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10/08/2003 03:38:15 PM · #1 |
I'm a recent arrival to DSLR and the possibility of shooting in RAW format. The instruction manual that came with my cam appears to be written in English, but I'm having one hell of a hard time understanding how to do this efficiently. It took forever to process 1 image, and I'm running a P4 1.6ghz.
What's the best way to download and process these images?
Any help would be great...
PS. I remember reading about a Canon workflow CD that some members had gotten their hands on. Would this help?
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10/08/2003 04:13:47 PM · #2 |
I'm only just getting started with raw myself, but here's a few handy links:
The Art of Raw Conversion
Capture One conversion software and review.
BreezeBrowser conversion software.
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10/08/2003 04:30:29 PM · #3 |
what is the benfit of RAW format?
never messed -w it myself - although i think the camera will
take RAW format photos if i so desired.
soup
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10/08/2003 04:42:53 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by soup:
what is the benfit of RAW format?
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The benefit is that you're not locked into the exposure, wb, sharpness, colour saturation and contrast settings that were on your camera at the time of the photograph. You can make adjustments afterwards, as you convert it to a TIFF in order to further process or print it.
PLus you cannot overwrite the original, so it's like a digital negative.
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10/08/2003 05:54:06 PM · #5 |
| So far as I've gotten I'm finding this article on the PS7 plugin to be of the most overall help. |
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10/09/2003 12:52:56 AM · #6 |
These are very good sites to discover how to process the images, but my thoughts are more along the lines of file handling prior to processing.
Do you first download the whole CF card worth of RAW images to your computer? If you do that, can you then just look at the images via thumbnails? And process only the ones that you want? What's up with the imbeded JPEG that comes with the RAW?
I know this is alot of questions, but any comments on how people handle these steps would be great. I'm sure the advantages of RAW are great, but after reading that Canon book, I think the time involved outways the advantages.
Message edited by author 2003-10-09 00:53:53.
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10/09/2003 01:09:51 AM · #7 |
I've never worked with RAW images, but I can tell you that the first thing I would do is transfer them all to my computer's hard disk and burn them to optical media (CD, DVD) or a second hard drive (or X-drive, iPod, etc.) before I ever erased them from the card.
The rest of your questions are probably dependent on the platform/software you currently use, to either recommend a workflow or workaround (or additional software). Maybe you should list what you already have/do.
Message edited by author 2003-10-09 01:10:46. |
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10/09/2003 01:52:48 AM · #8 |
the embedded jpeg likely IS the thumbnail. I use nikon view to convert (came with the cam), and it's failry quick - maybe 3 seconds to open each image. once i've set the wb and exposure, I save it as a PSP (photoshop) document, and do all other adjustments from there (sharpness, colour, contrast, etc).
I do download all images to my computer first, and GeneralE said, and rip to DVD once every few weeks as a backup.
Your RAM and your video card cache will likely have the greatest impact on the speed at which they're processed. a RAW image from a 6mpix camera will likely only be about 10MB in size, which for a processor the speed of yours shouldn't be an issue.
As a test, try downloading IrfanView and see how quickly it can convert it on your system. I haven't found how to adjust WB on Irfan yet though...doesn't mean it isn't there, just mean i dunno how :)
good luck,
P
Originally posted by mariomel:
These are very good sites to discover how to process the images, but my thoughts are more along the lines of file handling prior to processing.
Do you first download the whole CF card worth of RAW images to your computer? If you do that, can you then just look at the images via thumbnails? And process only the ones that you want? What's up with the imbeded JPEG that comes with the RAW?
I know this is alot of questions, but any comments on how people handle these steps would be great. I'm sure the advantages of RAW are great, but after reading that Canon book, I think the time involved outways the advantages. |
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10/09/2003 01:55:36 AM · #9 |
These are my processing steps.
I normally shoot 150+ RAW images and download them to my computer (1.8 Ghz with 1 GB RAM and 240 GB hd). I try to shoot only RAW for anything that I want to deal with professionally. Sometimes on a test shoot with a new model I may switch to Large Fine or Large Coarse and shoot several hundred photos but if I've worked with a model before and know that we're going to get some good shots I'll stay in RAW format and just work with him/her to hit one of those rare "looks". I never use the embedded JPEG as I can't imagine why I'd want that when I can create a JPG fairly quickly back at home on the computer. That just seems like it'd take up more room on my CF card and that real estate is already the second most valuable element in the whole equatiion (the lenses/optics is the first thing I wanna spend resources on).
When I download the photos I have the Canon software create a new folder for each date in which I shot. That way if I have 2 photoshoots on the same day, they're in the same folder. If I'm shooting for a contest on DPC or if I do a session with a model I always check the box that allows me to change the name of the photos and I type in what contest or which model I was shooting for before downloading the images from the CF cards. With 200+ Gb I have a lot of real estate to keep a couple of months worth of work handy before I have to archive it (meaning delete it off the hard drive and make more room).
I burn a copy to CD and label each CD with year_month_date_sequentialLetter (2003_10_09_A or 2003_10_09_B). I write a brief description of what can be found on each CD; something like "Cityscape downtown @ lunch" or "Photoshoot: Jane Doe @ Freedom Park". That way months later when I want to find my originals because I've archived them I can more easily find them as I can read the CD as I sift through the stacks.
My next steps are determined by the content of images and for whom the images are shot. If I'm working with a model on a photoshoot I will select all the images in Canon's FileViewerUtility and choose File | Save File | Convert & Save in File. This allows me to make a quick copy of all the images in JPG format. This also creates a duplicate set of photos; the original in RAW format and the 2nd set in JPG. I then fire up PS7 and run some custom actions to copyright the images, apply my name on the images and then make a thumbnail of each image. Now I have 3 sets of the same images on my computer. I zip up the thumbnails and move them to my server, unzip them and fill out a form on my webserver and voila, the model can now preview her photoshoot at her leisure and tell me which photos she would like to see edited for her portfolio. I then remove the thumbnails and zip file from my hard drive putting me back to 2 copies of the images. If I'm just working for myself to get a shot for DPC, I'll step through the images one-by-one in Canon's FileViewerUtility until I find one that I want to take a shot at processing and I'll use the File | Transfer Image to toss it over to PS7 as a 16-bit TIFF. Now that I have a full 1Gb of RAM I find that I can actually make edits to the TIFF version without killing my computer. The 16-bit TIFFs are actually about 36 MB in size because of the way PS7 handles them. Once I've played with the levels, saturation, alignment, etc I change the mode of the image using Image | Mode | 8-bit and then I save the image as a JPG File | Save As. Now I run my custom actions for copyrighting the image and creating a thumbnail (I go ahead and create the thumbnail so that I can post the photo on PhotoSIG or UseFilm or PBase regardless of the original intent because its nice to get feedback from other photogs about my composition and my post photo processing.
Eventually I remove a few folders worth of photos so that I don't bog my machine down too much and have room for more. I plan on putting a DVD writer in the machine in the future so that I can still burn immediately to CD for short-term storage and then later I will go back and archive several CD's worth of images onto one DVD.
Message edited by author 2003-10-09 02:01:02.
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