.
You also have the advantage of layer masks etc in PS.
The SAVE button in ACR allows you to save image(s) while you continue to work in ACR. Then you can come back to the saved image and do your local adjustments.
My RAW workflow goes something like this:
Convert all camera RAW images to DNG RAW images
Open up the RAW images I want to work with in ACR, can open up dozens at a time.
Perform global adjustments (see Andys tutorial)
If you have multiple RAW images that were shot under the same conditions you can apply the same settings to multiple images.
Save images as PSD files
While images are being saved I can continue to work on the rest of the RAW images.
After I'm done performing all the global adjustments I go back and open up the PSD files and perform any needed local adjustments, sharpen, convert to jpeg and upload to smugmug
Everytime you modify an image you lose some data. To see this in action open a jpeg file and watch the Histogram while you add a curve adjustment or a levels adjustment. You will notice small gaps in the histogram. These "gaps" are image data that is lost. With small adjustments you will be unable to tell that the data is lost, but with larger adjustments your image will suffer.
With RAW images you can make larger adjustments without losing as much data. AND- you can always go back to the original RAW image and start all over again, without losing anything,
Very good info Rohirrim. In case anyone is wondering why you don't lose any data is because you are working in 16bit instead of 8bit. So instead of working with 256 colors per bit you are working with thousands of colors per bit. Another important piece of info to point out is that once you make your changes and then hit open to transfer the image to CS2 you are still working in 16bit. So if you then try to save your file as a jpg you won't have the option. Why you ask? Because you are still in 16bit of course and jpg's are 8bit. So all you have to do is Mode and select 8bit. Viola your done! I love RAW by the way, if you don't have CS or CS2 I would suggest Rawshooter Essentials like Gus suggested, it's very good for a free program and is very easy to use.
Humungus.. boy o boy! that download was
real easy and ( lickity split!) smooth..from start to finish, the download took no longer than 3.5- 4 minutes, Tops!
I played with my first raw photo on RawShooter and I made myself dizzy :oogle trying to match PERFECTLY the colors/is it sharp or not sharp enough etc. of all the pens, magic markers (orange, pink & black), pencils with and without erasers, tiny brown brush?, red scissors and the holder sitting next to my monitor, with my RAW photo on screen!
Any tidbits that you could pass my way, that might save on the learning curve, would be most appreciated!
p.s. perhaps it is to darn late in the AM, but I missed how to save the freshly tweaked photo.
Anson i use CS2 these days but RawShooter is still value for free no worries there. I did what you did & just blundered about till i worked it out.
To save once you are done just go to the 'Batch Convert' tab up on the top right & select that screen...be aware that it always saves in Tiff unless you tell it to save in Jpeg (well my version always does.)
Snapapple...download Rawshooter essentials its free & does a good job for free.They do ask for a real email for registration but never pass it on or annoy you.
My 20D has never shot a Jpeg. Once the penny drops as to how you can change the temp of a shot in RAw then you can get so much more form an 'ordinary' shot.
I agree 100% with the man from Down Under.
RSA runs soooo much faster than the Adobe Raw software and does the job at least as well - maybe better. You can set the program to open the image in Photoshop when it's converted, just like the Adobe plug-in does.
The main reason I avoid the Adobe software is that it takes so long to load the thumbnails in the file browser. Why is it that people like Pixmantec and Bibble can make a simple browser that loads images in a few seconds when Adobe can't. I tries CS2 to see if that new Bridge thing was any better than CS but it was just as slow. Spent my upgrade budget on Bibble instead. [/rant]
My bought and paid for programs is Elements 2.0, I am more used to PS7 after a few months using it. But I did try this same thing, to bring up the Raw files to Elements. It is the same as PS 7.
There are instructions as to how to do it, however, I don't see the files to bring open one............. same as PS 7.
I don't need a 1 gb card, would be nice, but not needed, if I can't figure this out, for free.
ginger
Just to reply to ginger about small card. I bought a portable hard drive ( image tank) which can hold 20 gigs of raw picture. you just insert you memory card into the slot of the hard drive and you download you picture. So if you are on the field or travel and don't have access to a pc or laptop, this is the ideal solution at least it work for me.
