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Editing in RAW


peterridding

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<p>Hi, just about to start using my new 450D in RAW setting. I have some in camera parameters set for Standard (sharpening, contrast and saturation), do I need to take these off when I shoot in RAW? Any hints about using Lightroom or DPPwill be most valuable. Can Lightroom be used for JPEG as DPP can? Just received Lightroom, so am exploring it. Is it better than DPP that comes with the camera? Thanks, enjoy the festive season and have a safe and happy 2009. Cheers,<br>

Peter.</p>

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<p>The jpeg parameters won`t make any diference to raw, you can choose to use or overide the parameters during conversion. I`d suggest shoot jpeg + raw then use the jpeg as a guide till you are use to raw conversion, I have lightroom but never used it yet dpp is fine for me, so won`t comment on it. :)</p>

<p>have a good one</p>

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<p>Hi Peter,<br />Sharpening/Contrast/Saturation/Picture Style/White Balance settings are automatically transferred to DPP (when shooting RAW), but you have an opportunity to change them - I usually do. In my workflow, Picture Style is Standard, Sharpening is set to zero, Contrast and Saturation remain at default (for 'Standard' Picture Style), and I pick the Shot Setting (white balance) that looks most pleasing. After a brightness adjustment (to taste), the converted raw file is then edited as a tif in Photoshop, where I perform multipass sharpening per Bruce Fraser's 'Real World Sharpening' book.</p>
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<p>The settings technically don't make any difference in RAW because, uh, RAW is RAW... more or less the data as they were produced at the sensor.</p>

<p>However, some RAW conversion software - notably that provided by Canon with your camera - will respect at least some of the camera settings and use them as defaults for the RAW conversion.</p>

<p>You only need the settings if:</p>

<p>1. You want them to be your starting point for RAW conversion and you use DPP, or</p>

<p>2. You need jpgs straight from the camera.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

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<p>I transferred all the files from my CF card to PC to DVD...a mix of jpeg and raw files..<br>

Now this gets interesting..I took the dvd to a Kodak kiosk at shoppers drug mart and played around with the settings until i liked the pix and saved the final one for printing.<br>

With jpeg,i had no problems but with raw,it seems hazy or blur and it was pretty difficult to fine tune the picture..did i do something wrong or maybe miss a step?</p>

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<p>I am a fan of DPP, which is now a very powerful piece of software. I strongly suspect that it would be more highly valued if you had to pay for it separately from the camera. Not only does it incorporate Canon's own understanding of how to do conversion from RAW, but its lens aberration correction capabilities are based on Canon's lens data, rather then on guesswork or experiment. There are a few further relatively simple things that I would like it to be able to do, but the list is getting steadily shorter. As others have pointed out, the settings that need to be got right for in-camera JPEGs are nothing more than starting points for RAW when processed by DPP. There are a couple of exceptions, of which the most important is, of course, the ISO setting. It is not entirely clear whether the same applies to Highlight Tone Priority on those cameras that support it. The view that you can get exactly the same effect by under-exposing and then compensating during post-processing may be an over-simplification.<br>

Despite this, it is still worth making sensible settings, for two reasons. First, the JPEG-related settings do affect the JPEG that is embedded in the .CR2 file, and that embedded JPEG is what provides the image preview in camera and on most portable storage devices, so it is helpful to have it looking right. Secondly, it saves time in post-processing with DPP if not much in the way of adjustment is needed.<br>

There used to be a good reason under certain circumstances for shooting RAW+JPEG, because the embedded JPEG was of lower resolution than the RAW image and was less suitable for assessing how well focus had been achieved, etc. The most recent bodies embed a full-resolution JPEG in each .CR2 file, so there is less reason to shoot RAW+JPEG. Often it would not have had any advantage in any case, and many people, myself included, normally shoot RAW-only.</p>

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<blockquote>... get another card and shoot all in raw?</blockquote>

<p>That would be my suggestion. I used to shoot only "important" shots with RAW, but for the past three years I've been shooting everything only in raw.<br>

A bit of a white lie - sometimes I'll shoot RAW+JPEG at events when I need to have a slide show ready to go right after the event, but I can't remember the last time I used the from-camera JPEG for anything beyond that.</p>

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<p>I almost always shoot in RAW, the exception being on rare occasions when I need to get more burst mode shots into the buffer when shooting certain sports subjects. Even here, though, I only switch to jpg if I absolutely must do so and only if I'm certain that I can get the exposure dead on.</p>

