Shooting RAW. What are the benefits?

^^
If someone could post comparisons of photos shot in .raw it'd be great.

Shooting in RAW is about you making the decisions in post production on how the image will look when its finished where as shooting in jpeg the camera makes most of the decisions and throws away a lot of information that RAW doesnt, your not going to see much difference between a jpeg and a RAW converted to jpeg.

Think of raw as sort of a digital negative, not a display format. RAW is where you start to make your .jpg. Do a serach here for Raw vs jpeg and you will see tons of discussions on the merits.

How would I be able to find good ways of post processing?

PBaction wrote in post #12031488
How would I be able to find good ways of post processing?

Your question is too vague. Are you trying to do something specific?

The advantage of RAW, is to recover nearly blown highlights, and nearly blocked shadows - and in doing so to find detail that would have been lost on an 8 bit JPG.

Here is a little vacation shot, that the JPG just didn't cut it (sorry, don't have it handy, but trust me, the sky was nearly whited out, and the shadows were blocked up with no detail.)

Using my RAW processor, I converted the shot twice, one Light and one Dark. In PS I then layered them and blended them. Granted, not a hugly artisitc shot, but I think it turned out pretty good.

Rad

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

gonzogolf wrote in post #12031504
Your question is too vague. Are you trying to do something specific?

Say im trying to get colors like this:
http://skipspics.smugm​ug.com …10/1059493603_X​4dzd-M.jpg

Would i even need to shoot in raw to produce something like that?

PBaction wrote in post #12031587
Say im trying to get colors like this:

Well, just repeat what you did to get those colors.

Not my photo, I'm trying to imitate processing like that for a project

PBaction wrote in post #12031614
Not my photo, I'm trying to imitate processing like that for a project

Are you saying you posted some other photographer's photo? Do you have written permission from the photographer to do so?

Rad

The "essential" app for getting started in shooting in Raw and understanding what it's about is the Canon Raw processing software that comes with Canon DSLRs, Digital Photo Professional (DPP). This software "understands" the in-camera settings for White Balance, Picture Styles, etc, so that when you open a Raw file your preview is what the jpeg would have been. From there you are free to change things around in ways that you'd be more limited to with a jpeg.

So, install that software and shoot a few Raw photos and play around in DPP. If you want, you could shoot in Raw+jpeg and compare the relative capabilities between processing the two file types.

And, take some time to check out our RAW Conversion Thread to see a bunch of examples of what can be done with Raw!

PBaction wrote in post #12031614
Not my photo, I'm trying to imitate processing like that for a project

We don't know if that shot had any "special" processing -- it could have been shot as a jpeg and that's it. So really you should help us to understand what this project is and what you are looking for.

Radtech1 wrote in post #12031633
Are you saying you posted some other photographer's photo? Do you have written permission from the photographer to do so?

Rad

Dude, cut him some slack. Yeah he's committed a no-no, but from the nature of the question he's a total noob. Besides the pic has a watermark.

PBaction: your question "how to get better colors" is pretty vague.

First, what is your shooting environment? By that, I mean what is your subject? How is the lighting?

Second, what kind of program are you using to edit your pics?

Assuming you shot an outdoor sport in bright daylight (as per your example), you can just bump up the saturation in Windows Photo Gallery (Vista 64). In this case you can simply shoot jpg.

Please give us more info.

PBaction wrote in post #12031614
Not my photo,

Then you should link to it. Fixed.

Nothing too special about the image.
You could get this from a jpg as well.

There's a huge "Raw conversion" thread here. Might give you some idea.