Snapapple...download Rawshooter essentials its free & does a good job for free.They do ask for a real email for registration but never pass it on or annoy you.
yeah, too bad it doesn't work on AMD Athlon based PCs
Hmmm...someone had better tell my AMD Athlon then because it runs perfectly on it.
Why would the prog not run on it
when i launched it last night it said that pentium III or better is required and that AMD Athlon based machines need some upgrade in BIOS or something. Didn't want to play with all that and got DPP from Canon website that i read about in other thread. It works now :
Why I shoot RAW vs JPG
There are a number reasons to seriously consider shooting "in the RAW"
1. You get much more color data per color channel (12 bits vs. 8 bits found in jpg)
2. The biggest reason is creative control over more of the photographic process! If you will allow that the RAW file is your negative, then shooting/processing the raw file is very much analogous to processing your film in a wet-chemistry darkroom. You have much more control over what happens to the image than if you rely on the computer in your camera to translate the image to JPG format for you. And, the beauty here is that, if you don't delete your RAW file, if you don't like one attempt at processing the RAW data, you can start over and do it again!
3. When the image comes out of the RAW processing (ACR for sure, most others I believe) you can elect to retain all 12-bit based color data (usually stored in 16-bit values) to continue with your processing.
So, what does the 12-bit vs 8-bit data get you? In 8-bit RGB data (jpg), each channel has 8 bits with which to express each channel. This means you have, essentially, 256 different values for the red channel (same for green and blue). This gets you a maximum of 16,777,216 (256 ^ 3) distinct colors in your pallet.
But, with the 12-bit, you have 4,096 colors in each channel, getting you a maximum of 68,719,476,736 (4,096 ^ 3), a really rediculous number to consider.
But, what this means is, with the 8-bit color depth, there are a lot fewer values to express/represent a color in your image. What happens if your image has a color that is not "exactly" expressable in one of these fewer colors? It gets approximated and you get positorization :puke1(my spelling on this, I believe, is incorrect).
Long story short, the greater the depth of your data, the better the chances your image will contain the intricate detail that first caught your eye. clap
In case anyone is wondering why you don't lose any data is because you are working in 16bit instead of 8bit.
That's sort of correct, but not totally. If the camera could give you a 16-bit TIFF, that still wouldn't be as editable as RAW. The real reason RAW preserves your image data is because it hasn't been converted to RGB yet. It's still raw data. As an analogy, you can only do so much to alter a recipe after you bake it. If you get to work with the raw ingredients before you put it in the oven, you can change the recipe in all kinds of ways. RAW is raw, RAW conversion is the oven, and JPEG and TIFF are cooked. Once it's cooked, you can still "edit" the dish, but your options are limited.
Another analogy: RAW is like undeveloped film. If you develop it yourself, you get to control chemistry and development time. JPEG and TIFF are like developed film - if it was developed by some outside lab in a way you don't like, too bad. Using a RAW converter is like gaining the expertise to develop your own film to get exactly what you wanted from start to finish. I was never that good at developing my own film in a darkroom, but fortunately, I finally got the control I've always wanted, by shooting RAW.
That's sort of correct, but not totally. If the camera could give you a 16-bit TIFF, that still wouldn't be as editable as RAW. The real reason RAW preserves your image data is because it hasn't been converted to RGB yet. It's still raw data. As an analogy, you can only do so much to alter a recipe after you bake it. If you get to work with the raw ingredients before you put it in the oven, you can change the recipe in all kinds of ways. RAW is raw, RAW conversion is the oven, and JPEG and TIFF are cooked. Once it's cooked, you can still "edit" the dish, but your options are limited.
Another analogy: RAW is like undeveloped film. If you develop it yourself, you get to control chemistry and development time. JPEG and TIFF are like developed film - if it was developed by some outside lab in a way you don't like, too bad. Using a RAW converter is like gaining the expertise to develop your own film to get exactly what you wanted from start to finish. I was never that good at developing my own film in a darkroom, but fortunately, I finally got the control I've always wanted, by shooting RAW.
