Shooting in RAW

[Lamora]

Hi again. I am stumped about shooting in RAW. I have that option on my camera, and I have heard it is the best quality to shoot in. But when I upload my photos onto my computer, there is nothing there! If I am very lucky, I am able to find them, but they want me to put them to another quality for me to see them.

Am I missing something? Do I need something else? I am stumped on this... Please help??

 

[Designer]

You need a software that converts the Raw file into a viewable image. Adobe Camera Raw, for instance, or possibly your camera came with software. There are some free ones available as I understand it.

 

[480sparky]

Every camera produces a slightly different version of a raw file. They are proprietary. As such, each camera model needs to have specific 'decoding' instructions on your computer in order to see the image. If you're not seeing anything, you need to update your software.

What camera & software are you using?

 

[KmH]

The advantage of Raw is that it is a minimally processed image file that usually has more bit depth than a made in the camera using quite a bit of processing JPEG.
Both aid in giving the photographer more options for post processing.
Photo Editing Tutorials

By the way - Raw is a proper noun, but is not a file type acronym like JPEG or TIFF are, so only the first letter is capitalized.

JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
TIFF - Tagged Image File Format
PNG - Portable Network Graphics
GIF - Graphics Interchange Format.

Nikon's Raw file type if NEF - Nikon Electronic Format.
Canon's most used Raw file type is CR2. I don't know what CR2 stands for.

 

[snowbear]

Canon's most used Raw file type is CR2. I don't know what CR2 stands for.

Chromium, because it's a heavy metal, but oh so shiny?

 

[Derrel]

By the way - Raw is a proper noun, but is not a file type acronym like JPEG or TIFF are, so only the first letter is capitalized.

JPEG - Joint Photography Experts Group
TIFF - Tagged Image File Format
PNG - Portable networks Graphics
GIF - Graphics Interchange Format.

Nikon's Raw file type if NEF - Nikon Electronic Format.
Canon's most used Raw file type is CR2. I don't know what CR2 stands for.

If you want to offer corrections to people, perhaps take a bit of time to offer the proper spellings of said definitions. JPEG is not "Joint Photography Experts Group" as you incorrectly wrote, it is actually Joint Photographic Experts Group.

PNG - "Portable networks Graphics" as you wrote is also incorrect: it is Portable Network Graphic. Please note the capitalized and also SINGULAR form, Network, and the SINGULAR form, Graphic. Your definition was incorrectly spelled. The correct file type is spelled Portable Network Graphic.

Glass houses, and stones, you know KmH?

As to the assertion that "RAW" is incorrect, experts seem to be divided on that. Nikon uses the term RAW in all of its materials, as does PC Magazine, and multiple other technical sites. Common usage seems to indicate a tremendous preponderance of people using the all-caps term "RAW" to differentiate a camera RAW file from say, raw beef, or raw fish, and so on.

Camera RAW Definition
RAW file Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia
RAW file definition of RAW file in the Free Online Encyclopedia
What are the differences between RAW NEF Compressed-NEF TIFF and JPG file formats Nikon Knowledgebase

 

[soufiej]

Hi again. I am stumped about shooting in RAW. I have that option on my camera, and I have heard it is the best quality to shoot in. But when I upload my photos onto my computer, there is nothing there! If I am very lucky, I am able to find them, but they want me to put them to another quality for me to see them.

Am I missing something? Do I need something else? I am stumped on this... Please help??

You don't mention how you uploaded the image data nor to what file system on your computer. First, if you are working with a Chromebook, it does not yet support a "RAW" file upload. That also means there are no Chromebook apps which support RAW files. Therefore, despite, say, Picasa supporting RAW in a Windows OS, the Picasa you would add to a Chromebook doesn't. I don't work with the Android OS but my understanding is it has similar difficulties with RAW files.

I assume you have shots saved as RAW files in your camera. And you understand how to get them from your camera and onto the computer's hardrive. I'm only going to address Windows OS though Mac should work similarly.

Upload your files to the "documents" section of your computer first, instructing the computer to add them to "My Pictures". If your computer doesn't want to accept the RAW files at that location, you'll have to do some software updates which can be found in, of course, the updates section of your computer's OS. Once the files are in the computer, you can see what file names have been assigned to the "RAW" data files. Jpeg will be noted as Jpeg or something very similar so anything that isn't Jpeg is your RAW file data.

If all you want to do is view your photos and send them to a printer in that form, you really don't need to do any more. Click on the file and follow the instructions provided for printing. Microsoft offers some free basic editing apps which you either already have on your computer (check the "All Programs" listing found at the bottom of the left hand side of your start up screen) or you can download a new program from the Windows store.

Most people aren't likely to use RAW files without some editing though. The advantage of using RAW files is to provide greater control over the final image so editing is almost always going to be applied to the RAW file before you hit "Save". If you want more editing control than the free Windows software provides, you'll have to download an image editing app. You can pay for software such as Photoshop in several different formats and have a very complete editing toolset in your computer or you can opt for freeware apps. Nero came loaded on my Windows 7 update and it performs minor corrections. I added Picasa and it handles RAW files and does a fairly complete job of editing without the steeper learning curve of the more sophisticated apps. The choice is yours to make after a quick search engine turns out a few dozen possibilities. When you are deciding which app (or apps if you want to try several) to download take note of the file data types each supports before you download the app. If the editing software doesn't say it supports the file format of your camera as you see it displayed in the "My Pictures" section of Windows, the app won't do you much good for your camera's data.

