Photoshop CS3 RAW

Shooting RAW

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5

WHEN TO SHOOT RAW

In an ideal world—a world fast

becoming reality—there will be little

or no additional cost associated with

the decision to shoot RAW. Digital

camera memory will be so cheap

that file size won’t matter. Digital

cameras will easily save both a RAW

and a JPEG file—or other file formats

of choice. Camera processing time

will be reduced significantly so there

will be no “backlog” as RAW files

are saved to memory. Computer

processing power will be so great

that it won’t take any more effort to

manage and process your RAW files

than a simple click of the mouse.

More applications and operating

systems will recognize and display

RAW images—much like they

universally read and recognize JPEG

or TIFF files today. Figure 1-7

This ideal world isn’t with us quite

yet—even though more and more

digital cameras offer a choice of

saving both RAW and JPEG (RAW +

JPEG).

Since it isn’t here yet, I suggest using

the guidelines found to the right to

determine whether you should be

using the RAW format.

(I used to include TIFF as an option,

but TIFF is rarely available with digital

cameras anymore, so I won’t bother

with it either. )

Not every shot warrants the exibility and quality of RAW,

especially when you consider storage limitations and the extra

work it takes downstream to convert and process the RAW les

into formats that can be printed or otherwise shared. When is it

appropriate to shoot RAW, and when is it not?

When to

Shoot RAW

Shoot RAW if Shoot JPEG if

Technical quality is critical Capture speed is an issue

Memory is plentiful Camera memory is limited

Processing time is available Time is of the essence for processing

(Many digital cameras will save only a few RAW files before temporarily “freezing” as RAW data is written to

memory.)

Figure 1-7

6

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CHAPTER ONE

WHEN TO SHOOT RAW

A RAW vs. JPEG Example

Here are a couple of examples of RAW

versus JPEG choices I made that illustrate

some of the decisions you may face. I

was in Iceland doing the groundwork

for a large photographic project (The

Lightroom Adventure) scheduled for a

few months in late summer. I brought my

wife and daughters with me and mixed

work with pleasure. Figure 1-8 is one

of several shots of the family enjoying

the famous Blue Lagoon, a unique

geothermal spa just outside Reykjavik.

These are family mementos, snapshots

if you will, meant for the family album. I

didn’t want to fill my memory card since I

was going to have limited opportunities

to download photos to my laptop and I

had plenty of shooting ahead of me. In

this case, I set my camera file preferences

to JPEG with the highest quality setting.

The saved file size was only 2.5MB and I

could shoot to my heart’s content without

worrying about quickly filling my 1GB

memory card.

Later in the day, while strolling

around Reykjavik, we came across the

church shown in Figure 1-9. With this

architecturally complex scene in front of

me, my concern for quality and flexibility

increased, and I switched my file setting

from JPEG to RAW. In the past, I might

have used a medium format camera for

this kind of shot. The act of changing my

file format setting helped put me in a

more deliberate mood, and I took time to

carefully frame the shot and pay attention

to detail. The resulting file size was

15.8MB, considerably larger than a JPEG

would have been. For now, changing file

formats is a part of my work process, just

like changing f-stops and shutter speeds.

Figure 1-8

Figure 1-9