Color -
You are absolutely correct in both of these statements (though you did restate my film analogy which I plagiarized from someone else).
I agree that the process of generating TIFF (even though a camera might be able to deliver 16-bit TIFF, I don't know as I don't do this) would be two steps away from the really raw data. I say two steps because, remember, the data comming off the sensor has to be processed to a very small extent to
Convert from analog to digita
Translate/organize the data stream to the RAW format
On some cameras, the RAW data is actaully losslessly compressed
On some cameras, insert a large JPG thumbnail of the image
I think I will let it rest with that. I tend to get too involved in the details of things and that would not reflect well on me. :
Well, that was easy. No wonder you write so many tutorials, you do a good job!
Andy (and anyone else) I have a question. I use C1 for my RAW processing. I never adjust my saturation, but do adjust the white balance, exposure compensation, black and gray points, and sometimes contrast. But I never adjust saturation.
Question is, I just got back another order of prints from smugmug. Shots that look good to me on my monitor, but are overly saturated on the prints. In your experience do you have to tone back on the saturation when you process RAW? Or is there something that I could be doing with the other settings that could be boosting the saturation somehow?
No doubt that I'm going to start knocking back the saturation. But I am curious why it would be overly saturated in the first place. Is it just that it's more than the CMYK print can handle? Is there a way to gauge what a print can handle as far as saturation?
Here's all the relevant info I can think of: I shoot on a Digital Rebel, process with C1SE, OSX 10.3.5, monitor calibrated with the calibration tool built into OSX, gamma set to the PC standard (not Mac standard).
Some shots come back fine, others look odd. So it's not entirely consisten.
I might be wide of the mark here ... but
On reading one of the help pages there was a reference to the i2e processing software the EZP use to pre-process images before developing so I went to there web site and found a CS2 plugin for sale, so I got it. Now what is interesting is the way it very cleverly 'cleans' and image up nicly in one step but if I have a complaint it is the amount of saturation it adds .....
Now, knowing that your images will go through this process when it is being commercially developed if you have your gallery set to 'Auto' could this be what is happening to your developed priints?
EOS 30D | EOD 20D | S50 | EFS 18-55 | 28-300 L | 24-105 L | 50-500 APO/HSM | 580EX | Hoya UV | Manfroto Mono | Velbon UltrMax Tri | Don't forget the Tokina 28-210 I use as a paper weight
On reading one of the help pages there was a reference to the i2e processing software the EZP use to pre-process images before developing so I went to there web site and found a CS2 plugin for sale, so I got it. Now what is interesting is the way it very cleverly 'cleans' and image up nicly in one step but if I have a complaint it is the amount of saturation it adds .....
Now, knowing that your images will go through this process when it is being commercially developed if you have your gallery set to 'Auto' could this be what is happening to your developed priints?
Hi Steve,
We use our own private "recipe" for i2e at our Lab - which is different than most I2E default configurations - we get extremely low return rate on our Auto prints...
I've not seen the plugin for photoshop so I can't know what settings you have it on - and there are probably ways to "dial it back" some? Anyhow, I hope this helps
Am I missing something here ////
Great explanation I am new to RAW but persavering.
Last night did a night shoot, well not night but a live band, so very dark ambience with super bright vivid lighting, and all the red, blue and greens you can handle to make the pictures as spotty as .... well
My workflow (to date) is open with CS2 CameraRaw/DNG Converter (free tool) and then I am forced to 'zero' out all the corrections. If I do not when I 'open' the file in CS2 it pixilates, most noticably the reds, to virtually an unrecoverable state.
Now I know why, as the post points out, I am going down from 12bit to 8bit and that explains a lot. However this is controlable if you do not process in the converter prior to load you can then use, in my case I use 'Shadows' and 'Noiseware Pro' to finalise, then as recomended by Andy/Smugmug team, save down to jpg10 for uploead to Smugmug.
