Hurrah for RAW!

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Why did it take me so long to switch into RAW. Why didn't I believe in all those that said you must shoot in RAW. Don't ask me why, but boy can I see how wonderful it is, all those sliders! I haven't really learnt much about how to use them yet other than to whip them up and down and watch what they do. I'm thinking how the heck do you know when to stop sliding, especially if you haven't got a calibrated monitor. But anyway that's not the reason for the post.....

My question is, once you have done some adjustments does the RAW file "save" by itself those adjustments. I was playing with a couple of shots, opened the RAW file through photoshop and it open the file in a seperate programme that says "Camera RAW 6.4.1- Sony DSLR- A350" at the top (is this a programme that has downloaded from my camera software when I purchased it?) I saved the changed file as a JPEG only and closed the file. When I reopened the RAW later it had the adjustments I had prevously done. Have I lost the original RAW file?

Hmmm, I'm a little confused here.......

[John Hendry]

No the Raw file is fluid, it will save at what ever you leave it at, you can also save as a default setting and go back to that. Still lots to learn!

Save as a psd its a better quality image I only save to jpg when printing and I have finished post production work.

All the best

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Thanks John. that's good I thought I'd mucked them up. I've looked but as far as I can see I can only save them as .dng (whatever that is) in the Raw programme............oh wait, I just had a thought and opened the raw file into Photoshop and I see .psd there, duh!! Right, that adds another problem. I have all my photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery, I decided (because of the share number of photos I was taking) to file them there and just open the ones I need to photoshop in PS then save them back to WLPG as jpegs. So I guess any RAW files I want in good quality I need to save them to PS as .psd files. Have I understood that correctly?

Thanks again.

[Dreamglade]

When you open a RAW in Photoshop, you'll get a screen like this:



When you make adjustments in this, a temporary(esque) file will be created with a duplicate name in the folder that the RAW is located. That file contains the alterations. So let's say you have a raw called _MG_1000.CR2 and you open it, make a few adjustments and either save it or click 'done' and open it in PS, a file called _MG_1000.xmp will be made, if you delete it and open your raw file again, it will be the original un-adjusted one. It's rarely useful, because you can click 'default' on most tabs, but it doesn't always reset every slider. So if you want the original unedited file for whatever reason, either move the raw to another folder or delete the .XMP

About knowing when to stop sliding? Depends on the picture and what you intend to do with it. If you have a calibrated monitor (or at least a good one) you can get away with being a bit trigger happy with the sliders, popping up the sharpness and vibrance a lot.

If however you intend to print them, don't go overboard, and for most purposes you shouldn't touch sharpness too much because even if it may look good on screen, it often doesn't on print

Hope it's useful.

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Thanks for the explanation Dreamglade, that makes a whole heap of sense. I saw those .xmp files and knew they had something to do with the RAW file as they kept appearing after my fiddling but I wasn't sure what they were or how important.

One thing that I cannot find when adjusting RAW files is an "undo", I know I can hit default and the pic will return to the original but after doing half a dozen adjustments and only wanting the last one returned to original it's a pain having to try and remember what was done in the prior 5 settings. Is there setting for undoing just the last adjustment?

And one other thing while I'm here , when usisng the crop tool there are no measurements so how do you know to what size you are cropping? Or is it best to crop once you are back in PS after doing any adjustments?

Thanks for any help.

[corry]

i'm at the same stage, just learning to work with the raw images and how to save them etc......curious if having an external drive to hold pics is a good idea, i have a couple for storage of older ones but with raw files it will eat up space on my main hd fast I'm thinking?..... so much to learn so little time.....(or at least so many other things left undone when I'm at the computer playing with pictures LOL)

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Originally Posted by corry

..........so much to learn so little time.....(or at least so many other things left undone when I'm at the computer playing with pictures LOL)

Haha, so true corry, so true! Mind you I've been on this steep learning curve(photography & editing) since February so it's become the norm around here

Good question about saving the RAWs, I have two external HDs, so I'm thinking perhaps I could use one just for the finished with RAW files .......a bit like the box in the attic overflowing with negatives from another lifetime

[Dreamglade]

Originally Posted by FlyingKiwiGirl

One thing that I cannot find when adjusting RAW files is an "undo", I know I can hit default and the pic will return to the original but after doing half a dozen adjustments and only wanting the last one returned to original it's a pain having to try and remember what was done in the prior 5 settings. Is there setting for undoing just the last adjustment?

And one other thing while I'm here , when usisng the crop tool there are no measurements so how do you know to what size you are cropping? Or is it best to crop once you are back in PS after doing any adjustments?

Thanks for any help.

About the first point, unfortunately in ACR there is no history. The only way to undo something is:

Ctrl + Z (Toggle the adjustment you just made, first press = undo, 2nd press restores)
Ctrl + Alt + Z (continuously goes back through your adjustments, one adjustment at a time) it has a maximum amount of things it remembers but you should never reach it. Pressing Ctrl+Z once will take you back again to your latest period after adjustments)

And about the second point, in honesty I've never used the crop tool in RAW - especially as it has no measurements as you say. When I'm done with my adjustments in ACR, I just press open and go to my further adjustments in PS - so if cropping needs to be done, there is the best place to do it (mind you, I don't really crop often, I'm terrible at it and I prefer to get composition correct in camera)

Lastly, external storage is so cheap nowadays.. a 500gb or 1TB external drive shouldn't break the budget, and even if that's too pricey for you, something like a 200gb one should be in your price range and unless you're bringing back 1000 pictures per shoot (I usually end up around 200-300) it won't fill up quickly... Also external hd's are less prone to damage from corruption, and they are easy to duplicate so you always have a solid and portable backup

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Thanks so much Dreamglade, that's great info and nice and precise and clear to understand, you should write the "help" menu for them, most times I can't make head nor tail of what they're trying to tell me!

I'm on a roll now, hope you don't mind but what does the following photo mean, it opens like this from RAW. Obviously it's because the sky is overexposed, right? (it was a very grey day) I am reading the help and can't quite understand what they are saying is the right way to correct it.



The help says-
Hold down Alt (Option key in Mac) while moving the Exposure slider to preview where the highlights are clipped. (Clipping is the shifting of pixel values to either the highest highlight value or the lowest shadow value. Clipped areas are either completely white or completely black and have no image detail.) Move the slider until the highlights (not specular highlights) are completely clipped, and then reverse the adjustment slightly. Black indicates unclipped areas, and color indicates areas clipped in only one or two channels.

Does that mean I slide across until the whole picture is black and take it back a notch or two to correct it? I'm lost on the last sentence "Move the slider....."

Thanks again for any help.

[Doug Sundseth]

Since you have highlight warnings on (hence the red bits), you can just slide the exposure slider to the left or the recovery slider to the right (or both), until the red goes away as much as you care about. If it's truly blown out, though, you will never get detail in the blown out parts.

FWIW, sometimes it's not worth the trouble to try to recover blown highlights or blocked shadows. If there's nothing important there and you don't hate the look of pure white or black, ignore them.