Working In RAW

[VictorEM83]

As I have gotten better with my digital camera I have been trying to improve my overall image quality. But to save time and engery I stayed in the JPEG format. Its eay to use and saves disk space. Plus it provides good every day pictures. But JPEG has limitations: It only supports 8 bits per color channel in RBG(compared to 12 in RAW), this limits error correction and editing abilities. The JPEG file format also has a lot of pre-editing already done to it. Setting the white balence, tints, saturations, hue, and other fixes per RGB channels to make it a fast easy format at the cost of quality.

Alas I have hit the limit to what JPEG can provide, thus yesterday I shot my first 2 sporting events in RAW and now I have seen the light(well okay quality and control).
There is one major drawback and that is file size its 7.5 megs per RAW file plus a JPEG for review on the LCD so I only get 120-150 pics per 1 GB CF card I have. Then the other minor drawback is you have to convert the RAW file into the the format you wish A.K.A. TIFF, due to it is lossless and has 16 bits per color channel plus it can save photoshop layers within the file.

So If your camera shoots RAW and you want to try to improve your image quality try using the RAW file format.

Anyone else on here use RAW or have any other tips about it?

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:1980, old post ID:29452