RAW confusion

[KevinW]

I've had my first digital camera, a PowerShot S30, for almost two years now and have enjoyed it immensely. I'm at a point where I'm exploring beyond the "Auto" setting, learning and experimenting with the different features the camera has to offer.

In a quest for greater resolution from this 3.2 MP camera, I've started shooting pictures in the RAW format, and then converting to TIF for editing. I've read that "...the RAW format records the image data as captured by the camera's CCD without further processing." So I assumed that, when the camera saves a picture in the RAW format, no "processing," such as adjustments for white balance, sharpness, contrast, and saturation, is done. However, I was surprised to find that, when I selected "Convert RAW Image With User Defined Parameters," in ZoomBrowser EX, those four adjustments had been made to the image based on the camera's settings.

So, just what does the word "processing" mean in the above phrase? Does it only mean "lossy compression"? Are certain camera settings applied when taking a RAW photo, and other settings not applied? Obviously shutter speed and aperature are applied, but what else?

Is it better to leave all settings at "normal" when shooting in RAW, and then make adjustments later when converting to a different format? Or should I go ahead and set the camera's settings before I shoot a picture? And what's the difference between making adjustments during conversion, like changing saturation, versus changing saturation later in a photo editing program like ArcSoft PhotoImpression? It seems as though this editing program gives you much more flexibility than either the camera or the conversion process does.

Thanks for your help!

[Scottes]

Yes, by converting using "user defined parameters" you basically just negated the RAW, almost. I don't know Zoombrowser but if you have a choice choose the "do nothing with user defined parameters" option if there is such a thing. At the very least, set it not to do anything that you didn't tell it to do - don't adjust WB, sharpness, saturation, or contrast. YOU want to control those settings - that's at least half the reason behind shooting RAW.

By shooting RAW you get to change the WB and saturation when processing from RAW to TIFF. In Photoshop or Elements or Paint Shop Pro is where you'll generally manipulate contrast, and always where you'd set the sharpness by running Unsharp Mask on the image. Now you have the best of both worlds since you're using a program designed and/or capable of doing these adjustments. WB can't be done in most image editing programs like Paint SHop or Elements - I think that only Photoshop CS can do it. But image editing programs are much better at color manipulations, like saturation and contrast and such.

One of the other reasons to shoot RAW is to convert to TIFF. The camera will generally give you a JPG, which is a lossy format - you lose information when converting to JPG - that's how it gets much of the compression. Running a full-info TIFF through an editing program is better than trying to work on a JPG.


To answer some of your questions... RAW basically gets the image to you *as the camera saw it* and without camera manipulations. Yes, aperture & shutter are set, white balance is set but selectable now, but the camera doesn't try to do anything else to the image. The camera won't try to sharpen it, or guess at saturation or contrast, etc.

Lossy Compression is used by JPG. In a very quick nutshell JPG will look at neighboring pixels, and if the colors are close to each other JPG will consider them the same. This results in better compression, but you lose information.

Processing is the set of steps done to get an image from it's RAW state to a final product. Whatever steps they may be, whatever the final product is. You can process an image and basically do nothing, or process one and do everything under the sun. The final product may be a small web image or a 4x6 print from Walmart or a 13x19 print from a photographic LaserJet.


Now hopefully someone will come around who knows Zoombrowser....

[Andy_T]

Duh.

believe me ... do yourself a favour and forget about Zoombrowser, get Breezebrowser instead!

It's a great little program and a lot better than Canon's very successful attempt to spoil the fun their otherwise great cameras bring you...

www.breezesys.com

If you don't believe me, do a forum search on the issue.

Best regards,
Andy

[aam1234]

Hi Andy again,

Is BB a free program.

To be honest, i'm not very interested in raw, but would like to prove to myself that the end result between the two formats is not much.

Thanks

[PacAce]

I've had my first digital camera, a PowerShot S30, for almost two years now and have enjoyed it immensely. I'm at a point where I'm exploring beyond the "Auto" setting, learning and experimenting with the different features the camera has to offer.

In a quest for greater resolution from this 3.2 MP camera, I've started shooting pictures in the RAW format, and then converting to TIF for editing. I've read that "...the RAW format records the image data as captured by the camera's CCD without further processing." So I assumed that, when the camera saves a picture in the RAW format, no "processing," such as adjustments for white balance, sharpness, contrast, and saturation, is done. However, I was surprised to find that, when I selected "Convert RAW Image With User Defined Parameters," in ZoomBrowser EX, those four adjustments had been made to the image based on the camera's settings.

So, just what does the word "processing" mean in the above phrase? Does it only mean "lossy compression"? Are certain camera settings applied when taking a RAW photo, and other settings not applied? Obviously shutter speed and aperature are applied, but what else?