Now here is the question: Ultimatly we are recomended to upload in jpg10, this is cool and works well for me, but this is 8bit, so what is the point in having 12bit in the first place because no matter what you do you are going to loose a range you cant possibly use. Unless you are going to upload the rae/dng is there any point in shooting in the raw12bit in the first place, does that make sence????
Dam fine post/thread this one, I have learnt a lot from it, many thanks to all contribs!!
There are a number reasons to seriously consider shooting "in the RAW"
1. You get much more color data per color channel (12 bits vs. 8 bits found in jpg)
2. The biggest reason is creative control over more of the photographic process! If you will allow that the RAW file is your negative, then shooting/processing the raw file is very much analogous to processing your film in a wet-chemistry darkroom. You have much more control over what happens to the image than if you rely on the computer in your camera to translate the image to JPG format for you. And, the beauty here is that, if you don't delete your RAW file, if you don't like one attempt at processing the RAW data, you can start over and do it again!
3. When the image comes out of the RAW processing (ACR for sure, most others I believe) you can elect to retain all 12-bit based color data (usually stored in 16-bit values) to continue with your processing.
So, what does the 12-bit vs 8-bit data get you? In 8-bit RGB data (jpg), each channel has 8 bits with which to express each channel. This means you have, essentially, 256 different values for the red channel (same for green and blue). This gets you a maximum of 16,777,216 (256 ^ 3) distinct colors in your pallet.
But, with the 12-bit, you have 4,096 colors in each channel, getting you a maximum of 68,719,476,736 (4,096 ^ 3), a really rediculous number to consider.
But, what this means is, with the 8-bit color depth, there are a lot fewer values to express/represent a color in your image. What happens if your image has a color that is not "exactly" expressable in one of these fewer colors? It gets approximated and you get positorization :puke1(my spelling on this, I believe, is incorrect).
Long story short, the greater the depth of your data, the better the chances your image will contain the intricate detail that first caught your eye. clap
EOS 30D | EOD 20D | S50 | EFS 18-55 | 28-300 L | 24-105 L | 50-500 APO/HSM | 580EX | Hoya UV | Manfroto Mono | Velbon UltrMax Tri | Don't forget the Tokina 28-210 I use as a paper weight
Yes, Andy there is
Yes Andy there is a dialback when processing it with the plugin, and I have to heavily dialback the saturation elements to get it to work what I consider properly, however it is woth this in pure timesaving on post-processing because of its ingenious 'memory' it know blues should be blue and greens green so save an awfull lot of masking to get a good dynamic range to fine tune from there.
I come from the basis, and I have heard this from many photags that have come from film to digital (does not include me, I started in digi) is that in digi there is not the same dynamic range between lights and darks as there is in traditional film. I beleive digital is there now in the higher end camera's 12mp plus but the 6 and 8 still have this problem to a degree. I certainly notice it on my 20/30D and almost always have to tweek the lights and darks.
But as pointed out in previous reply in this thread I am moving over to RAW now (big steep curve!). The upside I think, subject to the replies I get to my previous post about down scaling the bit rates from 12 to 8, is that if I am going to shoot in raw when I do an event it is not unusual to end up with 1200/1500 shots when useing motor drive that is going to be an awfull lot of editing because I am shooting in 'TV' (speed) most of the time as the lights are changing as I swing from say east to west depending where the sun it so I have to rely on the camera to trick the light, manual is no good as the start of the sequence will be right getting more and more over exposed as I pan and dambed if i can change the setting fast enough manually when panning on a Ferarri F1 car (he he)
We use our own private "recipe" for i2e at our Lab - which is different than most I2E default configurations - we get extremely low return rate on our Auto prints...
I've not seen the plugin for photoshop so I can't know what settings you have it on - and there are probably ways to "dial it back" some? Anyhow, I hope this helps
EOS 30D | EOD 20D | S50 | EFS 18-55 | 28-300 L | 24-105 L | 50-500 APO/HSM | 580EX | Hoya UV | Manfroto Mono | Velbon UltrMax Tri | Don't forget the Tokina 28-210 I use as a paper weight
Not an F1 but an F430, from a shoot I did this week.
