Make your pictures happy, shoot in RAW
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
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We've all heard the word before, RAW. What is RAW? How can it make your pictures better? And how can it make you happier?
The RAW image format is the pure form of a digital picture as your camera first sees it. RAW files are essentially the data your camera's sensor received combined with a few camera-specific shot settings such as white-ballance and over/under exposure values. Essentially, everything except focal length, shutter speed, aperture and ISO can be adjusted after the shot is taken when the RAW file is used.
By default, most cameras take the sensor reading and setting information and process them into a .jpg file because .jpg files are usually smaller and are easier to view on most computers and on the web. This conversion is done with an on board processing chips.
Most DSLRs and some point and shoot cameras allow you to get the image before processing is done, that file is the RAW file, and processing it can be done later on a home computer. That's where the fun comes in.
How do you set your camera to RAW mode?
The default setting for most cameras is to output pictures as .jpg because it requires almost no work outside of the camera after the shot. For cameras that support RAW, changing your to shoot RAW usually only requires a few simple steps. Typically cameras have a file size or file quality option on the menu screen.
Some cameras even have a dual output mode, like the ones shown in the menu above, that produce both RAW and .jpg files for later use.
It should also be said that some automatic modes will not shoot RAW files but will always create .jpg output files. Just be aware which auto settings these are and know that you won't have the benefit of RAW in those modes.
Why do I want RAW?
So why all the fuss about shooting RAW? Well, the reason is, in a word, control. Shooting RAW lets you adjust shot settings after you have taken the shot, usually at a time/place where you can monkey around and get it right. Here is an example of a picture that I took in Portland that was underexposed when I took it. If I had not shot in RAW, my file would have come out of the camera looking like the shot below on the left:
Underexposed shot straight from the camera
Adjusted RAW image to be correctly exposed
However, since I shot in RAW I was able to adjust contrast, exposure and saturation to produce the usable shot shown on the right.
Every brand of camera is going to have different settings on it, but they are all fairly similar. I will be using canon's CR2 RAW file as the basis of the rest of this post. With canon's CR2 file, I am able to change the following settings after the shot before making my .jpg file.
- Exposure Compensation
- White Balance Adjustment
- Blue/Amber and Green/Magenta Adjustment
- Picture Styles
- Sharpness
- Contrast
- Color
- Filter mode(B/W only)
Now some of the adjustments from above can be done in post-processing of the image, but on the whole, the quality and effectiveness of the adjustments are much better when done to the RAW file. Typical post processing is like taking a suit to a tailor, you can get most alterations to work, but not all. Processing a RAW file is like going to the store for a new suit every time, the suit always fits when you walk out.
How do I process raw files
Since every RAW file is sensor data and settings data, it has to be processed to be viewed. There are a lot of ways to do this.
· The first way to view/process your raw files is with conversion software that probably came with your camera. Canon includes their zoombrowser software which lets you adjust camera settings and save the file as either a .jpg or a .tiff file.
canon's zoombrowser RAW processing & management software
· In addition to packaged software, 3rd party software can process RAW files for use elsewhere. Some notable softare includes Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom. The nice thing about these solutions is that they have the ability to process RAW files from different brands such as canon and nikon.
· Some websites like picasa support RAW files. Most don't let you adjust the files, but they will convert the shot straight to .jpg without requiring any work and can make the act of posting to the web with RAW simple and quick.
· And most operating systems like Vista, OS X Leopard and even XP are now able to process RAW files and show you previews right in your file browser making it easier to see which picture is which.
Pretty much everyone is on board with RAW and it is becoming more and more ubiquitous to work with. There are still speed bumps and the RAW format specifications for any brand can be changed at any time, but that will become less and less of an issue as time goes on.
The negatives to shooting RAW
There are no negatives to shooting RAW, it is perfect....ok, that isn't true. There are actually a number of drawbacks to shooting RAW, but once you know what they are, you'll see how the benefits to shooting RAW almost always outweigh the negatives.
· The first problem with RAW is the size of the files. With .jpg files, there is some compression going on, so files are smaller. On my 8 mega-pixel camera, high-quality .jpg files are between 4-5 MB where RAW files are between 7-10MB. This becomes an issue if you are shooting on a small memory card or you plan to take lots of shots. With .jpg you can get almost twice as many shots onto a card/drive before you have to make space.
· Next is usability. Like I mentioned above, RAW pictures are mostly worthless, it's the .jpg or .tiff files you get from RAW that are important. It can sometimes be the case where you put a RAW file on a computer that has no way of opening the file for viewing. Very frustrating.
· RAW file processing takes time. Cameras have dedicated processors and buffers that do nothing but convert RAW files into .jpg files. This means that the work only takes seconds or fractions of a second to do. Processing later on a computer means that your processor (which is doing a dozen different things) now has to convert a huge file into a different kind of huge file. This has to happen one at a time for every picture you take. If it takes 2 seconds to process a picture and you have 1000 shots, that's a half an hour of waiting around before you are done processing.
· results may vary. Different software processes RAW files in different ways. Some tend to over-saturate, some don't have enough sharpness, others have different hues. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can cause some confusion when trying to get the same result twice in two different places.
· Shooting speed is lower. One of the slowest parts of taking a picture is writing the file to your memory card. In order to handle this, camera's have a buffer that hold pictures while waiting to write. The buffer gets cleared in between your shots. When the buffer isn't full, shooting speed is the same, but if the buffer is full of RAW files, it can only fit half of what it could with .jpg files. So rapid fire for RAW mode is slower with a full buffer than it is when shooting .jpg because the larger RAW files take more time to get through the system.
Why would I ever shoot .jpg again?
Ok, I think it is safe to say that I love RAW. It has been a huge help to me and my shooting, but there are still times when .jpg is needed and here are 2 below.
1) If you have limited memory for pictures, shoot .jpg. Better to get the shot as a .jpg than to not get the shot at all.
2) If you need to use the shots right away. Let's say you're putting the pictures up only immediately after a shoot. Why waste time processing when you can just throw up the .jpg file and be done. (This problem can be solved by shooting in RAW+.jpg mode, but I won't get into that) |
(post viewed 2794 times) |
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There are 4 comments |
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Nicely explained. |
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Posted by William @ 12/05/2008 9:36 AM |
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I manage to speed up the shots in raw by changing the 14bit to 12 bit depth.i mannaaged to shoots 3 to 4 shots a second
Andre
NikonD300/18-200mm Sigma |
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Posted by andre @ 12/05/2008 2:01 PM |
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Perfect illustration, makes explaining RAW nice and easy. |
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Posted by Scott Lenger @ 12/06/2008 10:24 PM |
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This article could be way better if you show how that sample jpg looks like when processed the same as the raw version. We just see a bad picture processed in raw, but don't see it processed in jpg. Is is worth to process in raw? This could be demonstrated.
Also, you can show what exact processing steps you have used. This could show that processing a raw is quick and easy (or long and difficult).
And one last comment that Canon bundles its Digital Photo Professional software which is more advanced than Zoombrowser. |
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Posted by joska @ 06/04/2009 4:10 AM |
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