*ahem* GIMP (gimp.org) is a freeware, multiplatform editor that can read raw files (including 7D cr2 files).
The GIMP is currently an 8-bit application. Unfortunately that does mean some loss in ultimate quality. I have used a Raw Therapee-to-GIMP workflow for a remote computer (not mine), staying in Raw Therapee for as long as possible (which is a 16-bit application), and then switching to GIMP for any layers and activities that weren't possible in Raw Therapee. That did work pretty well and both are free (and both are relatively slow).
Corel has a couple of software applications that are decent for photographic applications, but it's been years since I used them. PaintShop Pro X4 is the least expensive and still supposed to be very complete.
The GIMP is currently an 8-bit application. Unfortunately that does mean some loss in ultimate quality. I have used a Raw Therapee-to-GIMP workflow for a remote computer (not mine), staying in Raw Therapee for as long as possible (which is a 16-bit application), and then switching to GIMP for any layers and activities that weren't possible in Raw Therapee. That did work pretty well and both are free (and both are relatively slow).
Corel has a couple of software applications that are decent for photographic applications, but it's been years since I used them. PaintShop Pro X4 is the least expensive and still supposed to be very complete.
Hi Ziggy, Corel just bought Bibble (see my earlier post re: AftershotPro.)
I used Bibble for a while. It's a nice program with some interesting features, but gave it up for the stability and regular updates once Lightroom's raw engine got up to snuff.
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
Wow! And I thought that I had arrived. It looks to me like a lot to know and kind of takes the fun out of taking pictures, really.
Ive always been really conscious about making sure I got everything right in my viewfinder before pressing the shutter, but now Ill be even more careful. I didnt know I had to save from dpp to 16 bits? IF I get a lightroom in the future will it save me the time to cobert it to a 16 bits?
I jheard lots of people talking about RAW but am sure than half of them are probably not doing it the right way. Just like photographer using auto mode setting with their flagships fancy camera.
You know what, it sounds like you might just wanna stick with what you've got. I don't say that as "you're not ready for the big leagues" or something snobbish like that, but just because you're relatively HAPPY with what you're doing right now. Unless I am mistaken?
If you're not happy with your old workflow, and you're ready to take the plunge, the BEST thing you can do right now is get out to a real workshop or something, or at least use some video training, to dive into a full Lightroom / Bridge RAW workflow. This is just not the kind of thing that is easily explained in written form, here on a discussion board.
If you're simply interested in higher quality images, you should NOT have to be saving huge TIF or PSD files, and worrying about 16-bit vs 8 bit, and all that nonsense. Not unless you're the next Ansel Adams or something, honestly. All you really need is a good RAW-to-JPG processing workflow. I honestly hardly EVER save PSD or TIF file anymore, I only need PSD's if I'm creating an HDR or a panorama or something. But for general workflow, you should be able to go straight from RAW, non-destructive processing to a single high-res JPG or a single web-res JPG. That's it. No fiddling around with converting huge files, no worrying about future changes to your workflow.
So, my question is, where do you stand? What is your goal with this endeavor, and how far are you willing to go to change your workflow? Is your computer fast enough to handle Lightroom 3? Or do you shoot few enough images that Bridge will be enough? (which comes with Photoshop Elements BTW)
But the point is that you wouldn't have a bad exposure. You'd get it right at the time of capture. Again, it's a "spend the time to get it right" vs. "spend the time to fix it later."
This is a false choice. Not just for professionals but for people like me as well. When you're shooting landscapes or have two different bodies with two different set ups maybe you can get all the pictures you need in jpeg.
What about when you're shooting your kid at a birthday party in a gym? Or running around the pool deck coming in and out of the sun and shade? Do I still do my best to get the settings right in camera? Absolutely. But what if I'm wrong on some of the shots? If I shot jpeg they would, most of the time, go in the trash. Shooting raw gives me much, much more headroom for correction when everything isn't just right in camera.