Not an F1 but an F430, from a shoot I did this week. [/quote]
Seriously nice, and that is not stricctly true as the 430 was built useing the F1 technology!!! More importantly, with a car like that I would have been expection the driver to watching where they were going and not looking at the cameraman OR was the car still and you were running by it to simulate motion ????????
Can I be you assistant?
Steve
EOS 30D | EOD 20D | S50 | EFS 18-55 | 28-300 L | 24-105 L | 50-500 APO/HSM | 580EX | Hoya UV | Manfroto Mono | Velbon UltrMax Tri | Don't forget the Tokina 28-210 I use as a paper weight
Hey Andy - great thread. I can't believe I haven't seen it before now.
The preliminary window I see when I launch CS, opening a RAW file, looks different than the one above and with less options. I'd show you mine but I don't know how to capture a screen shot.
Hey Andy - great thread. I can't believe I haven't seen it before now.
The preliminary window I see when I launch CS, opening a RAW file, looks different than the one above and with less options. I'd show you mine but I don't know how to capture a screen shot.
You on Windows, Angelo? Alt-PrtScn will copy the current window into the buffer. Then just Paste it into your favorite image editor. I usually use mspaint, but Photoshop works too...
PS Tip, if you have an image copied to the clipboard, if you do a File->New, the default image size will be correct for the copied image.
I have just purchased a Vosonic portable storage VP5500 250GB. I use this if I am on a big shoot. I shoot RAW and am only able to get around 150 files on a 2GB card. When the card is full I insert it into the Vosonic storage and then I can clear my card and start again.
I use a 40D and as I have said I shoot RAW. The problem I have come up against is when I transfer the files from the Vosonic Storage onto the computer they come up as CR2 files and I am unable to preview them without first sending them into Photoshop. I find this most unhandy and time consuming.
I have tried changing from RAW to 'L' Jpeg and when I transfer these from the Vosonic Storage onto the computer they transfer perfectly and the type of file is: Graphics Interchange Format Image and I can open them in Preview without a problem.
What I would like to know is can I continue using RAW and getting rid of the CR2 files and if so what or where do I make the change.
Regards
Bob
<!-- / message -->
RAW files from a 40D ARE *.CR2 files - that is their designation, part of their name. You can't get rid of it if you want the RAW files, and you do. Adobe RAW 4.1+ with CS3 recognizes .CR2 files, but the operating system may not.
Windows (Vista) Raw Codec
I don't know if this will help you or not but Canon has released a Codec for their RAW files for Windows (you don't say what platform you are on...). You can download it here if it works for you.
I don't know if this will help you or not but Canon has released a Codec for their RAW files for Windows (you don't say what platform you are on...). You can download it here if it works for you.
Thanks Mike, I am operating Windows XP. However, I have downloaded the codec and it has been installed in Canon files and I will let you know how I get on. Thanks once again.
Bob
After we feel comfortable with he first 4 settings you told us to stick with, which controls should we start to explore next?
Ozzwald, this thread was originally posted in SEptember 2004. There have been two or three iterations of Adobe Camera Raw since 9/2004, so the appearance, and commands available in ACR are completely different now.
The present initial screen for ACR 5.5 looks like this now
Comments
Everytime you modify an image you lose some data. To see this in action open a jpeg file and watch the Histogram while you add a curve adjustment or a levels adjustment. You will notice small gaps in the histogram. These "gaps" are image data that is lost. With small adjustments you will be unable to tell that the data is lost, but with larger adjustments your image will suffer.
With RAW images you can make larger adjustments without losing as much data. AND- you can always go back to the original RAW image and start all over again, without losing anything.
Another advantage of RAW is you never have to worry about the White Balance setting as you can change it to whatever you need during RAW conversion.
RAW workflow is for making global adjustments to your image. Exposure/Shadows etc. Once you are done with your global adjustments and saved your image as a PSD, TIFF or JPEG then open it up in Photoshop and then do your local adjustments (lighten dark areas, darken light areas, clone, heal etc). Its best to wait and do sharpening in Photoshop as well. The Sharpening feature in RAW converters is not as good as the Sharpening available in PS.
