RAW, huh! What is it good for?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sajid Fakir on January 11, 2012 at 2:14pm

great answer!

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Permalink Reply by jm chanyungco on July 16, 2012 at 5:27pm

how come when i shoot in raw i cannot open it using photoshop CS5? whats wrong? :)

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on July 16, 2012 at 7:56pm

You open raw files with Adobe Camera Raw, you should be able to see a thumbnail in Bridge, then double click it to open in ACR.  If the thumbnails do not contain pictures, you need the latest plug-in for ACR.  The Adobe web page has instructions on downloading and installing it.

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on January 11, 2012 at 2:34pm

This question came up before.  I turned my answer into a web page and put it here: http://cameraclicker.com/Compare/Raw/Raw.html

There are some sample photos there that demonstrate the power of raw that Paul spoke about in his reply.

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Permalink Reply by Ron on March 21, 2012 at 6:29pm

I like your demo of using RAW, it really show the power of using it.  In one program I use which is Corel Aftershot Pro (previously called Bibble 5) you can create layers and adjust any section of the picture during the RAW process. This eliminates the need to save several exposure levels and later re-combine them.  Much faster work flow on that.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Segi on January 11, 2012 at 5:27pm

Mate the above post have already said it, shoot raw, get use to it, I don't know any professional photographers or hobbyist who take photography seriously who don't shoot in raw.

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Permalink Reply by James Elliott on January 11, 2012 at 7:22pm

Haha nice title. I'll save you time and just send to a link that breaks down all you need to know about RAW and JPEG and how to make the most out of your RAW files http://bit.ly/zOxwxC 

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Permalink Reply by Matt Sciba on January 12, 2012 at 6:04am

Wow. Thanks for all the information.  I had no idea that RAW could be so useful compared to JPG.  Fantastic!

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Permalink Reply by Ronald A. Wechter on January 12, 2012 at 11:56am

Hi Matt:  I shoot strictly in RAW format. Never save your pictures in JPEG. Always save them in tiff format and keep your RAW files for future reference. RAW format is everything the sensor sees. You have better control over extreme fixes for a picture than JPEG. 

Ron Wechter

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on January 12, 2012 at 1:33pm

Keep the raw file.  Save what you want to display as a jpg.  Many sites on the Internet will only accept jpg, gif, and png.  Some will only accept .jpg.

With jpg, there is some loss, and more loss if you have the file compressed a lot.  This becomes a problem if you open the file, save it, close it, open it again, save it again, close it again, and repeat this process a number of times.  If you start with a jpg and only edit it once or twice, and save an original in case you need to go back and edit it differently, you can get away with just using jpg files without ever having enough degradation that anyone will be able to notice it.  If you edit the same file fifty times and save it to the same name, close it and reopen it each time, you may find the file is not as good as if you opened your original, edited it the same fifty ways and saved it once at the end. 

TIFF may be a good choice if your editor does not have its own format for saving work in progress.  In Photoshop if you save as TIFF, all the editing steps fall out.  If you save the file as psd, it will keep your layers.

By the way, many news and sports photographers just shoot jpg because they do not have time to do the conversion and are not going to do any post processing.  They just shoot the photo and file it with the office.  I suspect they would shoot raw + L if they wanted to keep a copy.  Some cameras have 2 card slots and can write raw to one and jpg to the other at the same time.

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Permalink Reply by Brigette Lamb on February 2, 2012 at 3:14pm

I have probelm also CC. I bought GH2 lumix and I have photoshop elements. I shot in Raw but when I download in the comp , it says RAW2 and it wont allow me to open it in my photoshop elements. So I have to convert it into DNG converter and now it allows me to see my pic through photoshop elements. My question is , would it change the quality of my pic when I edited them and save it into dng? Thanks :)

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on March 22, 2012 at 3:29am

Well... this reply is really late!  I just saw your post now.

DNG is Adobe's digital negative format.  It is their effort to assert a common file format for raw files.  Will you loose any detail?  That is a difficult question, it depends, is the best answer I can give.  Every manufacturer has their own file format for raw, and it seems every Canon or Nikon model has their own unique format.  Without speaking with the developers, I can't comment on their motivation for that.  Presumably they keep bringing out new formats to take advantage of sensor and code improvements.

Adobe update their web page fairly frequently with new conversion files.  Photoshop Elements is updated quite frequently as well, I think I saw version 10 the other day.  The latest version will have conversion programs for all the cameras that were released early enough to be recognized by the design cycle.  Check Adobe's page for a list of supported cameras.

According to the list here: http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/camera-raw-plug-supported-...  you need a version that contains Adobe Camera Raw 6.3, so the plug-in will work.  You can use either Elements 9, or Elements 10, with the plug-in.

I think this link will provide the instruction you need to get the plug-in and install it:  http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/troubleshoot-camera-raw-ph...

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