RAW rookie

So let me ask a question regarding RAW processing.

Just as a test, I shot some RAW photos for the first time the other day, went home downloaded the files to the computer then opened them with PhotoShop CS6. Now it appears to me that a RAW photograph has to be completely processed meaning each and every tint, color, brightness, etc.... has to be manually adjusted, correct?

Historically, I have always used PS to automatically make these adjustments to my JPG files mainly because I am color-blind and do not trust my eyes. Hell, I cant even dress myself having to count on my wife to lay my clothes out. But I digress.... So am I correct in understanding what these RAW files are all about?

If this is so, what really is the point of a RAW file? Why do professionals shoot that way? PhotoShop appears to make very nice corrections with their auto feature.

No, they don't have to be manually adjusted. You only adjust what you think you need to usually after your global adjustments. Alternatively you can use presets to automatically do the adjustments you normally do to a certain type of photo and tweak from there. The features for the individual color hue, saturation and brightness are there for flexibility, not because you need to adjust them. RAW files normally come out flat compared to their JPG counterparts (that are preprocessed in the camera). Not sure about camera raw, but in LR you can apply these preprocess settings so the RAW picture looks about like what the camera would have given you had you chosen a style (ie. landscape, portrait, etc.). The advantage of the raw files is that you have much more data to work with and can do more adjustments without clipping or whatever.

The point of a raw file is to maintain your ability to apply those settings after you shoot. All of the sensor data is collected when you shoot a raw file. When you take a .jpg file the camera user the picture style setting to adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, white balance, etc and then tosses the rest of the information. Editing those things in a .jpg file means are already missing a great deal of your flexibility based on your camera settings that cant be undone. For instance lets say your picture style setting has sharpening and contrast adjusted a bit high and you take a landscape where subtle tones and low contrast might be more appropriate. Your .jpg file is already contrasty so reducing that contrast means you will likely lose tonal range. Not so with the raw file.

In the case of photoshops raw tool, ACR it tries to open the raw file in much the way you shot it, but they cant fully interpret canon's in camera settings. If you open that same raw file in DPP canon's raw processing tool it already applies the in camera settings to the preview, but you are free to change them without penalty (over and over again too as the raw file is never actually altered) then export to .jpg.

Because ...

... but some people prefer not to leave their images in the hands of other people's processing, the "one-size-fits-all" designed by some software engineer. It is for the same reason that they don't just put their camera controls on "Green Box".

gonzogolf wrote in post #15837918
The point of a raw file is to maintain your ability to apply those settings after you shoot. All of the sensor data is collected when you shoot a raw file. When you take a .jpg file the camera user the picture style setting to adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, white balance, etc and then tosses the rest of the information. Editing those things in a .jpg file means are already missing a great deal of your flexibility based on your camera settings that cant be undone. For instance lets say your picture style setting has sharpening and contrast adjusted a bit high and you take a landscape where subtle tones and low contrast might be more appropriate. Your .jpg file is already contrasty so reducing that contrast means you will likely lose tonal range. Not so with the raw file.

In the case of photoshops raw tool, ACR it tries to open the raw file in much the way you shot it, but they cant fully interpret canon's in camera settings. If you open that same raw file in DPP canon's raw processing tool it already applies the in camera settings to the preview, but you are free to change them without penalty (over and over again too as the raw file is never actually altered) then export to .jpg.

So are sayingin your opinion Canon's DPP is better to use than PS CS6 or Lightroom? Just wondering which would be better for me.

dhornick wrote in post #15838175
So are sayingin your opinion Canon's DPP is better to use than PS CS6 or Lightroom? Just wondering which would be better for me.

I wouldnt say better. I actually like the interface of ACR (cs6) or Lightroom better because of the way the sliders work, but DPP does have the advantage of starting with your defaut in-camera settings. That means you only have to play with the adjustments that you want. I prefer to make adjustments that your original post seems to indicate that you find intimidating myself so give both DPP and ACR or Lightroom a try and see which you like.

dhornick wrote in post #15838175
So are sayingin your opinion Canon's DPP is better to use than PS CS6 or Lightroom? Just wondering which would be better for me.

Better depends on need; DPP is great because it's free, Lightroom is great because it's easy to process and catalog a ton of photos, Photoshop lets you composite and edit on a per-pixel basis, Capture One has great image quality, and so on.

Whichever you use, RAW can make automatic color adjustment even easier, if you use a gray card. Whenever you enter an environment with a different light source, shoot a photo of a gray card and then when editing in RAW use the white balance tool on the gray area and you get the right colors. Just make sure that the card is reflecting the main light source.

In photoshop you can open a tool tab with the histogram on it and split it into RGB, with each color on it's own graph, which can help in visualizing the overall tone of the image. And with the Info tab open, you can also use the Color Sampler tool (it looks like the color picker but with a cross) to track changes made to color, by watching the ratio of red, blue and green it's possible to know what color something is. (and in a different color space at the same time too, like CMYK, which can help with problem colors)

It'll take some practice, but you can learn to produce colors even more accurately then someone who sees in color, because you can always look at the numbers to be sure your red isn't too magenta or that your grass isn't lime. (Hint: foliage contains more yellow then green) I remember reading a book by Dan Margulis (who wrote THE book on color) where he mentioned a print press operator who was colorblind, but always had perfect colors coming from the press because he didn't let his eyes fool him, he always double checked his work by the numbers.

gonzogolf wrote in post #15838317
I wouldnt say better. I actually like the interface of ACR (cs6) or Lightroom better because of the way the sliders work, but DPP does have the advantage of starting with your defaut in-camera settings. That means you only have to play with the adjustments that you want. I prefer to make adjustments that your original post seems to indicate that you find intimidating myself so give both DPP and ACR or Lightroom a try and see which you like.

If you want to start with what you saw on the back of the camera in Lightroom, the link below has presets for the Canon picture styles. Just apply the preset to the picture and it moves the sliders for you so that you have something approximating what you would get with a jpeg and using the camera picture style. Then you can tweak from there.

http://www.mattk.com …era-calibration-profiles/

Using the picture styles as a base is hardly ideal, the more I learned to set tones and color manually in RAW conversion software, the more I became aware how contrasty and awful out of camera photos look, almost like they're blown out even if nothing is clipped. There's no way I can return to canned looks now.
If you have to, at least use Faithful with contrast dialed down a notch as the starting point, because it's the least ugly out of the canned profiles.