Pick an editing app which supports the data files you want to work with and add it to your computer. From there you should see a tab which allows you to either upload the image data from your camera or to move a file from your harddrive to the program. From there it's all about learning each editing program and deciding which is best suited to your needs.

Hope that helps.

 

[dennybeall]

LAMORA,
A RAW file is the digital information captured by the camera lens. The camera will then convert that data into a picture and present that photo to you in jpg file format. The picture you see on the screen on the back of the camera is that jpg file. IF YOU want to convert that data to a photo yourself then you can copy that RAW data to your computer and use software, like Photoshop or Lightroom, to work with it. You can choose to save copies in jpg or tiff or other file formats.
The software built into the camera to do that conversion is pretty darn good so until you master pc software to do that job you're better off letting the camera give you photos already converted to the jpg format.

 

[480sparky]

LAMORA,
A RAW file is the digital information captured by the camera snesor. ..........

Fify.

 

[TCampbell]

Hi again. I am stumped about shooting in RAW. I have that option on my camera, and I have heard it is the best quality to shoot in.

This is a bit of an over-simplification. It's actually not the best quality... it's the most adjustable. There's a difference.

When the sensor captures an image, you'll have issues such as "white balance", color, "noise", sharpness issues, chromatic aberration, etc. When the camera does it's in-camera processing to produce a JPEG, it automatically handles many of these issues. It applies white balance correction. It can apply color correction and color saturation adjustment. It can do sharpening. It can apply noise-reduction (typically to high ISO images). The list goes on.

But one "other" thing that it does, has to do with reducing the amount of space needed to store the image. The JPEG algorithm uses a clever scheme whereby it takes advantage of weaknesses in human visual which actually have a very difficult time discerning the difference between similar hues. The JPEG algorithm will take hues which are so close that your eye probably won't notice the difference... and just make them the same. Since they are the "same", it means the compression algorithm to reduce size will work MUCH better.

But here's the problem... if you take hues that are so similar that your eye probably can't tell the difference, and normalize them so that they actually ARE the same... but then you realize that they only looked the same because they were over-exposed... you might want to reduce the brightness to recover the details. If you do this to a RAW image, you actually DO recover the detail. If you do this to a JPEG image, you recover nothing... the detail is lost forever.

When you shoot in RAW your images will come out of the camera with no white balance adjustment, no color saturation adjustment, no sharpening, no de-noising, etc. etc. This means the computer has to do it. Many RAW processing programs (such as Lightroom) can have camera profiles that automatically apply the most common adjustments for you. But they do this in a "non-destructive" way. The original image is still there and the adjustment is only applied to the on-screen version that you see. So if you don't like an adjustment, you can back it out and not lose anything.

That means that RAW images are really the most adjustable and, by extension, a person who knows there way around the editing/adjustment software can ultimately produce a better looking image then the straight-out-of-the-camera JPEG.

But if you just compare a straight-out-of-the-camera JPEG to a straight-out-of-the-camera RAW... the JPEG will probably look better. But once the image is processed on the computer... the RAW will look better.

The most popular software (by far) for working with RAW images is Adobe Lightroom.

 

[dennybeall]

Anybody have any idea what "Fify" means??
Also, a good idea to cut and paste on a quote so you don't misspell it.

 

[480sparky]

Anybody have any idea what "Fify" means??
Also, a good idea to cut and paste on a quote so you don't misspell it.

Fixed It For You.

 

[KenC]

Anybody have any idea what "Fify" means??
Also, a good idea to cut and paste on a quote so you don't misspell it.

"Fixed it for you"

What does FIFY mean - FIFY Definition - Meaning of FIFY - InternetSlang.com

 

[dennybeall]

Thank you.
Denny

 

[fjrabon]

Not to pick nits here, (and correct me if I'm wrong) but you don't edit raw files, you edit the way the JPEG (or tiff or whatever else viewable format you're using) conversion of the raw file is rendered. I don't know of any program that will edit an image at the raw file level, that is, editors don't alter the raw file data in any way.

How editing a raw image works (best case scenario) is that you tell the conversion program to make different choices about how it displays the raw data from the raw file into a JPEG (or tiff or whatever else). But if the raw file is saved, the data from the raw file is completely unaltered. Typically if you edit such a file, two things are saved: the original completely unaltered, unedited raw file and a record of how to display the conversion, such that if you edit the image again later, it doesn't edit the actual JPEG, but again edits the conversion from the raw file data. Basically the program recreates a new JPEG from scratch every time you edit it. You never actually edit the raw file or the JPEG image in such a scenario, you just create different a conversion from raw to JPEG. A raw file is essentially just a record of the data the sensor recorded.

Some poor editors though will convert the raw image once using the raw data, but then after you edit it again, you're editing the JPEG, in which case your options for editing are drastically reduced.