1st time using RAW: C&C welcome

[bunny99123]

Wow, this has become so interesting! I have learned so much... Thanks everyone! i have enjoyed this thread. Off to Amazon to look for a few used books.

 

[Ernicus]

OP, RAW simply refers to the image untouched. Meaning as your camera captured it.

Raw files get processed a lot before they ever reach the point of being an image a person can see. The image sensor in a DSLR camera is an analog device only capable of recording luminosity, and is not capable of recording color. So all Raw files get recorded on the memory card as grayscale files.

In a Raw converter the Raw file is subjected to a process known as demosaicing. Demosaicing is a process that interpolates the missing color information for each pixel based on a comparison with each pixels neighbors. For most DSLR cameras that comparison is based on the layout of the Bayer Array filter that is in front of the image sensor. Demosaicing includes colormetric interpretation, usually in the CIE XYZ colorspace which is based on human vision, sharpened, tone mapped, antialiased, and some noise reduction is applied.

An important part of the Raw conversion process is applying a non-linear gamma curve to the linear Raw luminosity data, because human vision is non-linear.

For the OP - PsE 10's Raw converter, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is heavily de-featured compared to the ACR in CS3. However I would still recommend the following inexpensive books -
Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)

Good stuff....thanks.

 

[Solarflare]

... and hopefully in near future Nikon will finally realize their patent of 3ccd on a chip, then we will no longer need Demosaicing, the chips will be three time as effective, and we will lose all evil effects caused by this process.

Three-CCD camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bayer filter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia