iPhoto confused...

[stickman.walks]

Confusion over iPhoto right now and I am losing sleep over it. Looking for some help.
I have 100 JPEGs taken on a Canon G10. I have 100 RAWs taken on a Canon G12. All are saved in a folder on an hdd, safe and secure (and with additional backups).
I need to do some mild editing to them - cropping, rotating, color correction. Sure I could use Lightroom or PS CS5 or Aperture - but for these basic needs, I like iPhoto.
But I keep hearing that if you are gonna shoot RAW, you should edit RAW. I didn`t think you could do this. I thought all editing or managing programs basically take a RAW image on import, create what I would like to call a virtual copy where you can make unlimited changes that don`t happen or save until you decided to export and even then it is a saved, edited copy of that original. But that new exported file won`t
still be a RAW file, it would be a JPEG, TIFF, PNG, DNG, etc - whatever you choose.
Am I wrong? Are there programs that people can use that import RAW, edit RAW and export as RAW - and are they common?
I have Lightroom 3. I have Photoshop CS5. I have iPhoto 2011. Sadly for me, I get iPhoto 2011 perfectly well. When playing around with the other programs, I feel lost. I don`t have weeks and months to learn these programs just so I can get the hang of basic editing. I need to fix some minor things NOW - and iPhoto will allow for that.
But I feel lost in that - everyone says how JPEG sucks because of compression and lossy format, etc. So I feel like, should I import the JPEGs to iPhoto and save them as 16-bit TIFFs and then reimport and edit? But everyone says no and then there is all this talk that iPhoto is just editing a virtual copy of the import, it doesn`t lose any quality - as in lossleesy, and even if I export as JPEG, it will be fine.
I just don*t know. What should I do with these JPEGs and RAWs and what should I export them as with wanting to keep the HIGHEST quality and losslessy quality possible. I want to make 8x10 or larger prints.

 

[GeorgieGirl]

I have't used iPhoto in a good long while. If you import your raw files into LR and work on them in LR they can stay a raw file until you decide to do something else with them like export them. If you bring your raw files into CS5 and work on them in CS5, once you click done, it will save as what you have set up in your presets which can be other than a jpeg.

Someone can check me back on that in case I don't have it exactly right.

 

[stickman.walks]

it`s my understanding that iphoto uses the same `engine` as aperture - so they are basically, in essence, the same, just with more bells and whistles on the aperture end. and i know it`s the same with respect to not touching the original. iPhoto makes a virtual copy to make changes and edits - only when you export those changes and edits (whether jpeg, tiff, png, etc) are those changes actually put into a new file - and it is a copy. again, original is untouched.

 

[KmH]

A Raw image data file is not actually a photo.

The Raw file has to be converted into a photo. Specifically it has to be demosaiced before it can be seen as a photo. Well, there is a way to see the file un-demosaiced but it doesn't really look like a photograph that way.

So no, you cannot export a Raw.

An 8-bit JPEG file does not gain any image data when converted to a 16-bit TIFF. The only thing that is gained is the ability to use 16-bit capable editing tools on the file.

Most print labs will only accept JPEG files.

I do as much of my editing as possible in my Raw converter application. I use Adobe Photoshop CS5's parametric Camera Raw (ACR 6) as my Raw converter (16-bit color depth, Prophoto RGB color space). (Lightroom 3 also uses ACR 6 for Raw conversion and editing.)

I then open the file in CS5 as a 16-bit .PSD also in the Prophoto color space. I do as much of the editing as possible non-destructively, and only use 8-bit editing tools when necessary.

When the image is finished I export it according to it's intended use. Most web images get exported as JPEGs in the sRGB color space. Commercial images usually get exported as 16-bit TIFFs on a disc.

Most images destined for print get exported as JPEGs in the sRGB color space, with an occasional print exported in the Adobe RGB color space. for prints it depends what equipment the lab uses to print the image, be it a chromogenic process, a giclée process, or an offset print process that requires the CMYK color space.

 

[stickman.walks]

Thanks KmH.

So would you say for the JPEGs, just leave them as JPEGs - edit them and save them as JPEGs?

If using iPhoto with the RAWs, too - those I can save as 16-bit TIFFs.

But is there any debate with PSD vs TIFF that you know?

Do you know what Raw Converter Aperture uses - because I heard iPhoto uses the same engine.

 

[KmH]

JPEGs, only having an 8-bit color depth, often have no editing headroom, and at the their best only have very limited editing headroom. I'll repeat that converting a JPEG to a TIFF buys you little if any editing headroom, because the conversion to JPEG discards about 80% of the original color data, and converts the pixels into 8x8, 8x16, or 16x16 pixel units called MCU's (Minimum Coded Units), which become the smallest editable units in the JPEG.

I rarely capture images with the camera as JPEG files.

.PSD is a proprietary Adobe file type that is used in Photoshop. TIFF tends to have bigger file sizes, but both .PSD and TIFF files can have layers.

I expect Aperture and iPhoto use a Raw converter written by Apple.