Toe in the water with RAW......

Gilly B

Gilly B

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Gillian
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I seem to have a phobia about shooting in RAW. From what I have seen and heard, shooting RAW appears to be the best way of achieving your best results. I know how to set up my camera and take a shot with RAW, but not sure what software or system I need to extract and work on it afterwards. I have Photoshop CS2 on my PC.

Could someone point me in the right direction for reading material or advice to get me going.

If anyone going to the Liverpool meet is willing to spare a few minutes on this subject, I will be very grateful. Thanks :thinking:
 
I think Photoshop CS2 will open them like any other image, then I believe there are options (god knows where) for making alteration to it, for example exposure and white balance. It could well be in a menu somewhere :| I would recommend taking a shot in RAW, stick it on your pc, open in PS CS2 and see what it does...lol

That or just wait for someone who knows what they are talking about!
 
Hi Gilly

The best thing i'd advise is to dive right in. From the raw file itself, just right click and open with, then select CS2.

You will notice that this opens CS2's Camera RAW program and there are sliders along the right hand side to adjust exposure, white balance, etc, etc. It's very intuitive and even has an auto function to point you in the right direction....

This link will help if you're really nervous thogh :)

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
 
:agree: thats about the crux of it ... CS2 sort of opens a preliminary file, which you work on and when completed and saved, its converted to a PSD and opened in CS2 proper-like...
 
Cheers Guys... I sort of expected you to suggest having a go. I wasn't aware that I could use CS2 for RAW processessing, I thought I needed something completely separate, so will try that later on. Thanks Jonnyreb for the Adobe link which I will also try out when I get home from work. :thumbs:
 
You're welcome.

CS2 comes bundled with camera raw and adobe bridge - neither are particularly obvious but both work well enough. If you're not familiar with bridge think of it as a viewing window capable of viewing raw shots as a thumbnail - its sometimes easier to use camera raw from bridge as from CS2 - you'll always end up editing through CS2 so have an experiment and shout if it goes haywire. :)
 
Digital Photo magazine regularly cover the subjest of extracting the best from RAW file and the best way to convert RAW files. They have a cover CD each month that has video tutorials that take you through the whole thing step by step. If you PM me your address I'll pop a few disks in the post for you from previous editions :)
 
If you don't want to muck about with (or have to buy for those who haven't already) Photoshop then Bibble is pretty useful and a hell of a lot cheaper. It doesn't do all the fancy special effects and lacks a couple of important things like Lab mode, but it gives you a fairly straightforward way to work with RAW files from all of the main brands.
 
Photoshop CS2 opens RAW very easily and for many pics you don't have to change any settings, to get started.

I just jumped in one day - actually when I found myself taking pics of kids on stage with very poor lighting, and even though it was a baptism of fire coz I shot 2000 pics, it really was too bad to process them.

Go out tomorrow - you don't need to buy anything if you already have CS2, and shoot in RAW. You'll never look back :)
 
and you should have 4 CD's in the post tomorrow too :thumbs:
 
I have to say I find CS2 RAW really easy to use..............and I'm a total technophobe! Just jump in and have a go. As you never change the original, it doesn't matter if you make a mess, just go back and open it again...foolproof! ;)
 
Grendel said:
and you should have 4 CD's in the post tomorrow too :thumbs:
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:thankyou: Paul for sending the disks - arrived today. You didn't say how much I owe for them? :shrug: Hubby & I are in Reading from 10-13th Feb visiting our daughter who lives in Lower Earley. If you are around, let us at least give you some disks or buy you a drink. :beer:

I am amazed at the response and assistance you guys give to people wanting to progress their photography skills. Thanks guys.

Keltic Ice Man - Give me a chance to get in and get my coat off. LOL. Do I take a photo in RAW or put one of the disks Paul sent in my PC? :thinking: Ah! I will go and make lunch first.

I will show you my attempts later...... Gillian :clap: :thumbs:
 
I've done quite a bit of reading on shooting RAW after reading comments on here and have now set my camera to shoot in RAW.

After all the reading i've done i can't find any reason for not shooting in RAW, is this the case?
 
