Doh, mistake with RAW

Kev M

Kev M

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I read up a bit on RAW before I dived into my honeymoon photos and saved the photos as 16bit TIFFs. Now when I open them in elements it won't let me duplicate the background layer or use any of the tools except for the crop tool. What did I do wrong and is there any way to fix it other than to go back and do it all again and save as 8 bit?

Cheers
Kev
 
Also why is it that when I increase the exposure slightly or add a little fill light that blacks in the picture turn into noise instead of staying black or just getting lighter?
 
I'm not sure why elements won't allow 16bit processing, as I do mine in 16bit albeit in cs2...exposure is better adjusted in the raw process.
 
Try the following:

1. Load your image.
2. Press CTRL+A (Select All)
3. Press CTRL+X (Cut Selection)
4. Press CTRL+V (Paste to new layer)

Also why is it that when I increase the exposure slightly or add a little fill light that blacks in the picture turn into noise instead of staying black or just getting lighter?
Click to expand...
Probably because what you're changing is brightness/contrast rather than exposure.
 
it's definately the exposure slider. Perhaps my camera just doesn't like night photos. Thanks for the tip I'll try that in a minute when this next batch is done.
 
The fill light filter does add noise to your shots quite dramatically, so I rarely use it for that reason. Given the exposure latitude you have with RAW processing, you should be able to adjust your shots with the exposure compensation filter and the highlight and shadow filters.

Under exposing your images will also increase noise. It may not immediately be apparent because noise manifests itself most in the darker areas, but as soon as you start to lighten the pic, by whatever means, that noise becomes increasingly noticeable.
 
Thanks for all your help. The images that are the biggest problem are the night shots and I've no idea how to expose them properly or what the histogram should look like it's all guess work.

As for the editing problem it seems elements doesn't support 16-bit files. it says I can either flatten the image which only allows basic editing (which doesn't seem to make any difference at all) or convert to 8-bit. Guess I'll have to do that until I can afford CS2. I doubt I could tell the difference between 8 and 16 anyway with my eye sight.
 
convert them to 8 bit you won'rt notice that much of sa difference....what happens if you then convert it back to 16bit?
 
Kev Mills said:
The images that are the biggest problem are the night shots and I've no idea how to expose them properly or what the histogram should look like it's all guess work.
Click to expand...

Thats the same problem I have with night exposure - or in my case stage work - for dance shows - what should the hist look like? I up the ISO to 800 or even 1600 but I need a high shutter speed to capture the dancing but end up with under exposed shots - How can I improve this?

Thanks

Allan
 
Surely you would need a larger? aperture lens like an f4 or f2.8?, if you were close to the stage you could get the nifty fifty f1.8 which i think would help, i am sure a pro will be along to confirm this shortly...

*waits patiently*
 
If you're taking available light night or low light photographs without flash with subject movement involved then the only answer is a fast lens and probably a high ISO. If it's a static scene with no movement then lens speed and aperture isn't really inportant... you can expose for as long as you like. It's what you decide to meter on which is important

Night and low light photography needs some thought to how you're metering. To use the example of people on stage which someone mentioned earler, then if the surroundings are substantially darker than the smaller lit figures on stage, then using evaluative or averaging metering modes is quite likely to result in the system deciding that the predominantly darker parts of the image are more important if they fill more of the viewfinder, resulting in over-exposure. Spot metering is obviously an advantage, you can meter on a skin tone and use the exposure lock button before you re-compose the shot.

But why not just get as close a skin tone reading as you can from someone on stage? Then switch to manual mode and make the settings for that reading. The viewfinder meter display will be probaby be wildly unbalanced, but that doesn't matter, you're metering for the tones you think are important, not relying on the meter which is reading for the whole scene. If the lighting on stage doesn't change you should be OK to take all your shots with that setting. Obviously shoot RAW to give yourself the best processing latitude.
 
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