beginner - understanding raw converting

[shaylou]

I am just a beginner with my first slr. I keep reading that taking pictures on raw is the way to get the most out of your work. My question is how does it work when saving and editing. I'm using iphoto and dont have a clue how this works. Thanks for your help.

 

[Chappers]

A digital camera captures a lot more information than can be displayed on a monitor or can be printed. The in camera processing when it produces a JPEG discards a lot of this information, simply because there is just too much of it. RAW on the other hand does little processing and supplies all the information to the processing software on the computer.

Now you can't see all of that data due to the limitations of the monitor, but it's there. Now you really don't start to see the advantage until you start processing the image. With suitable software you can recover detail from highlights and shadows, which probably would not be available in the JPEG.

Whilst iPhoto will handle RAW files it's probably not the best at extracting the extra data. You need something such as Lightroom or Apples Aperture, or even Photoshop Elements to do this. Something with more control.

have a look at this article, which explains RAW much better than I can

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

 

[dejongj]

I am just a beginner with my first slr. I keep reading that taking pictures on raw is the way to get the most out of your work. My question is how does it work when saving and editing. I'm using iphoto and dont have a clue how this works. Thanks for your help.

You know what the good news is, when using iPhoto you wouldn't know the difference except for some extra editing tools that become available.

It all happens automatically no need to do anything extra on your behalf. And because of the excellent Apple Media Browser system that is integrated in all applications, it will perform any required conversion say when sharing via email or uploading to a website automatically at the moment of sharing it.

Totally transparent!