Raw

Why do people like to use raw?how do you use it?not ready for it yet. many thanks

i use raw for a few reasons. it gives you the ability to edit contrast, saturation, sharpness, RGB channels, and many other things. also when you are editing a .JPEG photo you will normally change these settings in photoshop and re-save the file as .JPEG (which will degrade the image quality). the bottom line is that RAW lets you make non destructive changes to the image without degrading the image quality. as far as how to "use it" just look up RAW tutorials on google.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/​?q=why+raw

i completely forgot about let me google that for you

I only found it this week, it's a fun tool

Matt,

As has been said there are several good reasons why many of us use Raw, although there are some good reasons for some to shoot jpeg.

If you haven't already, check out our RAW Conversion Thread to get an idea of some of the things you can accomplish with Raw without bothering to go into a separate image processor.

Before launching into shooting Raw, get a good book to give you both the underlying understanding and some practical tutorials. Try a book like this (Real World Camera Raw):

http://www.adobepress.​com …oduct.asp?isbn=​032127878X

Details of working with Raw will largely depend on what you are using for your software (this book is written for Adobe CSx/Camera Raw and will also apply to Lightroom) but the essentials of understanding and processing Raw files applies broadly to other converters.

http://www.ronbigelow.​com/articles/raw/raw.h​tm

Hmm good I'd been wondering this same thing.

First off, your camera ONLY shoots RAW. When you select JPG, the camera takes the RAW data and pipes it into it's on-board JPG processor to generate the JPG "image" to save to the card.

When you shoot RAW, the RAW "data" goes directly to the card and is not an image.

To generate an image, you use a RAW processor (software on your PC) which turns the data into a viewable image, much like the camera's JPG processor. The difference is that YOU have complete control over the image generation process. You can change the white balance, adjust the contrast/brightness/bl​ack point/etc....

So you can leave these decisions up to the camera's little processor (and hope it makes the right decisions since they are irreversible), or save the decisions for later where YOU have complete control over it.

egordon99 wrote in post #8245798
First off, your camera ONLY shoots RAW. When you select JPG, the camera takes the RAW data and pipes it into it's on-board JPG processor to generate the JPG "image" to save to the card.

When you shoot RAW, the RAW "data" goes directly to the card and is not an image.

To generate an image, you use a RAW processor (software on your PC) which turns the data into a viewable image, much like the camera's JPG processor. The difference is that YOU have complete control over the image generation process. You can change the white balance, adjust the contrast/brightness/bl​ack point/etc....

So you can leave these decisions up to the camera's little processor (and hope it makes the right decisions since they are irreversible), or save the decisions for later where YOU have complete control over it.

I don't understand what you are saying i've just taken a couple of pictures with my camera on raw and you can see the image,so what do you mean? If you take your card to jessops,etc to print your photos what happens then?

mattj68,

The image you see on the camera screen is a low quality copy image created specifically for that purpose. The RAW file is not used.

I have no idea how Jessops deal with the RAW conversion. They would be the best people to ask, provided they are still in business!

mattj68 wrote in post #8247256
I don't understand what you are saying i've just taken a couple of pictures with my camera on raw and you can see the image,so what do you mean? If you take your card to jessops,etc to print your photos what happens then?

Matt, we can't teach you everything in posts, you seem to lack the fundamental understanding of the basics of digital photography needed to comprehend raw. Get the real world camera raw book from this thread. Alternately google "what is raw", and see if you find any articles that take you from the basics up.

many thaks to all once i take things in i get good at it since my car crash i cant read or right very good but get there in the end thanks ,matt

Ok, i'll give it a go, i'll simplify it as much as I can, apologies if I go to far.

You don't need to know what a raw file is, think of it as a record of what light hit the sensor in some format you don't understand. The camera takes this raw file and creates a small jpeg file so you can see it on the back of your camera. If you want you can get this small jpeg, but it's low quality so isn't hugely useful. If you want to make really good jpeg files you take the raw file, use software on the computer that understands what it is (DPP, Lightroom, Photoshop), and it makes a jpeg for you.

Does that help?

Dunno if Matt gets it all yet, but you guys definitely cleared it up for me so thanks. This has been informative.