You also have the advantage of layer masks etc in PS.
The SAVE button in ACR allows you to save image(s) while you continue to work in ACR. Then you can come back to the saved image and do your local adjustments.
My RAW workflow goes something like this:
- Convert all camera RAW images to DNG RAW images
- Open up the RAW images I want to work with in ACR, can open up dozens at a time.
- Perform global adjustments (see Andys tutorial)
- If you have multiple RAW images that were shot under the same conditions you can apply the same settings to multiple images.
- Save images as PSD files
- While images are being saved I can continue to work on the rest of the RAW images.
- After I'm done performing all the global adjustments I go back and open up the PSD files and perform any needed local adjustments, sharpen, convert to jpeg and upload to smugmug
I sure hope that makes sense!Regards,
My Photo gallery- rohirrim.smugmug.com
Selective Sharpening Tutorial
Making a Frame for your image (Tutorial)
Nick
SmugMug Technical Account Manager
Travel = good. Woo, shooting!
nickwphoto
real easy and ( lickity split!) smooth..from start to finish, the download took no longer than 3.5- 4 minutes, Tops!
I played with my first raw photo on RawShooter and I made myself dizzy :oogle trying to match PERFECTLY the colors/is it sharp or not sharp enough etc. of all the pens, magic markers (orange, pink & black), pencils with and without erasers, tiny brown brush?, red scissors and the holder sitting next to my monitor, with my RAW photo on screen!
Any tidbits that you could pass my way, that might save on the learning curve, would be most appreciated!
p.s. perhaps it is to darn late in the AM, but I missed how to save the freshly tweaked photo.
regards,
To save once you are done just go to the 'Batch Convert' tab up on the top right & select that screen...be aware that it always saves in Tiff unless you tell it to save in Jpeg (well my version always does.)
Good Luck
RSA runs soooo much faster than the Adobe Raw software and does the job at least as well - maybe better. You can set the program to open the image in Photoshop when it's converted, just like the Adobe plug-in does.
The main reason I avoid the Adobe software is that it takes so long to load the thumbnails in the file browser. Why is it that people like Pixmantec and Bibble can make a simple browser that loads images in a few seconds when Adobe can't. I tries CS2 to see if that new Bridge thing was any better than CS but it was just as slow. Spent my upgrade budget on Bibble instead. [/rant]
Cheers!
David
www.uniqueday.com
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0205/ar0205-2.html
http://photography.about.com/b/a/148279.htm
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_18/essay.html
http://www.rawworkflow.com/index.html
yeah, too bad it doesn't work on AMD Athlon based PCs
Hmmm...someone had better tell my AMD Athlon then because it runs perfectly on it.
Why would the prog not run on it
when i launched it last night it said that pentium III or better is required and that AMD Athlon based machines need some upgrade in BIOS or something. Didn't want to play with all that and got DPP from Canon website that i read about in other thread. It works now
There are a number reasons to seriously consider shooting "in the RAW"
1. You get much more color data per color channel (12 bits vs. 8 bits found in jpg)
2. The biggest reason is creative control over more of the photographic process! If you will allow that the RAW file is your negative, then shooting/processing the raw file is very much analogous to processing your film in a wet-chemistry darkroom. You have much more control over what happens to the image than if you rely on the computer in your camera to translate the image to JPG format for you. And, the beauty here is that, if you don't delete your RAW file, if you don't like one attempt at processing the RAW data, you can start over and do it again!
3. When the image comes out of the RAW processing (ACR for sure, most others I believe) you can elect to retain all 12-bit based color data (usually stored in 16-bit values) to continue with your processing.
So, what does the 12-bit vs 8-bit data get you? In 8-bit RGB data (jpg), each channel has 8 bits with which to express each channel. This means you have, essentially, 256 different values for the red channel (same for green and blue). This gets you a maximum of 16,777,216 (256 ^ 3) distinct colors in your pallet.