I'm not a pro. I'm a dad with a camera. I cannot imagine ever going back to jpeg. Even Matt's points about simple creativity don't cut it for me. When I shoot RAW, if I decide a want a camera-processed jpeg I can still do that in LR (very easily). Then I can also do something else with it because I have all the image data. If I take a B&W jpeg from the camera that's all I'm ever going to have. So maybe I was in B&W mode taking pictures and I get some great shots but say to myself - man, I really wish I could see what this would look like in color. I can't.
With Lightroom, you can apply import settings every time you copy pictures to the computer. So with about two clicks I can import every raw file from my camera and automatically apply the adjustments based on the lens I'm using as well as auto-tone. That's about 95% of the post-processing work I do and it's no more difficult than opening a jpeg in Picasa. If the changes made a particular image look worse - no problem - they're non-destructive.
I read every post in this thread looking for a single reason not to shoot raw and I can't find it. Think about it - even if all you want right now is in-camera jpeg processing, why not have Lightroom do that for you on import? It takes no time at all, gives you the same result and for the 1 shot out of 1,000 that you really want to do something more with, you can! It's also been amazing to watch, as the technology has improved, how you can take some of your absolute favorite images from three years ago, reprocess them with the newest version of LR and see immediate improvements. I've replaced a couple of pictures on our walls (the house is filled with them) because the improvements were so noticeable.
I don't think it's much of an issue anymore, with the current speed of cameras and size of memory cards RAW + JPEG is fine. When shooting now I do RAW +JPEG and a 3 shot bracket for every shot (32GB memory cards have spoiled me). I'd say I use the JPEG maybe 30-40% of the time, and then if there is anything I view lacking I'll go in and develop the RAW file.
I don't think it's much of an issue anymore, with the current speed of cameras and size of memory cards RAW + JPEG is fine. When shooting now I do RAW +JPEG and a 3 shot bracket for every shot (32GB memory cards have spoiled me). I'd say I use the JPEG maybe 30-40% of the time, and then if there is anything I view lacking I'll go in and develop the RAW file.
32 GB, ...plural? 3 shot brackets, every time the lighting gets tough?
No thank you! Not really an option anyways, when as a studio we shoot hundreds of thousands of photos every season.
We still shoot RAW though, just sRAW1 and work hard to nail exposures.
A lot of people talk about "well what if it's just too fast-paced to follow the action? What if you just CAN'T nail every single one?" Honestly, in my experience this just isn't the case most of the time. It's not a war zone every single time you pick up your camera. You almost always have time to work the settings, without missing a magical moment.
Especially on cameras like the Nikon D300, with focus points that practically blanket the viewfinder, and spot metering that follows the selected focus point. I've been able to track and nail some pretty tough exposures.
Either you just quickly memorize the two different exposures from light to shade, which are usually just 4-5 clicks away on the exposure scale, (I use half stops instead of 1/3 stops) ...or I just roll with aperture priority and spot metering. Sounds insane, I know, but it works.
Case in point, one of my favorite examples of this: Groom in full shade, and just a few seconds later when his bride comes up the aisle, he leans into the sun just slightly. BAM. On the one hand, there is just no way I would shoot JPG for this shot, it's just too risky with the light and the method I'm using for metering etc. But on the othe hand, I did nail it and it didn't take bracketing to do it...
Or, while we're on the subject of metering in conjunction with RAW vs JPG, here's another example of a shot I nailed first or second try. As I'm sure some of you know, sometimes Chinese parents really milk their introduction, but sometimes they're super shy and they stand up and sit down in three seconds when the bride and groom introduce them. Late afternoon, sun coming in the window, and even though when seated she was NOT in sun, I saw what was about to happen if she stood up and I readied myself for the situation. Aperture priority, spot metering with an off-center focus point, BAM.
So, if you find yourself often shooting in situations like THAT, then yeah I'd say that you really SHOULD delve into RAW capture and processing. Bracketing, maybe, if your camera isn't versatile to nail metering in tough situations like this. But at a bare minimum, at least UNDERSTAND RAW capture, even if you decide not to use it much in the long run...
