How do I save RAW files.

[tbfoto]

I've been trying my hand at shooting raw. I shot 54 images the other day and downloaded them all to my computer first then onto a CD to save them. This file was 470MB and easily fit onto my 700MB compacity disk. Then I worked with these files in Raw Shooters Essentials untill they were adjusted where I wanted them, and converted them all to a TIFF file. I then wanted to put these on a disk but WHOA the file size of the TIFF files is now a whopping 2.4 GIG for the same 54 images. Does the Raw file not contain all the same data as a Tiff file? Why would it be so much larger? I know that I'm new to this so go easy on me. Just having these 54 files on my computer has stalled my computer to a SLOW crawl. I guess I thought that I could download these to my computer (1 file) ...then work with them and convert them as Tiffs and save that copy (2 files) then create my final output copy and save that (3 files). No way my 30 gig hard drive will do all that. What do I do...or rather ...how do you do this process?

Thanks,
Tom

[chtgrubbs]

A raw file has no color data. The color ifo is interpolated when the file is processed in RSE. So my six megapixel raw image ends up being 32-35 megabytes after processing into a 16-bit TIFF. The best solution is to upgrade your hard drive or store them on an external hard drive of 120-200 GB. Dealing with that much data also take up alot of RAM so Photoshop compensates by using a pagefile, or scratch disc, which also takes up-space on the hard drive. So increasing your RAM to 1GB or more will speed things up nicely as well..

[tbfoto]

So your saying that I HAVE to have a new computer! YEEEHAAA. I've been waiting for the right moment to tell the wife. You DID say that my computer HAS to be replaced didn't you?

Seriously....I am shocked by the size of the files and this may indeed be the answer but for now I'll have to keep things on disk.

Oh wait....my birthday is Thursday........Hmmmmmmmmmm!!!

Thanks for the help,
Tom

[KevC]

Happy birthday in advace :)

Pick up a computer with 2GB of RAM and speedy 7200RPM HDDs. 250GB+ are cheap :) Also, Backup backup backup! NEC DVD writers are cheap and reliable. As for the rest, it's not easy to "mess up". I'd pick up an Athlon64 with nForce4 chipset.

Good luck!

[tim]

I don't convert all my files to TIFF, I leave them as RAW unless i've done a significant amount of work on them. If I do I save as PSD, it's a little smaller. Also you'll need a good computer with at least a couple of hundred gigs of hard drive if you're shooting a lot of RAW, 1GB RAM min, and as fast a processor as you can afford - dual core athlon is the best value at the moment.