MOVING FROM JPG TO RAW

1. MOVING FROM JPG TO RAW

2. This session will cover the following topics: • 1. Definition of the RAW picture format • 2. Considerations / (downsides) of using the RAW format • 3. Advantages of RAW use over traditional JPG photos • 4. Techniques for getting the most out of RAW photos in the RAW converter software

3. WHY DO WE NEED TO MOVE AWAY FROM JPG? JPG has considerable advantages: • universal compatibility; • small file size; • ease of use and editing; • quality settings controlled by the user; • internet-friendly; • full cross-platform compatibility. So if it "ain't broke, why fix it?"

4. JPG is basically a colour-reducing (corrupting) technology. Your picture is less pure, less perfect, when JPG has done its job. • Photo enlargements and photo cropping always yield less satisfactory results when printing.. • Photo enhancements are of lower quality when photos are in JPG format. • Many camera errors, such as incorrect white balance settings, are much more difficult to rectify when files are in JPG format. • Shooting in JPG format is, at best, a compromise, favouring small file size and file portability.  Bot of those objectives run contrary to the objectives of high quality and picture purity. 

5. Hence, the move toward RAW is a move toward higher quality, better printing results, more successful and flexible editing, and greater picture fidelity.

6. DEFINITION OF THE RAW PICTURE FORMAT. • Some things RAW is NOT: RAW is not a single type of file. It is not a standardized file format. Rather, each manufacturer finds different ways to encode the colour (pixel) information and that means that software may not be able to open all types of RAW files from different manufacturers

7. DEFINITION OF THE RAW PICTURE FORMAT. • Some things RAW is NOT: RAW is not a completed, ready-to-use photo - rather, it is a collection of pixel values, camera settings and encryption standards.

8. DEFINITION OF THE RAW PICTURE FORMAT. • Some things RAW is NOT: RAW is not a format that can be used when sending photos out to be printed either in book or photo print format.

9. So, what then is RAW? • RAW is a format in which data from the sensor has been minimally processed, and this data is saved in a format which is not yet ready to be either printed or edited in bitmap editing programmes. • It is not a single uniform format - in fact, there are over 30 RAW formats available in modern cameras and scanners - and it does require the use of a RAW converter in order to process it, and turn it into a bitmapped image which can be successfully edited and then printed from within traditional graphical editing software such as Photoshop or Lightroom. • This RAW image has a wider colour gamut which allows for more precise editing adjustments. You can accurately view a RAW file as a perfect digital negative - the highest possible format in which camera images can currently be saved.

10. CONSIDERATIONS (DOWNSIDES) OF USING RAW: • Using RAW may not be as simple a choice as it first appears. Many factors give users pause and cause them to question whether or not RAW is absolutely necessary for them to get good results. Here are some of those considerations which often dampen enthusiasm for using RAW:

11. CONSIDERATIONS (DOWNSIDES) OF USING RAW: • Large (much larger) file sizes - often 3 to 4 times bigger files. This limits photos a card can hold, and taxes your computer storage system once uploaded. • Specialized software needed for conversion and editing • It's a very incompatible file format and makes sharing difficult without additional processing • Photo editing often requires additional steps (depending on software). e.g. when using Photoshop you need to first work in Camera Raw before moving your photo into the Photoshop editing interface.

12. CONSIDERATIONS (DOWNSIDES) OF USING RAW: • After editing is complete, saving the photo presents its own challenges such as the decision over which format to use to minimize colour loss when saving. (e.g. non-lossy formats which include .PSD (Photoshop) and TIFF (Tagged Image File-format) are both very large file size formats. • In order to use these images on the web, through email, in books, or when uploading to web printing serices, you must still convert (or export) the images into the JPG format. • Some cameras actually do impose a type of compression on RAW files, and in fact, on some Nikon and Canon cameras, the user is given the choice of whether to use a compressed RAW file to save on space. This is something to be avoided at all costs. 

