Photography 101 – RAW

Hello class. Today I’m going to be talking about RAW, an image quality setting on a digital SLR.

I’m not an expert on any of this. I’ve been doing a lot of web reading and library book reading and wanted to share some techniques that have made my pictures better.

I have the Canon entry-level DSLR, a Rebel XT. It has the RAW image quality setting. My Canon Powershot does not have this feature.

I have always taken my digital photos using the highest quality JPEG setting. I ignored the RAW option because I didn’t know how to use it. In RAW file format, the camera does not do any post-processing on your image. It records the ISO setting, f-stop, and shutter speed. It saves all the other data available at the time the image was taken and saves it in the image file, ready to be manipulated later.

Understanding this was an epiphany for me. ALL those other options on the camera including white balance, sharpness, filters, etc., are processing options that the camera APPLIES to the image AFTER it’s been taken. RAW tells the camera “don’t do any processing on the image, just record the ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed, the photographer will take care of the rest later.”

RAW images are HUGE. They carry ALL the information about your image that the camera’s sensor was able to capture. RAW images must be processed in a software program before they’re ready for print. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements 5.0 have these editors.
For most situations, a high-quality JPEG is good enough. My camera does a darn good job of auto-processing my photos, throwing away all the information no longer needed, compressing it, and giving the best image.

So why use RAW? When it came to my pattern cover I wanted precise control over all aspects of post-processing the image.

Photoshop’s RAW image editor was a breeze to use. Here’s a screen shot showing all the options that can be tweaked:

If you want to see all the options clearly, click on the photo to see the big version.

Notice how the white balance options relate to all those auto-modes your camera has? Pretty cool. Photoshop takes a best guess at processing your RAW image and setting all the options. You can then tweak from that baseline. This photo was much better than the corresponding JPEG the camera produced, basically Canon’s best guess, or yours if you’re setting things in manual mode, at processing the RAW image.

A comment on Photoshop Elements. I used this program for years before acquiring the full-blown version (it came bundled with the other Adobe products I wanted to use for writing my pattern). Everything I’ve been doing in the full version is the same as what I did in Elements 5.0. I haven’t learned about the expanded features. If you know of some cool ones please tip me off! Also, I’m sure some of you are true experts on this subject and I’d love to hear any advice you have for getting the most out of RAW image processing.