anyone shoot in RAW? (DSLR)

[AmandaAnn]

I don't know what my camera is set to! I need to find out!

[inkspots]

I only shoot RAW too for the reasons Wenrob posted and also whitebalance. How many times have you shot a photo in the wrong white balance and then find you have blue landscapes? Shooting RAW has saved many a photo this way. It also just allows for more flexibility for photo manipulation. I don't think it's as a big deal now as before since PSCS3 can process jpegs like RAW files. But still. Yes, it takes a lot of memory and a little longer to get your photos, but not too bad. I think were going to shoot a lot of our summer RAW+jpeg so we can upload the photos to Costco easier and faster. (just in case. )

[WenRob]

Originally Posted by inkspots

I only shoot RAW too for the reasons Wenrob posted and also whitebalance. How many times have you shot a photo in the wrong white balance and then find you have blue landscapes? Shooting RAW has saved many a photo this way. It also just allows for more flexibility for photo manipulation. I don't think it's as a big deal now as before since PSCS3 can process jpegs like RAW files. But still. Yes, it takes a lot of memory and a little longer to get your photos, but not too bad. I think were going to shoot a lot of our summer RAW+jpeg so we can upload the photos to Costco easier and faster. (just in case. )

But if the info isn't there, the info isn't there. Like I said if you totally blow something in jpeg, it's just gone, the camera throws it away. With RAW you have it there to work with. Being able to process a jpeg in a RAW converter still won't yield the results processing a RAW would, kwim?

[Carolc]

Wow, Wendy... you are so knowledgeable about all this stuff! The second photo is a dramatic improvement. I'm sure if you tried to lighten a jpg, you'd lose all your color.

I did shoot RAW + jpeg on our trip in April. I've loaded all the jpgs to my PC and all the RAW files to my external hard drive. If there are any I want to include in a layout, I'll pull in the corresponding RAW file.

Do you have any tips for working with RAW editors? I kind of tweak the levers back and forth, but I really don't know what I'm doing. Which settings do you adjust the most? Do you use the histogram at all?

Thanks!

[WenRob]

Carol, you said you have Light Room right?

My very basic settings are:
Leave sharpening on it's default settings
Camera Calibration: Portrait Mode
Tweak Exposure up or down if needed
Tweak WB if needed (find something white where all 3 numbers match and then adjust from there)
Up Vibrancy slider to 14
Histogram-Strong Contrast
Go back to blacks and move them up or down-be careful with this, I see people crushing their blacks because it punches up the saturation but you lose a bunch of detail. Printing becomes a hot mess when that happens.

After this I my brighten things up more or add some fill light. Then crop if needed.

The cool thing about Light Room is you can copy the setting on one pic and paste them on to another. Makes processing a whole lot faster.

I avoid over saturation like the plague I think it's an epidemic and it really messes with skin tones. The vibrancy slider will punch stuff up without messing up your skin tones. For my pics from this trip I have been adding +2 saturation and upping the vibrancy to 17. For me that's a lot but you should see some of the saturation nightmares out there!

I export these to a new folder as tiffs then take them into PSP to sharpen w/pretty basic settings then convert to jpg.

That's about it. Sometimes things need more work sometimes less, it all depends. Hope that helps!

[TanyaH666]

do you NEED a RAW editor to use them? or can i just do what editing i need in PSE??

[WenRob]

Originally Posted by TanyaH666

do you NEED a RAW editor to use them? or can i just do what editing i need in PSE??

PSE should have Camera RAW with it, you can use that. You can go to the Adobe website to get updates. Also your camera should have come with RAW software though I hated mine, lol! But yes, you do need some kind of converter.

[Mama-si]

CS5 has some pretty amazing new features for RAW - including a fantastic noise reduction feature. I have rescued a few pictures to date with it.

[cddiesel]

I want to learn how to shoot and process RAW. I don't have a program to process. Well I do, CS2, but it's on my other computer which is down. Since I have a new camera, I guess I better get the computer fixed so I can shoot RAW.

If anyone comes across any tutorials or any info links, please post them. I'm trying to learn!

THANKS!