Opening RAW photos

[mrschmoley]

I just bought my first camera (canon powershot g9) a week or two ago and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I liked the idea of having RAW as an option and now I'm trying to learn how to use it.
HOW CAN I OPEN A RAW PHOTO IN PHOTOSHOP CS2? Whenever I try it says it the wrong type of file. I believe it's .cr2 or something like that. I can open them with zoombrowser, the softwear that came with the camera. But it seems saving it from there as a TIFF or JPEG and then opening that in photoshop defeats the purpose of taking the RAW picture to begin with.
Any help understanding this process would be a big help.

[Digidave]

You most likely don't have the proper Camera Raw plug-in. The first link is an explanation & the second page is where you would download the proper plug-in. I don't use Photoshop this is just what I found by going to Adobe's Knowledge base.

Knowledge Base

Download page for Camera Raw 4.3.1

Read the instructions for downloading & installing carefully. This a very important part to your problem.

[Matt Redmayne]

Make sure you've got all the latest updates for CS2. I know I couldn't open my RAW files when I first installed it, but they opened fine after it was updated.

Matt

[PHugger]

Originally Posted by mrschmoley

I can open them with zoombrowser, the softwear that came with the camera. But it seems saving it from there as a TIFF or JPEG and then opening that in photoshop defeats the purpose of taking the RAW picture to begin with.

You can't preview RAW image in the OS. You'll need something to help (like Zoom Browser). A RAW viewer program may seem stupid for just a shot or two, but they are designed to help you sort and categorize your shots before you begin to work on them. This usually involves rating or marking them and then moving them into appropriate directories (not sure why but I always end up with a REJECTS directory).

Now about the format that you convert your images to - you mentioned TIFF and JPEG. Investigate exactly how they are being save. At this point in the process we want a lossless format. Make sure that this is the case (both TIFF and JPEG can be lossless or lossy). You should only ever use image compression as a final step before web viewing. Everything else that you do with your images should be done with a lossless format. The basic rule is that you never want to resave an image that has already been compressed. When you are working on an image in your photo mangler (you mentioned CS2), always save your images using Photoshop's native format (this will save all of your layers and other parts, as well as being lossless). You should always be printing from your lossless images as well.

This leads to the next question - what do you archive as a backup. This is a hard call and I usually end up saving both my RAW and processed (lossless) images. The RAW image is my digital negative and the processed image may have some time invested in it. The final JPEGs are easily recreated if needed so I usually don't archive them.

Working in RAW necessitates a different workflow than you may be used to. There is a lot of organizing and intermediate steps involved. Figure out how you work best and stick with it. The results are well worth the extra time IMHO.


PCH

[mrschmoley]

that all helps.