First shots in RAW

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andya700

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I went out into the countryside a few days ago, and tried something new. I have had the Sony Alpha 700 for about a year now, but have been shooting everything in Extra Fine JPEG, as much for convenience as anything, but also because the quality seems fairly good.
However, after a chat with a local photographer, and reading threads on here, I decided to shoot RAW/JPEG, to let me compare.
What do I do next? ALL of my JPEGs are visible, and I have edited some, but what do I do with the RAW images?
I have Image Data Converter SR V, will this be any good, or will I have to get Photoshop or Portrait Professional?
I have been told that JPEG quality deteriorates over time, and it shows more noise than converted RAW files.
Please help.

Andy
 
I would advise to learn a good workflow with your pics, or it will start to get complicated if shooting Raw + jpeg.
Id have to recommend Adobe Lightroom, for the fact it works well and support, help, tutorials are far more available than any of the other options.

You dont need full on Photoshop, not sure what help portrait professional wuold be either.

Try downloading a 30 day trial of Lightroom, assuming your on PC?, maybe get a 7 day trial at Lynda.com to help you learn how to use Lightroom.

Then look at comparing Raw to Jpeg quality. Unless you have a real need, (printing on site and a few other specific reasons) shooting both is slightly pointless.
The jpegs won't be better. The way your camera makes the jpeg may be better than you are capable from the raw (no offence), until youve learnt how to edit the raws. But its not much of a learning curve.
Jpegs dont deteriorate over time... they deteriorate every time they are edited, or saved as the compression is executed everytime they are saved. You only ever save a raw file once... when the camera takes the picture.... all you edit is how that information is put together to make a picture. Therefore you never lose quality if you change how you want to put the info together at a later time, or over and over again.
As for jpegs showing more noise than a converted file, well thats not really a fact.. Like i kind of said above, your camera might do a better job at making a jpeg than you.. after a few weeks of playing with raw, you will have much more control and you will probably be able to tweak raw files better than your camera can. At least you have the freedom to edit them without losing quality.
 
A good start would be to use your sony software edit and convert/save as tiff or Jpeg's and see how you get on, if you like the result's then download the Lightroom trial...:):)
 
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Lightroom has had problems with Sony RAW files in the past. I don't use it often enough or seriously enough to have noticed but I know Andy (Puddleduck) has experience and knowledge in this area.

The problems may have been resolved but because I'm running an old version of Lightroom I won't have the latest ACR updates.

I'd suggest putting the camera in the thread title to see if it draws Andy in or cross post the question in the Sony Alpha thread (part 4)
 
Thanks for you help folks. I have used the Image Data Converter software, and saved some of the RAW images as TIFF files after editing them (Very basic tools as far as I could see - Sharpening, contrast, hue and various others). The first thing I noticed was the size of the TIFF files compared to a JPEG, the TIFFs are about ten times bigger. Nothing earth shattering yet, but there does seem to be less noise on the TIFFs, and some subtle colours are now evident.
I will press on with a variety of images. I also have to learn about Histograms.

Andy
 
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