RAW vs JPEG - beginners like me, take note!!

I've been shooting with a DSLR for a few years now. But I never shot in RAW, big images, the time, blah blah blah

After lurking on POTN and reading up on RAW image capabilities, tutorials, etc.
I FINALLY started shooting RAW images, and WOW what you can do in PP (yeah, I know, thanks Captain Obvious) - especially the WB.

Just makes me sorry I didn't start doing it from the get go, especially looking back at some okay images that could have been made really nice images with some RAW processing.

So, my advice to beginners (I think I'm now a novice / hemi-beginner) , if your camera has the capability of shooting RAW - SHOOT IN RAW! You will likely regret NOT doing it down the road...

(I set my camera to save RAW and med jpg for the quick family/web posting pics - the nice ones are saved, the crappy RAW pics are tossed)

NOTE: it is HIGHLY addictive and fun, especially with Photoshop CS4!!!

Thanks POTN, I'm blaming you guys, so ummm, you may wanna watch out for my wife! And remember, no one has seen me on this Forum...

A lot of photography (for the hobbiest) is a journey more than a destination. I've learned a lot and my pictures have gotten better. I've shot RAW for some time, but I recently have learned a lot of new things about PP and I hope to make another big step up in quality in the next year.

I look back to what I shot a year ago and I can see improvements today. I hope to look back next year at what I was doing in early 2009 and see improvement again.

Once I found the digital velvia plugin that made boosting the color easy (one click) and made my images look more like it did when shooting velvia film I said good bye to jpg for raw.

I have just been looking around and found GIMP. I am downloading it right now, do you any of you use GIMP for PP?

DrMitch wrote in post #7172517
So, my advice to beginners (I think I'm now a novice / hemi-beginner) , if your camera has the capability of shooting RAW - SHOOT IN RAW! You will likely regret NOT doing it down the road...

The biggest regret I have with RAW. All those ugly, hard to fix JPEG's from before.

shooting raw can be fun but whats not fun is when your load them on your pc, they dont show you a little thumbnail of the pic you shot...you have to open it up via a PP program in order just to see what it is...

dc5itr888 wrote in post #7177209
shooting raw can be fun but whats not fun is when your load them on your pc, they dont show you a little thumbnail of the pic you shot...you have to open it up via a PP program in order just to see what it is...

You can download a thumbnail viewer plugin from the Canon site (also from Microsoft I believe) - I have the Vista one and it works great - I do hear a few problems with the XP one not always working though, but it's worth a go if you have XP.

NinetyEight wrote in post #7177533
You can download a thumbnail viewer plugin from the Canon site (also from Microsoft I believe) - I have the Vista one and it works great - I do hear a few problems with the XP one not always working though, but it's worth a go if you have XP.

The RAW thumbnailer doesn't work on my xp box, but I don't care. I have 2 options, I can either shoot RAW + JPEG or just shoot RAW (a bit faster) and then build a set of thumbnails using DPP. Either way, I find shooting in AUTO/JPEG mode a bigger PITA now since I can't control the temp & white balance.

russ_hillis wrote in post #7178439
The RAW thumbnailer doesn't work on my xp box, but I don't care. I have 2 options, I can either shoot RAW + JPEG or just shoot RAW (a bit faster) and then build a set of thumbnails using DPP. Either way, I find shooting in AUTO/JPEG mode a bigger PITA now since I can't control the temp & white balance.

Third option: IrfanView. You can view the raw thumbnails and double-click any of them to view full-size.

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