13. CONSIDERATIONS (DOWNSIDES) OF USING RAW: • A large consideration is the choice of which software you should use: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and similar programmes require the user to first modify aspects of the photo in its CAMERA RAW converter utility before performing normal photo editing in the traditional Photoshop interface. However, programmes like Lightroom and Aperture allow for immediate manipulation with no conversion stage, and to the user, the process for RAW and JPG is pretty much the same. This is a great reason to be looking towards getting one of these Workflow-based editing programmes.

14. ADVANTAGES OF USING RAW OVER JPG: • HIGHER IMAGE QUALITY: Because you are using the original pixel colours unchanged by the camera settings, and because you are applying ALL modifications to brightness, sharpness, white balance, contrast etc in ONE single step, the end result is a much more pure and high quality result. • You BYPASS undesirable actions from the camera such as sharpening, and noise reduction. These are always of a poorer quality when done in the camera compared to the much higher quality results when done in a computer. • JPG images are ALWAYS LOSSY - meaning their range of colour has been reduced at the outset often from hundreds of thousands to mere thousands.

15. ADVANTAGES OF USING RAW OVER JPG: • MUCH FINER CONTROL of the modifications to such elements as brightness, hue, saturation, sharpening • GREATER COLOUR DEPTH: All RAW files have 12 or 14 bits of colour information not the 8 bits that JPG files have been reduced to. This ensures that there is much greater precision in highlights, shadows, and colour saturation areas. • YOU CAN SET THE FILE TO ANY COLOUR SPACE: Colour spaces such as RGB, sRGB, Adobe RGB etc contain different mappings of the range of colours in the colour spectrum. A RAW file is neutral and allows the user to set it to any colour space the user chooses.

16. ADVANTAGES OF USING RAW OVER JPG: • Different demosaicing algorithms can be used, not just the one coded into the camera. • LESS DAMAGE WHEN MAJOR CHANGES ARE MADE: If you dramatically increase or decrease exposure in a RAW file, or make other very major alterations such as colour saturation, there is less artifacting and less posterization when these edits are made to a RAW file than when they are done to a JPG file which has already suffered significant damage through colour compression and bit reduction. So, your chances are greater that the picture will turn out more successfully if start from a base of a RAW file.

17. ADVANTAGES OF USING RAW OVER JPG: • CHANGES TO RAW FILES ARE NON-DESTRUCTIVE: Since it is only the metadata (which affects the rendering of the image) that is changed in the editing process, the original data is still left untouched, and remains available at its original quality for any future manipulations. • LESS NEED FOR HDR PHOTOGRAPHIC STRATEGIES: Since there is greater control over the mapping of the input data to the output colours and exposure, it is possible to deal with greater extremes in a RAW file, which makes it less important to use HDR strategies of shooting multiple images at different exposures to deal with high contrast situations.

18. TECHNIQUES FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF RAW FILES: • If you are using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you will discover that unlike JPG, RAW files can not simply be dropped into the Photoshop interface in order to edit them. Instead, a window opens automatically that bears the name CAMERA RAW in the title bar. • This utility has been created to afford the user the ability to perform high quality manipulations while the image is still in its RAW state and therefore minimize quality loss that would otherwise occur if the image is converted down into an 8 bit JPG file. • Here are the settings that you should focus on while the image is still in the Camera Raw stage of its development:

19. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS SET BIT DEPTH TO 16-BIT: • By default, it may be set to 8 bit (ie, a reduction down to the bit depth JPG uses) but you should ensure that you set it to 16 bit to ensure that you are working with the image in its highest bit depth for the highest quality results.  Space (sRGB), size (default pixel size image has), and resolution can just be left at their default settings

20. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THE INTERFACE: • Typically, the area across the top left of the window contains a collection of icons that control: zoom, hand tool, image rotation, cropping, and custom white balance by use of the eye dropper tool. There is a preview box which you can check and uncheck to see how your editing is progressing. And finally, there are several palettes of tools down the right side of the picture area which is where you make powerful adjustments to the image. You will notice several tabs - clicking on each one display a completely different palette of adjustment tools, not all of which you need to use.

21. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS EXPOSURE AND RELATED SETTINGS: • These settings are found on the ADJUST tab, and these initial tools are the most significant in terms of major photo adjustments. You may note that all of the adjustments that relate to exposure (these include Exposure, Shadows, Brightness and Contrast) appear BELOW the White Balance settings. I strongly recommend that you ignore the order shown on the tab, and perform these exposure adjustments FIRST before going on to white balance and colour saturation.

22. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS • Now, much of the adjustment can be done through experimentation and trial and error. However, it is critically important that you CAREFULLY WATCH  the photograph to ensure that the adjustments you make are NOT causing any damage to critical areas in the image such as highlights, shadows, detail etc. You will also notice that as you make changes to the sliders of the above settings, the HISTOGRAM at the top of the screen will reflect these changes by modifying the graph shape. You would typically want to end up with a photo in which the histogram extends only just up to the left and right edges of the histogram box, as this would indicate there the image is well distributed between the darkest point and the brightest point on that scale.

23. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS WHITE BALANCE SETTINGS: • There are typically 3 ways you can choose to adjust the white balance (or colour balance as some call it): First, you can choose from the Drop-down list and notice that all the choices therein correspond exactly to the choices you discovered in your camera's White Balance settings.

24. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS WHITE BALANCE SETTINGS: • Second, you could adjust the sliders for Temperature and Tint, if you think your eye is good enough for that sort of manual adjustment.

25. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS WHITE BALANCE SETTINGS: • Finally, you could also decide to use the White Balance Eye-dropper, and by clicking on and around areas that were actually a true neutral grey in real life, Photoshop's RAW converter knows exactly how to adjust the colours to achieve a neutral and accurate balance. This works well IF there are areas in the picture that were neutral (grey) in colour when the photo was taken.

26. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS COLOUR SATURATION ISSUES: • Colour richness (or saturation) can be adjusted at this point. Be careful not to push the colour saturation too far as this can actually end up flattening out areas  in which colour is strong, resulting in less texture and detail in those areas.

27. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS Next, you will see that there is a TAB marked DETAIL. On here are two important settings: SHARPNESS: These controls help to control how crisp and well-defined are the edges within the image. A word of caution here: always ensure that you are viewing the image at its 100% size in order to accurately see how your sharpening actions are affecting the edges within the image. 

28. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS NOISE REDUCTION: Photoshop allows you to adjust for two types of "noise" Colour Noise, which is simply the type of noise where there appear to be multiple numbers of pixels that do NOT have accurate colours, and instead are randomly coloured throughout especially the darker areas. This slider will force those "non-conformist" pixels to change their colour to that of an average of those pixels around them, dramatically reducing the ugly colour noise that is so typical at higher ISO values.  

29. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS NOISE REDUCTION: Photoshop allows you to adjust for two types of "noise" 2. Luminance Noise is that type of noise in which while the overall colour representation may be accurate, there are many pixels that are either darker, or lighter, than the average for their surroundings. This gives an image a type of "sandpapery" appearance. So, the Luminance Slider allows for these differences to be smoothed out, resulting in a much more acceptable and high quality appearance in the open areas of the image. Be careful though - too much noise reduction can severely soften the entire image especially the edges which may then have a somewhat blurry appearance.

30. RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS • Finally, while there are quite a few additional settings that allow for some very refined manipulations in areas such as chromatic aberration, lens distortion etc, they are not of general use and are normally not part of the core set of manipulations that are necessary when pre-adjusting a RAW file.

31. Now, here's where the choice of software plays an important role. If you use an advanced workflow program such as Lightroom and Aperture, there is no separate Preliminary phase of RAW conversion. It all happens within the program interface. All the adjustments that Photoshop's Camera Raw gives you are present in Lightroom and Aperture and many more as well. So, you retain the power of the RAW adjustments and the high bit depth without the need for a separate RAW conversion phase. This speeds up the workflow, and dramatically simplifies what needs to be done to an image. In addition, you can very easily COPY all the settings you applied to the image, and PASTE them straight onto multiple other unmodified images to get an INSTANTANEOUS FIX for a large group of photos. What a time-saver! RAW CONVERSION ADJUSTMENTS Download notes at: www.adtschool.com/apac after 7pm