RAWjpgtiff?!?!?

[Cliffs]

Originally Posted by Gonzo13

Digital Photo Professional. It should have came with the software from Canon. I like it better than the zoombrowser.

Thanks for this info, I was thinking about photoshop but my Canon xs is not RAW file supported (at least I can't find the right version of Camera Raw).

Is the downloadable manual, on Canon sight, enough to learn ths program by?

Or are there, maybe, other programs I might try?

[Gonzo13]

It says professional on it but it can be used by anyone. The manual for it should be enough to learn it. I don't believe that I read it I just jumped in and started playing with on a my engagement trip to San Fran, I forgot to install zoombrowser, and haven't looked back since.

[digishoebox]

Some more old saws about raw! To add to the great info above, raw is actually a way to describe a group of proprietary file formats that different camera companies have developed - not a format in and of itself. Like mentioned above, a raw file is basically all the information written directly to the camera’s sensor with no processing (known as interpolation).

I'll share one more simplified analogy here that I like to use (and I totally agree with it being like a film negative, too, because you process it out to another format). It’s like getting all the ingredients for a birthday cake rather than the cake itself. It’s up to you to mix the ingredients together, toss it in the oven, and then ice that cake (read: create the JPEG or TIFF).

One thing to consider with raw right now, however, is that all raw file formats (like the Nikon NEF, the Canon® CR2 or CRW, and the Olympus ORF, among hundreds of others) are proprietary to the cameras that make them. So if your particular camera manufacturer goes out of business, it’s possible that other software manufacturers will discontinue making applications that will open your old camera files down the line.

Which is why you might consider converting to DNG.

DNG is a type of raw file format that Adobe developed (with specifications publically available) to avoid all this proprietary stuff - DNGs keep unprocessed image information, any processing information that you create (held in metadata such as XMP, EXIF, or IPTC), a JPEG preview of the image (set to the compression quality of your choice), and the entire original proprietary raw file, if you want to toss that in there, too. Adobe’s idea is that photographers will convert their raw files to DNGs, and thus have a photo archive that will never become obsolete in its formatting (and Adobe provides a free Adobe DNG Converter) Adobe - Digital Negative (DNG). You treat a DNG just like any other raw file when processing.

All this I'm writing is adapted from my book, "The Digital Shoebox: How to Organize, Find, and Share Your Digital Photos" which will be published by Peachpit next month (and it's written in really simple terms!), and if you really want to get serious about digital asset management and learn all about DNG handling you might want to get Peter Krogh's book "The DAM Book."

Best,

SARAH

[RustySterling]

Sarah: Great stuff and I've preordered your book. It looks interesting.

BTW, one thing that I didn't read anywhere in here is that RAW can be taken back to it's original state at anytime (at least it can in Adobe Camera RAW). For example, if you change your exposure setting, white balance, curves adjustments, etc. in ACR and aren't happy, you can then select "Reset Camera Raw Defaults" and all of the editing you've done will be reverted back to the original setting of the RAW file. I hope that makes sense. But I find this to be an important point because if I do too much in ACR and I'm not happy I can easily start over (noting that I've likely gone so far that Ctrl Z won't undo what I need undone).