Gillian you don't owe me anything for the disks :). I just hope you find them useful, I'm sure you will. That weekend in Feb is my son's birthday so may be tricky (not sure what we're doing yet :shrug: ). Remind me nearer the time when you come to visit your daughter and if I'm free that weekend it would be great to meet up for a drink :thumbs: I actually live in Shinfield, just up the road from Lower Earley :D
 
Jason said:
I've done quite a bit of reading on shooting RAW after reading comments on here and have now set my camera to shoot in RAW.

After all the reading i've done i can't find any reason for not shooting in RAW, is this the case?
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The only time I don't shoot RAW nowadays is if I just need "snap" shots. Anything else I know I will want to post process to some extent so always shoot RAW. Once you get into the habit you won't look back. JPG starts to feel very limited in flexibility.
 
Grendel said:
The only time I don't shoot RAW nowadays is if I just need "snap" shots. Anything else I know I will want to post process to some extent so always shoot RAW. Once you get into the habit you won't look back. JPG starts to feel very limited in flexibility.
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I shoot in RAW all the time. Until reading the microsoft raw reader thread on here i shot in RAW+JPEG. Now MS can read RAW thumbnails, there's no need to do that and i can squeeze more shots onto my cards :)
 
Well, i'm off to Newcastle tonight to shoot RAW for the first time.
 
Jason said:
Well, i'm off to Newcastle tonight to shoot RAW for the first time.
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Good man - you'll be able to nail those tricky night white balances with the flexibility of PP raw :) :thumbs:
 
I'm having problems with raw..I open up with photoshop CS2..it shows loads of empty folders..and in the last folder there are two images..but when i click them it comes up with error report and then shuts it down :shrug:
Any help would be great as i need to start learning quickly as i have a wedding in march :help:
 
Elaine said:
Canon 350D
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Thats the same as mine and I don't remember needing to update CS2 for them to work.

You mention loads of empty folder, which is a bit strange. Whats the file name of the file that you eventually found? Its the extension I'm after knowing really (the bit after the dot) - it should be .CR2 for a raw file. on opening it in photoshop - photoshop should start the raw convertor program within itself.
 
This is what it shows when i open up the card reader device thing heh i'm great with computers can you tell :P

CS2.jpg


The only folder with any images in is the last one,but as soon as you click it,microsoft error comes up and then closes cs2 down :thinking:
I can view the photo in microsoft RAW viewer,just cs2 doesnt seem to want to know :(
 
Keltic Ice Man said:
Have you done it yet....:D


How about Now :D


OK I'll shut up ;)
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Grendel, K.I.M. et al

Not overly confident using RAW yet. I took this on Saturday with bright blue skies and frost still on the ground in places. I tweaked the sky to match the Blue in the top right hand corner. As I was shooting into late afternoon sun it looked a bit White. The building could do with straightening up a bit as it appears to be leaning backwards. Actually, it looks much duller now it is in this thread

Used my new 5D and 24-105mm L IS

Come on Guys, do your worst......




IMG_7457-copy.jpg


Photograph is of an old listed building in our village that was left by 2 spinster sisters to the University of Wales. The building is called Gregynog and is used extensively for residential courses, Weddings etc.
 
Very good pic Gilly ... :thumbs: ... you have done rather well there for your first go ... ;)

BTB ... you can also alter perspectives in CS2 too ... :D


Go for it ...






:p
 
As a digital photography virgin until a few weeks ago, I've found RAW to be a doddle, and a massive improvement on shooting Jpegs.

I've used Photoshop CS2, CS3 and Canon's own DPP software. Images shot in RAW tend to look fine 'as is' when opened up in any of the above packages - it's just a matter of saving them to Jpeg, TIF or whatever. The Adobe RAW plug-in takes its default settings for exposure and white-balance from whatever the camera was set to, so what you see on your PC should be pretty much the same as what was on the camera LCD.

If the white-balance is off, you can set it to one of the presets, or get it spot-on by using the eye-dropper tool to select a white-coloured area in the frame.

If you want, you've got the various tools to adjust exposure etc., and you can straighten the image so that horizontal lines stay horizontal.

It really does help to think of the RAW file like a negative, and the process of creating a Jpeg as using an enlarger to make a print. Shooting in Jpeg format IMO is like keeping a print of your shot and throwing away the negative.

If you're still nervous about using RAW files, why not set the camera to create RAW and Jpeg of every shot. Use the Jpegs, and burn the RAW files on to a CD-R or DVD-R to archive for future use.

A.
 
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