by Brad Mauer

Created on: April 23, 2009

Camera Raw

Camera raw is a way of saving your image with out the camera deciding how you want it to look. Do you want complete control over your photographs? If you answered yes to the previous question then you need to shoot raw. When shooting in jpeg format the camera processes the image and edits the photograph slightly according to the settings in the camera at time of exposure. When shooting raw none of these settings are placed on the image and it is left for you to tweak later in photoshop or other photo editing software.

Another advantage to shooting raw is if you decide to make a HDR (High Dynamic Range) photograph then you only need one shot in raw and you can process the image with three separate exposures one for highlights, shadows, and mid ranges. If you haven't seen a HDR image do a search on google they are absolutely extraordinary. These are exceptionally useful in landscape photographs, like sunsets, or sunrises. Using camera raw opens up more options for your photography and increases the image size of the picture as well.

When shooting in extreme light conditions raw can help improve the quality of the picture. We should always shoot for proper exposure even when using raw improving a great photograph is easier than trying to fix a train wreck. With this said sometimes you have to take a less than perfect exposure in order to get the shot. When this circumstance arises raw can assist you in some minor play each way of the exposure. If you catch the highlights you can bring in the shadows slightly and still save the picture. When you loose the highlights it is nearly impossible to bring them back so always shoot on the side of the highlights.

Camera raw is a very powerful tool that can improve your photography in many ways. This tool gives you complete creative control over your images, while maintaining the integrity of the photograph. As long as you save the raw image you will always have a negative to go off of. After editing you can switch to a tiff file or jpeg, but only use jpeg when you are completely done with the image and only if you absolutely have to. The problem with jpeg is it compresses the information to maintain the quality of the image while making the file much smaller. What happens is when it compresses this information you lose data and after enough saves you will notice blocks and noise in you image, and after a lot of editing work we don't want this to happen.

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