RAW and JPG

[Hakanie]

Hello.
I've always shot only jpegs, but I've read in this forum and photo magazines that
RAW is the way to go to get the best quality of the pictures.
So this weekend I made some shots of birds (flying kind not ladies) with setting RAW+ (RAW and JPG).
When I came home and checked the photos I was a bit disappointed by the RAW photos.
They had more grain and were not so colorful as the jpgs and also brighter.

My camera settings were.
1/80s, f8, ISO 800, Natural color (sRGB), M and manual white balance.
Camera KM 5d + tripod
Lens Sigma 50-500

I use Lightroom and an old version of Photoshop. I'm not very used to these programs.
Can somebody help me to with any suggestions to make the RAWs look better.

Hakanie

[KevinBarrett]

One advantage of using RAW is having the opportunity to do your own noise reduction and jpg compression independent of the camera's built-in engines. I was a tough sell on RAW, myself, but now I like it just to keep the original fine grain over Sony's mottled jpegs.

[Winston]

Using the film anology, it's the difference between having a darkroom and not having one.

[Dusty]

Consider the RAW as a film negative - you can get do a lot more adjustments with it than you can a photo. If the JPEG is under/over exposed, WB is off or you accidentally set the camera for Vivid when you didn't want that, having a RAW file means you're not working an already degraded file.

Dusty

[harvey]

Hello.
I use Lightroom and an old version of Photoshop. I'm not very used to these programs.
Can somebody help me to with any suggestions to make the RAWs look better.
Hakanie

I had used Lightroom for a while but spent some time learning more about it. I purchased the book "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby. You can download example images and work throgh the processes described in the book. (His style might not be to your taste but there are quite a few books to choose from). If you do this you will get a good feel for what Lightroom can do.

Harvey

[Hakanie]

Thanks Harvey.

That is probably what I need. Yesterday I found some functions in Lightroom that I didn't know before.

Hakanie

[Birma]

Hi Hakanie - I too had problems finding the value in using Raw. At first my attempts at using Raw editors (IDC and Photoshop Elements/ACR) did not produce results as good as the jpgs straight from the camera. With more experience of using the editors, I now think that my edits are better than the jpgs - or perhaps I should say, I now prefer my end results over the in camera jpgs . There is a lot to be said for practicing using which ever editor you have, as well as getting tips from books and the web. Overtime I think you will find you are more happy with your edits that started with the Raw file.

For Raw I have found the Raw editor as part of Elements (7) easier to use than Sony's IDC.

Currently my favourite tweak (post raw) is the Adjust Colour Curves in Elements. I think this is only a simplified dialogue compared to full Photoshop, but I am finding it helps.

[bfitzgerald]

Well being fair I shot mostly jpeg on the Km5d when I ist got it, and I have some of my best shots. Raw does offer more esp handy for pulling about shadow areas, and wb, NR etc, so I do mostly shoot raw now. Have to say the 5d is light years ahead of the A200 for jpeg, I drop the contrast a touch though..and do try portrait mode for skintones.

Raw just needs more work, a quick tweak will often get it just there. So it's worth doing., on the other hand, it has to be said, a cracker shot is that, raw or jpeg. It's not how you got there (it's def possible to tweak settings for good output in camera jpeg wise), it's what you have! lol

Quick note, I find LR better set to linear, not med contrast for pretty much all my raw shots. Too contrasty by default from adobe, and colour photos just look damn awful printed if they are strong on contrast.

[Mike]

Hakanie,
These days I only shoot ARW. As someone relatively new to digital SLR cameras it seems to me doing so inherently means more work. From my limited experience I suspect that if you are shooting RAW and JPG and the JPG looks better, you have not figured out the best post processing yet. I suspect I will never figure out the best post processing and if I ever did it would not be fun anymore. But I think my results from processing RAW files are better than the JPGs "out of the camera."

Currently I am using DxO and PS CS4 with Neat Image plug in. By shooting ARW I'm able to go back to shots from a year ago and apply what I've learned, they just keep getting better as I figure out what I'm doing.

There is a wealth of information on the forums on post processing. My suggestion would be to download the trial version of DxO at http://www.dxo.com/us/photo/trial_version along with the instructions and play with it. Keep shooting RAW and JPG. Give yourself the goal of being able to make the ARW version look better than the ARW.

Mike

P.S. Don't post too many pictures of the same two dogs or some people will start to make fun of you! Just kidding, lol.