I am taking a photography class right now and the teacher had said that for beginners the best file format for beginners is RAW, for the ease of post-processing or something. So without thinking too much, I changed the setting to RAW on my camera, so now I stupidly have a bunch of photos in RAW format, but I don't have any necessary software to convert them. Any suggestions on what I can do? I'm sure this can be done in Photoshop, but I don't have it.
you can convert your photos to jpeg using the free software picassa....though you don't get the full benefit of shooting RAW with it, I think you need photoshop elements, photoshop or even lightroom to do that. I am sure there are more....but picassa will at least get them to jpeg
Just curious; why would the teacher tell you beginners should use RAW when you end up converting them to JPEG which is what most of us beginners use? I understand there is more to work with in a RAW file but as you say, without the software you can't do anything with it and learning the software seems to me to be a job for the no-longer-beginning photographer
Thank you all, for the info. I don't know why I didn't figure that out to start!! Allison...you're guess is as good as mine, except that maybe he works as a professional photographer, doing this for so long that he forgets how basic a beginner's needs are?
If RAW is "for" beginners then I'd love to hear what this "teacher" thinks professionals use.
In any event, to make the most out of RAW files you really do need something along the lines of Lightroom ($300), although your camera probably came with a basic RAW editor on CD.
Also I've just realised what your surname is so, allow me to add this: if you're a beginner at the whole photography thing, shooting in JPEG is probably... Good(e)nough!
Just want to put in a plug for Lightroom. You can download it for a free one month trial. My trial just ended and I am definitely going to be buying it - it's amazing! I never understood the value of shooting RAW until I actually did, and edited with Lightroom. I was second shooter a wedding in July, and shot everything with RAW and jpeg. The difference in what was captured was shocking to me, and the amount of control I had with editing the RAW was amazing. When you're done editing, you can then export your photos as jpgs.
Steve....haha!!! I *never* hear things like that. ;-) What can I say, I married "Mr. Good(e)nough". :-)
Kim...he had mentioned Lightroom might be a good investment. When I get to that point! I'm intrigued. This may sound like I'm hallucinating, but I *swore* just visually the RAW images looked better. The colors and lights...truer? When I changed it to jpeg, without doing anything, it seemed different. Am I just imagining that?
And nope, you're not imagining anything. For one thing, to get technical, RAW files store more bits per pixel, which will be thrown away by the camera's internal JPEG conversion, so external RAW converters will allow you to use this extra data, which to get back to non-technical, makes stuff look more bettererer.
I must really be behind the times, up until this web-site to me (raw) meant something not cooked. I guess I would have to use it to know what it is all about. Do all dslr's have the "raw" feature, and or is it something you can do without??
A very useful and free raw converter is Rawtherapee. It works in Win, Mac and Linux. Shooting in Raw is the best way to modify your photo (white balance and exposition for example) without destroy data. Jpg is a compressed files, every time you modify it and save you destroy some data. Best thing is process Raw and save photos in Tiff format. Convert them in Jpg only to reduce pixels for web.
Thanks so much for the info!! I might continue to shoot in RAW format. Richard...I think you can only upload jpeg to this website; anyone correct me if I'm mistaken!
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In any event, to make the most out of RAW files you really do need something along the lines of Lightroom ($300), although your camera probably came with a basic RAW editor on CD.
I'll get my coat.
Kim...he had mentioned Lightroom might be a good investment. When I get to that point! I'm intrigued. This may sound like I'm hallucinating, but I *swore* just visually the RAW images looked better. The colors and lights...truer? When I changed it to jpeg, without doing anything, it seemed different. Am I just imagining that?
And nope, you're not imagining anything. For one thing, to get technical, RAW files store more bits per pixel, which will be thrown away by the camera's internal JPEG conversion, so external RAW converters will allow you to use this extra data, which to get back to non-technical, makes stuff look more bettererer.
Thanks so much for your help!!!