But, with the 12-bit, you have 4,096 colors in each channel, getting you a maximum of 68,719,476,736 (4,096 ^ 3), a really rediculous number
But, what this means is, with the 8-bit color depth, there are a lot fewer values to express/represent a color in your image. What happens if your image has a color that is not "exactly" expressable in one of these fewer colors? It gets approximated and you get positorization :puke1(my spelling on this, I believe, is incorrect).
Long story short, the greater the depth of your data, the better the chances your image will contain the intricate detail that first caught your eye.
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That's sort of correct, but not totally. If the camera could give you a 16-bit TIFF, that still wouldn't be as editable as RAW. The real reason RAW preserves your image data is because it hasn't been converted to RGB yet. It's still raw data. As an analogy, you can only do so much to alter a recipe after you bake it. If you get to work with the raw ingredients before you put it in the oven, you can change the recipe in all kinds of ways. RAW is raw, RAW conversion is the oven, and JPEG and TIFF are cooked. Once it's cooked, you can still "edit" the dish, but your options are limited.
Another analogy: RAW is like undeveloped film. If you develop it yourself, you get to control chemistry and development time. JPEG and TIFF are like developed film - if it was developed by some outside lab in a way you don't like, too bad. Using a RAW converter is like gaining the expertise to develop your own film to get exactly what you wanted from start to finish. I was never that good at developing my own film in a darkroom, but fortunately, I finally got the control I've always wanted, by shooting RAW.
Color -
You are absolutely correct in both of these statements (though you did restate my film analogy which I plagiarized from someone else).
I agree that the process of generating TIFF (even though a camera might be able to deliver 16-bit TIFF, I don't know as I don't do this) would be two steps away from the really raw data. I say two steps because, remember, the data comming off the sensor has to be processed to a very small extent to
- Convert from analog to digita
- Translate/organize the data stream to the RAW format
- On some cameras, the RAW data is actaully losslessly compressed
- On some cameras, insert a large JPG thumbnail of the image
I think I will let it rest with that. I tend to get too involved in the details of things and that would not reflect well on me.My Photos
Thoughts on photographing a wedding, How to post a picture, AF Microadjustments?, Light Scoop
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Thank you. Donations are being accepted at the rear of the auditorium.
My Photos
Thoughts on photographing a wedding, How to post a picture, AF Microadjustments?, Light Scoop
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I might be wide of the mark here ... but
On reading one of the help pages there was a reference to the i2e processing software the EZP use to pre-process images before developing so I went to there web site and found a CS2 plugin for sale, so I got it. Now what is interesting is the way it very cleverly 'cleans' and image up nicly in one step but if I have a complaint it is the amount of saturation it adds .....
Now, knowing that your images will go through this process when it is being commercially developed if you have your gallery set to 'Auto' could this be what is happening to your developed priints?
We use our own private "recipe" for i2e at our Lab - which is different than most I2E default configurations - we get extremely low return rate on our Auto prints...
I've not seen the plugin for photoshop so I can't know what settings you have it on - and there are probably ways to "dial it back" some? Anyhow, I hope this helps
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Great explanation I am new to RAW but persavering.
Last night did a night shoot, well not night but a live band, so very dark ambience with super bright vivid lighting, and all the red, blue and greens you can handle to make the pictures as spotty as .... well
My workflow (to date) is open with CS2 CameraRaw/DNG Converter (free tool) and then I am forced to 'zero' out all the corrections. If I do not when I 'open' the file in CS2 it pixilates, most noticably the reds, to virtually an unrecoverable state.
Now I know why, as the post points out, I am going down from 12bit to 8bit and that explains a lot. However this is controlable if you do not process in the converter prior to load you can then use, in my case I use 'Shadows' and 'Noiseware Pro' to finalise, then as recomended by Andy/Smugmug team, save down to jpg10 for uploead to Smugmug.
Now here is the question: Ultimatly we are recomended to upload in jpg10, this is cool and works well for me, but this is 8bit, so what is the point in having 12bit in the first place because no matter what you do you are going to loose a range you cant possibly use. Unless you are going to upload the rae/dng is there any point in shooting in the raw12bit in the first place, does that make sence????