<p>If you are not super serious about maximizing print quality, then go ahead and shoot jpg. Out of the camera the images may well look better than the RAW files do before post processing. If you are happy with this, don't want to mess with post processing, and are SURE that you will never want that option, the shoot jpg. I guess.</p>

<p>But there are a bunch of reasons to go ahead and shoot RAW all the time in all but the most unusual cases:<br>

<ol>

<li>When the camera converts your RAW image to jpg internally (and that is what it does) it throws away a lot of the original image data, by changing to 8 bits and by "simplifying" the image to reduce the amount of data needed. If you do no post processing this can be OK, but if you ever want to adjust anything in the image in post you'll end up reducing the amount of data even further.</li>

<li>The data in the RAW file will allow you to recover a stop or more of additional dynamic range in wide dynamic range images and in images that were not correctly exposed. </li>

<li>When the camera converts from RAW to jpg, it makes some assumptions about white balance that may or may not be correct. When you shoot RAW you can go with the assumptions or use different settings.</li>

<li>When the camera converts to jpg it also applies a series of default settings to parameters such as contrast, curves, saturation, sharpening and so forth. While they can look pretty decent in "normal" situations, they are not going to be optimal in quite a few cases - and you are stuck with them in the jpg... but not the RAW.</li>

<li>While typical jpgs may look "better" than the RAW file straight from the camera, this is not a defect in the RAW format. It is simply that essentially no sharpening, color adjustment, curves, saturation, etc. has been applied. An advantage of RAW is that you can accept the RAW convertors default setting for all of these parameters (just as you would accept the camera's defaults when you shoot jpg) or you can optimize them in post for far better image quality than you would get from the camera.</li>

</ol>

Finally, about storage... With 8GB and 16GB cards costing so little these days I would certainly not let "storage" issues keep me from shooting RAW. I'm guessing that your 450D will hold well over 400 RAW files on a singe 8 GB card. With a few 16GB cards you could store many thousands of images. Better yet, if you can take a laptop along you can offload the images to the computer (even if you have enough cards that you don't have to) for backup, and to be really safe you can burn disc backups and mail them to yourself while on the road. In this way you could have as many as three copies of all of your images. And that is a Very Good Idea.

<br />

And you could also do the RAW + jpg setting and send off the in-camera jpgs via email or upload while you are travelling.

<br />

Dan

</p>

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<p>Hi Peter,</p>

<p>I shoot RAW-only most of the time, occasionally RAW+JPEG just when a particular job calls for immediate JPEG files....</p>

<p>The Picture Style parameters you set in the camera will only have effect with RAW on two things:</p>

<p>1. If you use Canon DPP to convert the RAW, that software can use those parameters. At present, no third party RAW conversion software uses the 'tags' set by the 'Style' parameters. That may change in the future, but presently this only matters when using DPP and you still have the option to override it.</p>

<p>Why shoot RAW at all? Well, as mentioned, it gives you a lot more latitude to correct mistakes, or change your mind. For example, a JPEG *might* have a stop or less of latitude for an exposure error. What I mean is that you can lighten or darken the image about a maximum of one stop, but usually more like 1/2 or 3/4 stop, before it starts to fall apart and look really bad.</p>

<p>With a RAW file, you have much more latitude to change image exposure. Generally 1.5 stops is doable, and I've managed even more than 2 full stops in some extreme situations, with a little luck.</p>

<p>2. Even when shooting just RAW files, the way the image is displayed on the camera's LCD is also deterimined by the Style parameters you have set. Now, the LCD image is of somewhat limited value and I'm not a fan of editing or judging too much based on it. However, it can be helpful when checking a shot.</p>

<p>What you see on the LCD is actually a small preview or thumbnail JPEG that is embedded in any RAW file. That's because the LCD cannot directly display a RAW file. So, the settings you have made in the Style menus will effect what you see on the LCD.</p>

<p>I have tweaked the Style settings in all three of my cameras to display, as closely as possible, what I know the camera will typically produce in the RAW files I'm shooting. By this, I mean that I know my workflow ends up higher contrast and higher saturation than the LCD shows at default settings, so I turn those up a little.</p>

<p>That makes the LCD playback image a little more useful to me. Still, it's of limited value, I use the histogram for more accurate exposure info, and the playback mostly just for composition.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Thank you so much everyone, the infomation is great. I have now shot in raw and processed the results and they look so much better than the original. The big problem is that I can't open the raw files, only the jpegs I saved a couple to. I used DPP and the firmware is 1.0.9. What has happened?</p>
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