Hey folks. Haven't been around much lately, it's been a hell of a stressful last coupla months. Anywho, I just found out about an app I can get for my camera(Canon Powershot S3 IS) that will let me shoot raw format. I've been doing a lot of reading on it and it's making me real sleepy. As many of you know, I'm a simple man. Words like algorithms make my head hurt. I know there are some of you out there that can explain what this stuff means and in a way that someone with a grade 3 education like me can understand. Help anybody?

What a coincidence that you bring this up today! I'd like to know more about them too. I was literally talking with my supervisor about camera RAW files just this morning. We were talking about the benefits of working with them vs. TIFF, JPEG, etc.

First go I had at a RAW file was when that young buck was posting pics of his "model friends" to have superhero chops done. One of them was a RAW file.

Edit: Anyone still have that "super waitress" RAW file? I found the thread but it's been moved to a "mods only" board.

When Photoshop CS3 came out, the Camera RAW part of CS3 was a great improvement (so they say).......but I think it works pretty good.......

Most of what I use Camera RAW for is the "Exposure, White Balance, and Temperature" adjustments....(its the first page of what you see when you opan a file in RAW)
Those three things can clean up the majority of an image that's not quite right.....

especially the white balance.......I don't even mess with the white balance on my camera......I just correct it there.........

after you make those corrections, open it, then save it as a .tiff or what ever.................you can go back to the RAW file and undo back to the original file

also, if your camera has the "RAW + jpg" setting......use that. that way you have a "good RAW file and a jpg file that you dont have to mess with........it fills up a memory card faster, but I think it's worth it in the long run..............

I take images only in RAW, and uses Lightroom to balance them. Save them as tiff or jpg and save. Then I finishes them up in Photoshop.

RAW shooting has changed the way I do my photography for myself and my clients... basically, when you take a "JPEG" image in the camera, the camera gets all this basic boring DATA from the camera sensor. It then goes into the little mini-computer chip onboard your camera. There, the colour balance is figured out (based on your on camera setting, or automatically in most cases), the exposure is figured out based on shutter/aperature info when you shot the picture, sharpness of the image is adjusted and then the whole thing is compressed down using one of the on-camera JPEG compression settings. You get a JPEG file and away you go.

In RAW: the camera takes the shot and that boring DATA from the sensor goes straight to a file. RAW files are BIG (almost as big as an equivalent TIFF file) because they are NOT compressed. They are about as pure of an image file as you can get from your camera.

Then, in a program like Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom, which uses almost the identical development module), YOU get to pick all thse settings AFTER you shoot!

So you can adjust your exposure AFTER you take the photo (up to 4 to 5 stops depending on the camera). You can decide on the colour balance AFTER you shoot. You can sharpen the image or adjust the resolution. You can fill in the shadows or pull back blown-out highlights (bright overexposed bits). In CS4 you can selectively BRUSH IN exposure, saturation, sharpness, etc. onto your image. You can add a gradient filter. You can do cloning and spot healing. Add vignettes. Get crazy with DouTones and maybe try out some serious B & W post processing. You can do TONS of stuff to your image that an ordinary JPEG just can't handle.

AND it is ALL NON-DESTRUCTIVE. All these adjustments are kept in a little side file (XMP file) that tells the RAW processor what to do with the original file. If you want to change any of the above a year or ten from now, no sweat.

I do about 50 to 70 % of my work now in the RAW converter (I shoot RAW Files 100% of the time though) and the balance with my old friend Photoshop.

Powerful stuff.

(Note: though not as effective, you can "open" your normal JPEGs from your camera in Adobe Camera Raw and still use a LOT of the above mentioned functions)



*edit* This book is a REALLY good book for photographers who use un-film. It relies a lot on RAW processing, as well as some cool photoshop techniques to.

One thing to remember if you use raw make sure you have CS3 or better cause CS2 dont use raw.

Camera Raw. (CRAW or RAW)

Is a fie format, which stores not only the pixel data but also the levels, exposure and white balance data for the red blue and green channels.

This allows for more precise colour, brightness and contrast management.

it also stores the exposure settings and white balance options.

On any digital camera, white balance is basically what your camera sees as white.

When you shoot in RAW you can change the white balance settings after the fact. (If you got them wrong.) This is useful if you are going inside and outside a lot.

This does mean, however, that you will not get the volume of pictures you would get if you were shooting in Tiff or Jpeg.

A Jpeg, on the other hand, does not save the contrast data, so effectivly any edits you make to jpegs will destroy the origional pixel data, on CRAW it does not.

raw is great !!

I shoot jpg most of the time, but when i know I am going to be working with some nice pics, I use raw.

family events, weddings, carshows, my extreme macros (with a lens i built)

raw allows a level of editing jpg cant even compare to.

make sure you have a big enough card though, they can take up some room real quick. My camera, 10 megs a pop, and at 3 pops a second, it can fill that card quick.

Raw is usually compared to a negative : You can make all kind of prints, your negative is not destructed.
JPG is like a print made out of your RAW : lots of informations are lost and can't be retrieved.

dude !

Holy CRAP! It's a Thierry sighting!

(miss ya around here frenchy)