I read every post in this thread looking for a single reason not to shoot raw and I can't find it.
I gotcher one answer: Sports.
Last month, I shot two different provincial championship basketball games, 40 minutes with stops, each. Both took about 1.5 hours. Each produced about 400 images. That's a lot of space... and a lotta pics to surf through for, admittedly, the four we put into print and the 50 posted on facebook, watermarked, to seek reprint orders.
That's a lotta data to shoot raw, esp. when the major likely flaws can't be fixed in post anyway.
These days, I shoot almost all sports in .jpg, everything else goes raw + jpg.
Newspaper photogs specialize in drive-by shootings.
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
Sunday night post raw
Hello, now that Im shoooting raw and actually see a difference compare to jpeg especially when its overexposed or underexposed Im having a problem saving as jpeg.
My DPP wants to save RAW only and my photoshop 7 want to save as Tiff,photoshop , or raw???
How do I save it jpeg????????????????????
Hello, now that Im shoooting raw and actually see a difference compare to jpeg especially when its overexposed or underexposed Im having a problem saving as jpeg.
My DPP wants to save RAW only and my photoshop 7 want to save as Tiff,photoshop , or raw???
How do I save it jpeg????????????????????
I didnt shoot raw+jpeg but RAW only.
When I saved it I had only the raw option, I didnt see jpeg at all???
What about Photoshop 7I have 3 option (tiff,photoshop psdd???,and raw) I didnt see jpegdunno
I didnt shoot raw+jpeg but RAW only.
When I saved it I had only the raw option, I didnt see jpeg at all???
What about Photoshop 7I have 3 option (tiff,photoshop psdd???,and raw) I didnt see jpegdunno
Thank you
Bounty
need to make sure you are saving in 8bit not 16 bit...if your working in 16 bit you will not see the jpeg option at all since jpegs are only 8bit.
I didnt shoot raw+jpeg but RAW only.
When I saved it I had only the raw option, I didnt see jpeg at all???
What about Photoshop 7I have 3 option (tiff,photoshop psdd???,and raw) I didnt see jpegdunno
Thank you
Bounty
I don't have Photoshop, but in Lightroom you don't "save as" a jpeg, you "export" it.
In consistent light I might agree, but not if part of your field is shaded and part is sunny, or if there are passing clouds, or if shooting on snow. Then it's RAW to the rescue.
Even if shooting in consistent sunlight, if you ever have to shoot a player who is back-lit by the sun, you will have to do some form of post-processing. And if you're going to do some PP, it may as well be on a RAW file.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I don't know if DPP has the option, but in PS you can shift from 16 to 8 in the Image Menu under the Mode heading (you can select the color space and bits per channel), you want RGB 8-bits/channel. In general, keep things in 16-bit until you need to go to 8-bit. No need to through away precision when you don't need to.
Ziggy I meant photoshop, I figured it out in DPP.
In DPP as I was told earlier one need to go to convert & save to have the option to save in JPEG.
In my photoshop I didnt have the option but have not tried the mode heading yet, tonight.
@Bounty - if you go and look through the finishing school forum, I think there are a lot of threads (older and more recent) addressing many of these questions. You might find some of the discussions there useful; even if out of date, a lot of the "basics" are the same and the discussions may fill in information about some of the things which you're finding confusing. Might be worth a search!
Comments
The GIMP is currently an 8-bit application. Unfortunately that does mean some loss in ultimate quality. I have used a Raw Therapee-to-GIMP workflow for a remote computer (not mine), staying in Raw Therapee for as long as possible (which is a 16-bit application), and then switching to GIMP for any layers and activities that weren't possible in Raw Therapee. That did work pretty well and both are free (and both are relatively slow).
