Handling D10 RAW images in Photoshop etc.

I bought a Canon D10 DSLR and moved to Italy. Can't begin to tell

people how happy I am with the DSLR. Aside from the 1.6

magnification, the camera is great. My film body sits at home and

collects dust. But I just shot Pasqua (Easter) in Firenze and the

two CF cards full of RAW images are a bit difficult to work through.

Only the Canon Image Viewer can see the RAW images, and they take

some time to load since they're 6MB RAW images. Photoshop cannot

read the files. (I use 7.01 on a Mac G4 1GHz) The work flow is

excruciatingly slow compared to a light box and slides. How can I

make things better?

 

I have a few ideas: batch processing. Is there a way to batch

process the RAW files into TIF files? (I don't understand why the

camera doesn't just take TIF files instead!) This way I can set the

computer to convert all my RAW pics to TIFs while I go eat, and come

back to edit useable image files?

 

Plug-ins: is there some sort of plugin to make RAW files compatible

with Photoshop? I know there is a white balance plug-in, perhaps

that will enable RAW image reading?

 

The Canon D10 came with Adobe Photo Elements 2.0 -- looks like a

useful program, but it can't read the RAW images that my Canon D10

took! Brilliant. There must be some way to make this work?

 

Sorry, I'm a DigiCam newbie but I think we can all benefit from a

discussion of how to better handle RAW files.

I use a PowerBook G4 1GHz with 1GB RAM, 60GB HD space and a DVD-R

drive, so there's no need to worry about space. I'd like to preserve

quality as much as possible. All suggestions welcome!

 

Thank you,

 

- Erick

Erick, please go to luminous-landscape.com and read the just posted Article. Peter

You do it in ZoomBrowser or FVU. From ZoomBrowser, select images to be converted, then Tools->Process Raw Images... After FVU comes up, select files (e.g. with Ctrl-A), then do File->Save->Convert and save... That's in the manual: look for "processing RAW files" in the index.

 

There is also unsupported patch to enable use of Adobe Camera Raw plugin on 10D files. Search for archive here or on dpreview.com or in adobe.com ACR user forum.

 

TIFF files are much larger than RAW files, that's one of the reasons for camera to use RAW instead of TIFF.

I am wondering, in the first place if you can REALY see a big diference in qualty between a finest JPEG and RAW ( converted

to TIFF ?) Make an experiment and compare. I can't.

When you print it out even A3 you unlikly could tell what was that Fine JEPG or TIFF :-)

 

 

 

I only see RAW usufull for people that want do "seriose"

post prossesing ( that camera DIGIC does for you in case

of JPEG) with Canon software and then it looks like

to be good enough and well, slow and files big,

but you should REALY have a good reason and should

not complain , right ? I belive it shoudl be 10-20%

of 10D users at most :-)

 

So , if you write "I'm a DigiCam newbie " , why you need RAW ?

( in the first place) for you and fro 80% of 10D users

( most are "newbies" , price tag was right :-)

 

1) it is big

2) it is slow

3) you need manulay ajust balanse and other staff

4) You can not shoot RAW in all modes of 10D

 

Sounds like a lot of limitations and pain.

 

So, my recomendations

 

1) Shoot finest JPEG avalable : it is very good on 10D.

2) Always keep "original JPEG" - never edit and save to it !

treat it as "digital negative"

3) Do "one time" editing or keep intermideate results as TIFF

( Save JPEG will add artifacts of FFT you do not want)

 

With this 3 simple steps you will preserv both space time and

qualty you are looking for :-)

 

Have a nice shoothing with this great toy 10D is :-)

Peter and Sergey, thanks for the helpful adivce. I found the lum landscape article at:

 

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/digital-workflow.shtml

 

For anyone interested. A worthwhile article. Luminous Landscape has the best articles for photography on the web!

 

VS Though I'm new to DSLRs, I am not new to photography. I haven't touched a DSLR until now because the quality was too poor, in my opinion. My digital film was Velvia, Reala, NPH, up until now. A lot of new D-SLR users are equipment nerds who get into it but take horrendous pictures with their new toys. From the other end, others hesitantly migrate over from film, hoping the quality will be good enough. I usually scan my negs or slides to 30+ MB TIFs, so a 6MB RAW is comparatively small. I like the quote from luminous landscape: Storage is cheap. Regret is expensive.

 

Check out the above web site and good luck! Thanks guys.

While I agree that Large/Fine JPEGs are extremely good, the advantages of shooting RAW files are (a) 12 bit color depth (vs 8 bit for JPEG), (b) exposure adjustments during conversion, © use of linear processing to recover highlights, and (d) ability to choose/change all other settings (color, sharpening, contrast, white balance) during conversion.

 

Zoombrowser, or third party RAW conversion programs like Breezbrowser, Capture One, Adobe RAW, will make editing and processing RAW files much easier.

"© use of linear processing to recover highlights, "

 

Can you explain this process? Thanks!

<i>Plug-ins: is there some sort of plugin to make RAW files compatible with Photoshop? I know there is a white balance plug-in, perhaps that will enable RAW image reading?</i><p>

I like opening RAW images directly on photoshop instead of converting it to JPEG or TIFF. The reason? It takes way too much disk spage to store unnecessary TIFF files on hard drive when I have the RAW files.<p>

As far as I know of plug-in for photoshop to read RAW images from digital camera, there is one called "Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw & JPEG 2000 plug-in bundle". This costs $99 and can be downloaded from adobe website. However, this plug-in does NOT support Canon 10D as downloaded from adobe. You will have to go thru some rewriting the registry of the plug-in. No way you can do that? Yes you can. If you follow the easy step by step procedure explained in the following website.<p>

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/25906/0<p>

You must read to the second page of the posts. Sometimes, when you search for string "Canon EOS D30 Canon EOS D60", it says "string not found". All you gotta do is to find D60 and rewrite it to 10D. It is as simple as that.<p>

well.... welcome to digital world and enjoy..

 

Sang