Is it better to leave all settings at "normal" when shooting in RAW, and then make adjustments later when converting to a different format? Or should I go ahead and set the camera's settings before I shoot a picture? And what's the difference between making adjustments during conversion, like changing saturation, versus changing saturation later in a photo editing program like ArcSoft PhotoImpression? It seems as though this editing program gives you much more flexibility than either the camera or the conversion process does.

Thanks for your help!

When they say that RAW images have no processing done to them, they mean exactly that. The RAW file is nothing more than a collection of data from each unit in the sensor. However, the problem is that the RAW file, as is, is useless to us. That is the reason we need to convert the RAW file into a more usable form such as TIFF, PSD or even JPEG if you really wanted to do that. It is during this conversion process from RAW to TIFF, for example, that some type of processing is done to the converted image. By default, the processing that is applied to the converted image is that which was specified in the camera setting. However, you can overide the default by telling the conversion program to process the image any way you wish, such as specifying more sharpening or less sharpening, applying more saturation or less saturation, etc.

Please don't confuse the converted image with the RAW image. The RAW image does NOT have any type of processing applied to it. It's coming straight from the CCD or CMOS sensor. The converted images, however, will have some degree of prcoessing applied to it and the degree processing done is up to you, within the limits of the processing software, of course.

[PacAce]

Duh.

believe me ... do yourself a favour and forget about Zoombrowser, get Breezebrowser instead!

It's a great little program and a lot better than Canon's very successful attempt to spoil the fun their otherwise great cameras bring you...

www.breezesys.com

If you don't believe me, do a forum search on the issue.

Best regards,
Andy

Actually, you can't use Zoombrowser for converting RAW to TIFF or JPEG. You have to use File Viewer Utility or EOS Viewer Utility which is the update to FVU. FVU wasn't really much to speak of but EVU does a pretty decent job of converting RAW to TIFF and the interface has been improved a lot over FVU. If I'm not mistaken, BB is using the same API as FVU and EVU so I'm not sure how BB can be better at processing RAW than FVU or EVU. The interface for BB may be better than that of FVU but I'd be interested to know how BB compares with EVU.

[Scottes]

To be honest, i'm not very interested in raw, but would like to prove to myself that the end result between the two formats is not much.

It's not so much that there *will* be a difference. Shooting RAW allows you a bit more data (due to JPG lossy from the camera, and the fact that JPG is 8-bit while the camera takes 12-bit), allows you to save a shot (ie; underexposed), play some games (ie; blending exposures of the same image) but most importantly to me RAW puts ME in control and the camera doesn't do any automatic guessing. And when it does do something automatically I can change it.

BreezeBrowser is shareware, but has a trial period. Actually I think you can use it forever with limitations like allowing only 12 images per directory. Capture One also has a trial, but the learning curve is steeper so try BB if you just want to see what RAW can do.

[aam1234]

Hi Scottes,

but most importantly to me RAW puts ME in control and the camera doesn't do any automatic guessing

Call me crazy (or maybe lazy), but I'd like the camera to handel the guess work.

Me think if a person is willing to spend time & effort in raw, why not spend less effort and learn the limition of jpeg. And with 20-25 times less storage space.

[Andy_T]

Hi Andy again,

Is BB a free program.

To be honest, i'm not very interested in raw, but would like to prove to myself that the end result between the two formats is not much.

Thanks

The version you can download freely allows you to view 12 pictures per folder. So it's great for your purpose to just try it out.

If you want to see more, you have to purchase an unlocking code.


As to RAW ... something from an old post of mine:



There's that BreezeBrowser example (from the help file):

You can correct this

http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/help/standrews_uncorrected.jpg

to look like this

http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/help/standrews_corrected.jpg

Now shoot me if I'm wrong, but I think I rmember that RAW conserves 12 bit of colour information, vs. only 8 bit in JPEG (and that extra 4 bit come in handy when lighting up an underexposed photograph).



Nobody bothered to shoot me so far, so I suppose the info is correct :lol:

Best regards,
Andy

[KevinW]

In ZoomBrowser EX, when you convert a RAW photo to TIFF format, a window comes up containing a thumbnail of the photo, along with drop down list boxes for white balance, contrast, sharpness, and saturation. These four list boxes show what the camera settings were when the photo was taken, and give me the option of applying them during the conversion process.

For example, the sharpness list box says "AsShot(High)" which is what the camera was set at, but I can use the list box to change it to "Low" or "Normal."

So, if I understand this correctly, if I wanted to have a TIFF image for editing that is identical to the RAW image, when converting to TIFF I would set those four parameters to "Normal" regardless of what they were set at in the camera when the photo was taken.

Better yet, when taking RAW photos, I should probably just keep those four settings at "Normal" in the camera, so that unwanted processing won't be mistakenly done during the conversion to TIFF.

[aam1234]

Andy, I will not shoot you. But would like to say this: if you took the 1st photo in the 1st place, then you are not allowed to handel a camera :D

[aam1234]

On a second thought, the 1st photo is not bad at all. As a matter of fact, I prefer it to the "adjusted" one.

I know I know that this is not the point.