Profile for stubby43 - RAW files aka, photography question

stubby43 aka Phil is a 25.42 year old boy, has been a member since December 22, 2006, has scored 3,809 submissions, giving an average score of 2.65, helping 191 designs get printed.

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Mar 31 '08 by stubby43
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RAW files aka, photography question

I've been doing alot of reading lately about RAW files and apprantly for photography its the way to go, for those that dont know what a RAW file is its kind of like the digital equivilant of film.

a RAW file is exactly how the camera recieves the image, if you take a photo as a JPEG it post process's the image doing things like white balancing it. The problem is that it doesnt leave you with much control over the image and it will of done a worse job because a camera has a limited amount of proccessing power where as a computer has alot more. The other problem is that a JPEG file compress's it.

This is all well and good but nothing I've read has actually told me how to post proccess RAW files, its talked about saving them as a Tiff file and that you need a specialised program but the guides tend to say very little more (which is kind of annoying considering thats the very reason I'm looking at guides).

Anyone know anything about it?

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 4:36pm

By post do you mean get them onto your computer?

martiandrivein on Mar 31 '08 at 4:37pm

CS3 can take/process raw footage. That's all I shoot in the studio. I never save them as Raw (in fact, I'm not sure you can) but I save em as PSD's and then tiffs or jpegs from there. I never start off with jpgs, because the compression when you jpg a jpg, is terrible

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 4:38pm

yeah sorry, we use that term alot on my film course.

Basically the digital equivilant of the darkroom.

Tonteau on Mar 31 '08 at 4:38pm

If you have CS2 or better you should have the "camera raw" plug in which deals with most Nikon .nef files quite nicely. You can do your adjustments in camera raw and then save them as uncompressed tiff files.

staffell on Mar 31 '08 at 4:39pm

I like it raw

Tonteau on Mar 31 '08 at 4:40pm

It basically gives you a lot more control over the white balance and overall exposure as well as colour fringing and more complicated stuff. It's pretty simple to work out.

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 4:40pm

ok, so all I have to do is download them onto a computer, save them as a tiff file then edit them as a I please?

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 4:41pm

Ok the answer got their faster than my question,

I have cs3 but I've yet to use it.

Tonteau on Mar 31 '08 at 4:45pm

You can do most of the editing as raw files in photoshop camera raw. After you've saved you adjustments it will then create another file called and xmp file which stores all the adjustments so that when you open the raw file again you have exactly the same setting of exposure, etc. but can put it back to how it originally was when it left the camera.

You can't have looked that hard for info on this, it's all over the web.

http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/tips/phs7rbrawbasics/index.html

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 4:46pm

There's a new programme called Lightroom that I got introduced to recently on a photoshop course. It's pretty much the same as photoshop raw. The dude that was talking about it said that adobe developed it for photographers who didn't want to muck around with photoshop. I haven't had a play with it, but it looks like a nice programme.

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 4:47pm

Just the first three google hits, I only started looking this morning then I went out and shot.

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 4:48pm

^Like what Tonteau said. The cool thing about Raw is that it wont ever save over the original image, you can do whatever you like to it but there will always be the original somewhere.

Tonteau on Mar 31 '08 at 4:49pm

Fair enough, I suppose it's quite tricky if you don't know what you're looking for.

iDanSimpson on Mar 31 '08 at 4:53pm

More rock less talk.

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 4:54pm

Sounds good, I'm downloading adobe light room now then I'm gonna put them on my laptop.

I'm quite excited, up until very recently I really havent had time to learn how to use my camera or photoshop because of school and work.

I've messed around with photoshop and didnt like it that much so I've stuck to a program called microsoft digital image, I know it was free and came with the computer but its fairly decent, I know how to use it and it was designed for photography which serves what I need, but I'd rather use something a little more proffessional now that I'm using better equipment.

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 4:59pm

I've never heard of Digital Image, so I can't compare the two, but when I first started using photoshop it was rather daunting because there are so many things you can do with it and i didn't know any of them. But after playing around it's defiantly the best way to go in terms of image manipulation IMO.

What's your email man, I just went on a photoshop course recently and he gave us a pretty comprehensive overview in paper form, which I PDF'd and sent to my mates. I can send it to you if you want.

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 5:04pm

That would be amazing mate, my email address is stubby42@hotmail.co.uk

I'd love to go on a course for photoshop and illustrator but as always now isnt the right time (a.k.a, I'm broke, in school and working on the weekends then flying out to canada at the end of august).

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 5:14pm

You should get it soon bud!

Yeah man, work paid for this which is the only reason I went on it.

There was another handout too but when I scanned it in I forgot to make it double sided so it's only every second page :P if I remember to re-do it I'll send it though to you.

stubby43 on Mar 31 '08 at 5:20pm

cheers mate your a hero.

tobasco on Mar 31 '08 at 5:35pm

Now worries man. Share the knowledge is what I think.

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