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Photo in the RAW September 22, 2006
I'm trying to kick this photography thing up a notch, so to speak. Or perhaps I should say kick it up an f-stop. Har har! Nerd photography humor! I kill me.
At any rate, while poking around Flickr and other photoblogs like my friend Todd's website, I keep noticing how much better many pictures look than mine. Better color, sharper, better contrasts. Part of this, for sure, is that these people are shooting with better cameras and with better lenses. But as we say in the psychology biz, even after partialling out the effects of these factors there still remains significant variance to be accounted for. Har har! Nerd psychology humor! I kill me.
To whit, these people probably just know how to take better pictues and use their equipment to its fullest extent. One example of this is probably shooting in RAW format instead of the default jpg. For the neophytes among you, jpg is a pretty standardized and widely used computer file format used for images. The vast majority of images you see on the Internet are jpgs thanks to its universal support. Just about all digital cameras can save pictures in the jpg format, but higher end ones can save them in the RAW format.
Without getting too much into it, the RAW format is supposed to better because it saves EVERYTHING about an image instead of discarding some of it for the sake of size and standardization. That means you can tweak more in digital post-production --stuff jpg users couldn't dream of doing, like changing camera settings after the fact and exercising rediculous levels of control over color, contrast, and sharpness. It's like being able to go back in time and fix all the settings you should have fixed but you were in too much of a hurry because Samantha was doing something cute that would be over in another two seconds. The drawbacks of RAW include the fact that you have to buy special, proprietary software to work with the images (though most cameras come bundled with at least some such software, even if it is usually lousy) and the image files are huge. And you have to ultimately convert to jpg anyway if you watn to e-mail the pictures or post them on the Web.
But given all that I was reading about the superiority of images coming out of RAW image processing software, I decided to do a little experiment and dive into the format. I set my camera to capture both RAW and jpg, so that every picture I took would be saved in both formats. Then I took like two pictures and frowned at the "Card Full" error on my viewfinder.
I picked one shot of Sam to start with. The RAW files I imported with the trial version of Capture One so I could work with them. I played with colors, tweaked the white balance, fiddled with contrast, and exported it as a high quality jpg file. But what I really wanted to know was whether or not shooting in RAW would produce better looking pictures than what I was used to from fiddling in Photoshop. So I opened the picture in Photoshop and did a few more tweaks, like sharpening and brightening a bit more. Then I took the out of the camera jpg and did the same exact same tweaks in photoshop. Here's the results (click on each to enlarge):
 From jpg |
 From RAW |
Which do you like better? I like the from-RAW one on the right because the colors are better and it's a little bit shraper with a little bit less noise (the differences are more pronounced in the original, uncropped and un-resized versions). But still, this was less of a dramatic than I was hoping for.
The thought occured to me, though, that more of an advantage might reveal itself if I looked at a picture that was worse off to start with. So I looked through my shots and found one where I had used the flash but forgot to change the white balance to the appropriate setting. It was also of a scene with a lot of white next to dark colors, which can throw off the camera's light meter. I took both versions of the shot and repeated the experiment, resulting in this:
 From jpg |
 From RAW |
Little more pronounced, no? The yellow cast in the jpg picture was impossible for me to shed with my meager Photoshop skills, while it only took a quick change to the white balance in Capture One for the RAW image. Again, the colors look more realistic, too (out of the camera jpgs often seem oversaturated to me). Now this is actually a pretty crappy picture, with lousy composition and a big ugly shadow on the wall behind Sam, but i think it proves the point even if this particular shot isn't a keeper.
So what I think I've learned is that I should try shooting in RAW for a while. It's going to paly hell with my workflow, as it adds several steps to the process of reviewing, editing, and saving the files. But if it can change one flub to a keeper each week, it'll be worth it. I also expect to get better at using the software, which should help a lot, too.
And if that doesn't work I can always just drop $1,600 on a new, high-end lens. Just kidding, Geralyn!
...Mostly.
Comments (7) |
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Photography
Tags: Photography, Photoshop, RAW, Samantha
Comments
Posted by Laura on September 22, 2006 7:34 PM:
When I first got my camera, I was shooting in both JPG and RAW and would muck with the RAW versions with the software that came with the camera (not great, but I can't afford Photoshop CS2 quite yet). In pictures that are well colour-balanced the differences, as you noted, seemed minimal to me. But for the ones that didn't quite turn out right, the RAW helped correct any errors better. Of course, I've since gotten lazy and just shoot in JPG and do my tweaking in Photoshop (I'm getting the hang (I think) of levels and curves and colour balance, etc.) because I found even after correcting the RAW format and saving it as a JPG, I'd still end up tweaking the JPG format in Photoshop anyway and it ended up taking Way Too Long to fix up one photo. Although if I'm doing a photo shoot of my daughter for pictures to print and send out, I shoot strictly in RAW.
Just some ramblings from another novice who is having fun playing with her camera!
Posted by Laura on September 22, 2006 7:35 PM:
Hey, I didn't post that twice - I only clicked once, I promise!
Posted by Jamie on September 22, 2006 8:35 PM:
Yeah, no worries on the double post. I don't know why that happens sometimes. I deleted the extra one.
I'm also kind of wondering about how to keep an efficient workflow while working in RAW. Futzing for fun with the odd picture is fine, but I like to get the Sam's Stories posts up on time each week. I guess as long as I'm having fun...
Posted by jjohnsen on September 23, 2006 10:08 AM:
I did a similar experiment by shooting with RAW for s few weeks (my camera doesn't shoot both formats together). I liked the results, but eventually determined the minor positives weren't worth all the extra trouble.
Posted by Darren on September 25, 2006 8:31 AM:
Great post, as always. :-)
RAW is the way to go. It is very, very rare for me to go deep into changing anything beyond the "auto enhance" settings for post-production, but the end result is always better regardless how have many tweaks I make to the image.
Posted by Darren on September 25, 2006 8:39 AM:
I use Nikon's PictureProject for basic enhancement and a Photoshop Action (with RAW plugin) for resizing and "thumbnailing". I use Nikon Capture for everything beyond these basics.
Posted by Kevin Hoyt on September 25, 2006 2:41 PM:
For what it's worth, Adobe just released Lightroom Beta 4 on their Labs web site (http://labs.adobe.com). It's clearly aimed at the photographer working with the RAW workflow. Might be worth a look-see.
Kevin