Canon CR2 image editing

[onehundredoctane]

I've been using Picasa 3 (free download and I'm a hobbyist) to edit the pictures taken with my Canon EOS T3. I've noticed a little difference in quality when editing the RAW pictures versus the saved copy in JPEG form. I'm a little new to image editing so this question might sound stupid, is there a way to keep the image quality of the RAW image rather than having to save a JPEG version so I can view it outside of Picasa?


Thanks for any help, advice or suggestions!


-Matt

 

[jaomul]

You can also save it to tiff which is higher quality than jpeg

 

[onehundredoctane]

True noob here, haven't heard of TIFF.

 

[jaomul]

I use Picassa also and find it great for e-mailing and re-sizing photos with some nice little edits to use. Most (non raw converter)viewers don't even see raw but Picassa does allow you to view them. I may have misunderstood your first post. Raw will be completely unprocessed from your camera and jpegs will have some in camera processing on them depending on your camera set up. I assume you have Digital Photo Professional that came with your camera also. If you have your camera set up for both raw and jpeg the raw will look slightly different but I dont think Picassa is a very reliable raw viewer. I say this because when I initially got my camera I used it to view raw files also found many of them looked corrupt, with red lines going through them, yet when they were opened in DPP or photoshop they were fine.

I would look at your photos with DPP and you can maybe tweak your camera with experimentation to get the look you like. Alternatively and many say better, would be to process your raw file until you like the way it looks. You can then save it as a jpeg in high quality with the convert and save. The convert and save also allows you to save as a Tiff file, that is a file that keeps more info than the jpeg. I would only ever save as a tiff if I felt I may need to do some extra processing later. You will more than likely find that a processed raw to jpeg is as much as you will ever need. Hope this is some help

 

[onehundredoctane]

Thanks so much! A co-worker was just explaining tiff to me earlier today and that is it is better image quality than jpeg, and that when you convert from RAW to jpeg the image is being compressed. I haven't seen a way to convert from RAW to tiff so that I have a better quality end product. Do you know if this is possible with Picasa? I do some more googling also, thanks for your help so far!

 

[jaomul]

You can't in Picassa as its not a raw converter, but DPP which came with your camera is one.Also photoshop and lightroom if you have these. In DPP open up the raw file, do your specified adjustments and go to "convert and save". The Dialog box comes up with the image file name on it, below this is file type. If you select the drop down box on this it gives the option to save as a tiff

 

[o hey tyler]

Or, if you're a student, you could get Adobe Lightroom for pretty cheap. Works great at organizing files, and has the latest ACR engine.

 

[luvmyfamily]

I just recently started shooting RAW +JPeg. I had a problem at first because I have an older version of Photoshop, but a newer camera. You usually need to download a DNG converter, but still, this was a PITA for me. I have been using my Canon software (Digital Photo Professional) and I can even fix focal issues by sharpening it greatly. When I am finished processing color and focal issues, all I have to do is click "convert and save," and WALA, is is a jpeg. Then, if I need to fix any blemishes, I upload the jpeg to PS.

 

[Crollo]

Tiff? Why would you use tiff, use PNG if you want lossless images.

 

[onehundredoctane]

Or, if you're a student, you could get Adobe Lightroom for pretty cheap. Works great at organizing files, and has the latest ACR engine.

I would LOVE to get a copy of lightroom, but I'm not a student and spending that much money on a "hobby" is kind of out of the question with planning for a wedding right now. (sigh)

Tiff? Why would you use tiff, use PNG if you want lossless images.

Since I'm new to all this, do you know if Picasa or Digital Photography Professional will save in PNG? I'm not on my home computer at the moment otherwise I would check DPP and see if that's possible.

 

[luvmyfamily]

You have the option in DPP to just save or convert and save. So, if you want to keep it a RAW file, just click save.

 

[MTVision]

Tiff? Why would you use tiff, use PNG if you want lossless images.

I may be wrong but isn't TIFF with an LZW compression lossless as well?

I've never heard of saving a picture in PNG. I mean I do have PNG files for other graphics and such but no pictures.

 

[o hey tyler]

Tiff? Why would you use tiff, use PNG if you want lossless images.

Because PNG doesn't support CMYK color space. So if you're looking for prints, you might want to shoot for Tiff. Web usage, PNG is fine but not what I'd keep my images as.

 

[ScubaDude]

Tiff? Why would you use tiff, use PNG if you want lossless images.

TIFF files may be compressed or uncompressed. Based on the size of the TIFF files produced by DPP (and the fact that there are no compression options when saving just a TIFF), I'd say that they're uncompressed.