Corel has a couple of software applications that are decent for photographic applications, but it's been years since I used them. PaintShop Pro X4 is the least expensive and still supposed to be very complete.
http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4130078#tab5
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Hi Ziggy, Corel just bought Bibble (see my earlier post re: AftershotPro.)
I used Bibble for a while. It's a nice program with some interesting features, but gave it up for the stability and regular updates once Lightroom's raw engine got up to snuff.
You know what, it sounds like you might just wanna stick with what you've got. I don't say that as "you're not ready for the big leagues" or something snobbish like that, but just because you're relatively HAPPY with what you're doing right now. Unless I am mistaken?
If you're not happy with your old workflow, and you're ready to take the plunge, the BEST thing you can do right now is get out to a real workshop or something, or at least use some video training, to dive into a full Lightroom / Bridge RAW workflow. This is just not the kind of thing that is easily explained in written form, here on a discussion board.
If you're simply interested in higher quality images, you should NOT have to be saving huge TIF or PSD files, and worrying about 16-bit vs 8 bit, and all that nonsense. Not unless you're the next Ansel Adams or something, honestly. All you really need is a good RAW-to-JPG processing workflow. I honestly hardly EVER save PSD or TIF file anymore, I only need PSD's if I'm creating an HDR or a panorama or something. But for general workflow, you should be able to go straight from RAW, non-destructive processing to a single high-res JPG or a single web-res JPG. That's it. No fiddling around with converting huge files, no worrying about future changes to your workflow.
So, my question is, where do you stand? What is your goal with this endeavor, and how far are you willing to go to change your workflow? Is your computer fast enough to handle Lightroom 3? Or do you shoot few enough images that Bridge will be enough? (which comes with Photoshop Elements BTW)
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Ya learns something every day, doesn't ya?
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
This is a false choice. Not just for professionals but for people like me as well. When you're shooting landscapes or have two different bodies with two different set ups maybe you can get all the pictures you need in jpeg.
What about when you're shooting your kid at a birthday party in a gym? Or running around the pool deck coming in and out of the sun and shade? Do I still do my best to get the settings right in camera? Absolutely. But what if I'm wrong on some of the shots? If I shot jpeg they would, most of the time, go in the trash. Shooting raw gives me much, much more headroom for correction when everything isn't just right in camera.
I'm not a pro. I'm a dad with a camera. I cannot imagine ever going back to jpeg. Even Matt's points about simple creativity don't cut it for me. When I shoot RAW, if I decide a want a camera-processed jpeg I can still do that in LR (very easily). Then I can also do something else with it because I have all the image data. If I take a B&W jpeg from the camera that's all I'm ever going to have. So maybe I was in B&W mode taking pictures and I get some great shots but say to myself - man, I really wish I could see what this would look like in color. I can't.
With Lightroom, you can apply import settings every time you copy pictures to the computer. So with about two clicks I can import every raw file from my camera and automatically apply the adjustments based on the lens I'm using as well as auto-tone. That's about 95% of the post-processing work I do and it's no more difficult than opening a jpeg in Picasa. If the changes made a particular image look worse - no problem - they're non-destructive.
I read every post in this thread looking for a single reason not to shoot raw and I can't find it. Think about it - even if all you want right now is in-camera jpeg processing, why not have Lightroom do that for you on import? It takes no time at all, gives you the same result and for the 1 shot out of 1,000 that you really want to do something more with, you can! It's also been amazing to watch, as the technology has improved, how you can take some of your absolute favorite images from three years ago, reprocess them with the newest version of LR and see immediate improvements. I've replaced a couple of pictures on our walls (the house is filled with them) because the improvements were so noticeable.
32 GB, ...plural? 3 shot brackets, every time the lighting gets tough?
No thank you! Not really an option anyways, when as a studio we shoot hundreds of thousands of photos every season.
We still shoot RAW though, just sRAW1 and work hard to nail exposures.
A lot of people talk about "well what if it's just too fast-paced to follow the action? What if you just CAN'T nail every single one?" Honestly, in my experience this just isn't the case most of the time. It's not a war zone every single time you pick up your camera. You almost always have time to work the settings, without missing a magical moment.
Especially on cameras like the Nikon D300, with focus points that practically blanket the viewfinder, and spot metering that follows the selected focus point. I've been able to track and nail some pretty tough exposures.
Either you just quickly memorize the two different exposures from light to shade, which are usually just 4-5 clicks away on the exposure scale, (I use half stops instead of 1/3 stops) ...or I just roll with aperture priority and spot metering. Sounds insane, I know, but it works.
Case in point, one of my favorite examples of this: Groom in full shade, and just a few seconds later when his bride comes up the aisle, he leans into the sun just slightly. BAM. On the one hand, there is just no way I would shoot JPG for this shot, it's just too risky with the light and the method I'm using for metering etc. But on the othe hand, I did nail it and it didn't take bracketing to do it...
Or, while we're on the subject of metering in conjunction with RAW vs JPG, here's another example of a shot I nailed first or second try. As I'm sure some of you know, sometimes Chinese parents really milk their introduction, but sometimes they're super shy and they stand up and sit down in three seconds when the bride and groom introduce them. Late afternoon, sun coming in the window, and even though when seated she was NOT in sun, I saw what was about to happen if she stood up and I readied myself for the situation. Aperture priority, spot metering with an off-center focus point, BAM.
So, if you find yourself often shooting in situations like THAT, then yeah I'd say that you really SHOULD delve into RAW capture and processing. Bracketing, maybe, if your camera isn't versatile to nail metering in tough situations like this. But at a bare minimum, at least UNDERSTAND RAW capture, even if you decide not to use it much in the long run...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I gotcher one answer: Sports.
Last month, I shot two different provincial championship basketball games, 40 minutes with stops, each. Both took about 1.5 hours. Each produced about 400 images. That's a lot of space... and a lotta pics to surf through for, admittedly, the four we put into print and the 50 posted on facebook, watermarked, to seek reprint orders.
That's a lotta data to shoot raw, esp. when the major likely flaws can't be fixed in post anyway.
These days, I shoot almost all sports in .jpg, everything else goes raw + jpg.
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
Hello, now that Im shoooting raw and actually see a difference compare to jpeg especially when its overexposed or underexposed Im having a problem saving as jpeg.
My DPP wants to save RAW only and my photoshop 7 want to save as Tiff,photoshop , or raw???
How do I save it jpeg????????????????????
File->Convert and Save then in the "Save as type..." drop down select jpg.
Ctrl-D will also bring up the Convert and Save dialog.
http://www.danalphotos.com
http://www.pluralsight.com
http://twitter.com/d114
When I saved it I had only the raw option, I didnt see jpeg at all???
What about Photoshop 7I have 3 option (tiff,photoshop psdd???,and raw) I didnt see jpeg
Thank you
Bounty
need to make sure you are saving in 8bit not 16 bit...if your working in 16 bit you will not see the jpeg option at all since jpegs are only 8bit.
I don't have Photoshop, but in Lightroom you don't "save as" a jpeg, you "export" it.
In consistent light I might agree, but not if part of your field is shaded and part is sunny, or if there are passing clouds, or if shooting on snow. Then it's RAW to the rescue.
Even if shooting in consistent sunlight, if you ever have to shoot a player who is back-lit by the sun, you will have to do some form of post-processing. And if you're going to do some PP, it may as well be on a RAW file.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
On the other hand Im doing great with DPP.
Thanks
Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.
My SmugMug Site
See if this PDF helps:
http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/quickguides/CDLC_DPP_QuickGuide.pdf
... or these tutorials:
http://learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/tutorials/dpp_tutorials.shtml
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
In DPP as I was told earlier one need to go to convert & save to have the option to save in JPEG.
In my photoshop I didnt have the option but have not tried the mode heading yet, tonight.
Thanks all for advices
Im starting to love RAW
Bounty
Thanks