raw!

tonight i was doing some portraits for my gf and some other friends. and i shot my first raw!!! im a little confused though. when it's transfered onto the comp, it has 2 files, .crw & .thm, i can open the .crw file in CS and convert it to jpeg but not the thm. whats the thm for? it seems like a resize of the original, can i delete it since it seems useless? is my primary concern for raw file .crw? or do i need both? and boy oh boy raw IS amazing in editing!!!! oh and do u guys normally have ur images 180dpi or 300dpi?? when i take the picture as jpeg format with the camera. it sets the jpeg to 180dpi. only when i take it with raw it allows me to change the dpi to what i want, is there an in-camera setting i can adjust so it sets the dpi to 300 when i record the picture as jpeg? or do i have to change the dpi of the jpegs in CS? should i save the raw file to 8 bit jpeg or 16bit jpeg? thnx!

Depending on the camera, when you shoot RAW (.CRW), there is a .THM file generated for each frame. That is a thumbnail image. It is a tiny version of a JPEG, but it is generally usable only in the camera and in some conversion software utilities at the computer. It is used mostly as a thumbnail for sorting and filing purposes, but it may only loosely resemble the RAW file. Once the RAW gets converted to TIF or JPEG, then you don't need the .CRW much more. However, it is tiny in file size, so I generally archive the .THM right along with the .CRW and forget about it after that.

---Bob Gross---

- The THM file is the thumbnail; it's very small (maybe 5 or 6 kilobytes) and contains a small preview image.

- The DPI number is meaningless. It doesn't matter what you set it to. Only when you're printing, you may need to change the number to get the print the size you want. You can't change the number on the camera when shooting JPEG.

- JPEG does not support 16 bits per channel, only 8 bits per channel. Anyway, you'll want to save the final result with 8 bits per channel - 16 bit is only useful for editing.

ah ic, thnx for sorting those out for me. well i hate extra useless stuff on my comp, so ima delete the thm files =) but i have to say, raw it quite amazing, it's like playing with a film negative, with even more freedom! but the downsize is it's big and slow

Doesn't the .thm file also contain the EXIF data? That's my understanding, I could be wrong.

Jeff

The THM does contain data not in the CRW file. Some converters (e.g., BreezeBrowser) do make use of this info.

More here:

http://www.rogercavana​gh.com/helpinfo/13_why​_thms.stm

Regards,