Dam fine post/thread this one, I have learnt a lot from it, many thanks to all contribs!!
Regards
Steve
Yes Andy there is a dialback when processing it with the plugin, and I have to heavily dialback the saturation elements to get it to work what I consider properly, however it is woth this in pure timesaving on post-processing because of its ingenious 'memory' it know blues should be blue and greens green so save an awfull lot of masking to get a good dynamic range to fine tune from there.
I come from the basis, and I have heard this from many photags that have come from film to digital (does not include me, I started in digi) is that in digi there is not the same dynamic range between lights and darks as there is in traditional film. I beleive digital is there now in the higher end camera's 12mp plus but the 6 and 8 still have this problem to a degree. I certainly notice it on my 20/30D and almost always have to tweek the lights and darks.
But as pointed out in previous reply in this thread I am moving over to RAW now (big steep curve!). The upside I think, subject to the replies I get to my previous post about down scaling the bit rates from 12 to 8, is that if I am going to shoot in raw when I do an event it is not unusual to end up with 1200/1500 shots when useing motor drive that is going to be an awfull lot of editing because I am shooting in 'TV' (speed) most of the time as the lights are changing as I swing from say east to west depending where the sun it so I have to rely on the camera to trick the light, manual is no good as the start of the sequence will be right getting more and more over exposed as I pan and dambed if i can change the setting fast enough manually when panning on a Ferarri F1 car (he he)
Regards
Steve
Not an F1 but an F430, from a shoot I did this week.
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Not an F1 but an F430, from a shoot I did this week.
Seriously nice, and that is not stricctly true as the 430 was built useing the F1 technology!!! More importantly, with a car like that I would have been expection the driver to watching where they were going and not looking at the cameraman OR was the car still and you were running by it to simulate motion ????????
Can I be you assistant?
Steve
Hey Andy - great thread. I can't believe I haven't seen it before now.
The preliminary window I see when I launch CS, opening a RAW file, looks different than the one above and with less options. I'd show you mine but I don't know how to capture a screen shot.
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You on Windows, Angelo? Alt-PrtScn will copy the current window into the buffer. Then just Paste it into your favorite image editor. I usually use mspaint, but Photoshop works too...
PS Tip, if you have an image copied to the clipboard, if you do a File->New, the default image size will be correct for the copied image.
Here's my screen shot:
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I have just purchased a Vosonic portable storage VP5500 250GB. I use this if I am on a big shoot. I shoot RAW and am only able to get around 150 files on a 2GB card. When the card is full I insert it into the Vosonic storage and then I can clear my card and start again.
I use a 40D and as I have said I shoot RAW. The problem I have come up against is when I transfer the files from the Vosonic Storage onto the computer they come up as CR2 files and I am unable to preview them without first sending them into Photoshop. I find this most unhandy and time consuming.
I have tried changing from RAW to 'L' Jpeg and when I transfer these from the Vosonic Storage onto the computer they transfer perfectly and the type of file is: Graphics Interchange Format Image and I can open them in Preview without a problem.
What I would like to know is can I continue using RAW and getting rid of the CR2 files and if so what or where do I make the change.
Regards
Bob
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RAW files from a 40D ARE *.CR2 files - that is their designation, part of their name. You can't get rid of it if you want the RAW files, and you do. Adobe RAW 4.1+ with CS3 recognizes .CR2 files, but the operating system may not.
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I don't know if this will help you or not but Canon has released a Codec for their RAW files for Windows (you don't say what platform you are on...). You can download it here if it works for you.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Canon_RAW_Codec.htm
Hope this helps
Mike
Mike Mattix
Tulsa, OK
"There are always three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the truth" - Unknown
Thanks Mike, I am operating Windows XP. However, I have downloaded the codec and it has been installed in Canon files and I will let you know how I get on. Thanks once again.
Bob
ProjectPhotobooth
Ozzwald, this thread was originally posted in SEptember 2004. There have been two or three iterations of Adobe Camera Raw since 9/2004, so the appearance, and commands available in ACR are completely different now.
The present initial screen for ACR 5.5 looks like this now
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