A big secret to capturing better images is shooting RAW, but what is it about RAW that makes life easier? We regularly educate our clients one by one on the differences between destructive and non-destructive edits, but for the sake of this blog let’s start off with a quick description. A RAW file is the equivalent to a negative in film photography, as it contains raw and unprocessed pixel data straight from your camera’s sensor. Because the data isn’t converted into logarithmic values (using curves), photographers are able to reestablish the exposure, white balance, black and white points, saturation… and basically every other aspect of an image in RAW, to their specific taste AFTER the image has been captured.
Is the RAW file format better than JPEG or TIFF? Here at Revolution, we would all say yes. However, it depends on who you talk to and what you are shooting, as there are many benefits, as well as a few drawbacks. Actually, only two drawbacks that we can think of. One is file size. In a Nikon D700, a RAW file tends to be around 18 to 20 MB and in a Canon 5DII, RAW files are around 23 to 25 MB. This means that on a 4 GB card, we can expect to capture around 165 images if shooting uncompressed RAW files. Because memory is so inexpensive these days, this RAW flaw may not be that big of a deal. What does this tell us? We all need to upgrade our memory cards to at least 16 GB and buy external memory for our computers!
The other issue that is brought up when comparing RAW and JPEG is the fact that RAW images write slower to the memory card than JPEGs, which may slow down the frames-per-second depending on your camera. However, the speed that your camera loses is so negligible that it is almost unnoticeable. So if you don’t notice a problem, is it really a problem?
Now for the good stuff! A major bonus of shooting RAW is the fact that images are never fully processed in the RAW format. This enables us as photographers to revisit an image after capture and tell the RAW file how we want the final process to take shape. A JPEG will permanently process the image information according to how you set up your camera settings, and all of the excess information in the file is either compressed or discarded. RAW files will maintain all the original data so the photographer can decide which information needs correcting. If you are shooting in a room with yellow or green walls and bounce your flash, your images are going to have a yellow or green hue cast onto everything in the shot. With RAW, you can go back into the file and set the image WB so that wedding dress that looked orange or blue is now white, like it should be.
Another awesome RAW factor is the XMP sidecar file that is created to tag along with most RAW files, which is the middle man between the editors here at Revolution and the actual file. All RAW image edits that take place in Adobe Lightroom or Bridge are written to an .xmp file, whose function is to communicate to the RAW file and apply the edit. The great thing is that these .xmp files do not permanently apply the edits that are made! How bad-ass is this!? The XMP file lives right next to the RAW file in the file structure system, and every time an edit is made (via Adobe software) it is applied to the .xmp instead of the image. This means that nothing is permanent (thus, “non-destructive), so if your client looks at the image and thinks it’s too flat, revising it is almost mindless. Also, XMPs are extremely small that when you send your RAW images to us here at Revolution to be edited, we can get the finished product back to you in a matter of minutes by simply compressing the XMPs and emailing them to you. Simple as that! No waiting to export to JPEG or waiting days for a drive to come in the mail… instant access to awesome images. Doesn’t get much better than that!
To visualize this process, we took an unedited RAW image and converted it to JPEG. We then edited the JPEG file and the RAW file to bring back as much of the image as possible and, well, the images speak for themselves. The sequence of images is as follows: original RAW converted to JPEG, edited JPEG, edited RAW.
original
edited JPEG
edited RAW
There is much more to the RAW file than can fit in one blog, but really the best way to learn about the RAW file is to SHOOT IN RAW. Seriously, you wont regret it! If RAW files seem intimidating, which they do to many photographers who haven’t made the conversion yet, give us a call and we’d be happy to help troubleshoot.
The sunset was the most amazing thing I’d seen in my life! I was told that was normal for locals there!
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