RAW - Semantically driven

I bought a new camera a few months ago and it’s the first camera I’ve had that shoots in RAW format. I usually use the JPG files but occasionally I need to modify the RAW file – usually because of over exposed photos.

Because my photography is a hobby and I don’t do that much with the photos except for putting them on the web and occasionally printing them out I don’t keep all the RAW photos I take. The reason for this is that they take up a heck of a lot of disk space and I’m not equipped for that so JPGs suit me just fine.

Even when I do edit the RAW photo I keep the resulting JPG file, not the RAW file.

I wanted to share a couple of examples of how I salvaged a couple of photos from the RAW file.

The first photo here is the original and the one underneath is the result after editing it. I flipped it and I also tidied up that brown smudge on my wrist using some Photoshop wizadry. Goodness knows where the smudge came from – I’m sure it was JJ’s fault.

I wanted to keep the photo below of JJ and took it while praying he wouldn’t come off because sliding on the gravel would have been quite painful.

I probably over compensated a bit with the colours and saturation here but it certainly works a lot better than the washed out version above.

The only software I have to edit RAW files is what comes with Photoshop CS3 but that seems to do me okay. Lightroom would be the ideal I understand but I can’t justify it at present.

Just in case you don’t know what the heck RAW is, here’s RAW phto file format explained.

This video from Blurbomat shows how to adjust RAW photos using Lightroom.

What do you shoot in?

I got my camera out before and had a play outside with it (subtext – I’m procrastinating from cleaning chores). I played with some settings and tried to get some interesting photos out of something I find pretty ordinary. I’ve mentioned before I’m a fan of the aperture setting so that’s what I used.

These photos were shot in RAW format and I played with them in the Photoshop CS3 RAW editor. Don’t know the exact name of it but the file extension out of the camera is CR2 and these open in Photoshop. I don’t know heaps about RAW but I do know that you can do a heck of a lot more when they’re in this format than you can when they’re in JPG format.

It’s enabled me to bring out a lot more detail in this photo than there was in the original and make it a bit more interesting than it was.

I included Monty below. She knows I was taking a photo of her. Again RAW helped me out here because it helped me to pick up more detail with her too. Because she has mainly black fur (although a steadily increasing amount of gray is appearing) most photos don’t pick up that much detail.

Now I’ve wasted just enough time that it’s nearly time to go do the school pickup. Procrastination is a wonderful thing.