The Raw Deal
My GF-1 makes pretty nice JPEGs. I haven't had any complaints, really. But yesterday's experiment in RAW+JEPG has opened my eyes. Even with my clumsy bumbling in Lightroom, I can see why professional photographers shoot in RAW. Although I'm post-processing these images on a non-color-controlled MacBook Air, I can clearly see why the exquisite tonal and color control afforded by post-processing RAW data is desirable. Here are a few examples (of course all images you see online are now JPEGs, and have gone through an extra level of compression courtesy of Blogger, so some of the differences get lost in the process).
Blue Ice Puddle
Image 1: Camera JPEG, tweaked in iPhoto. Not bad!
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
Three Guy Wires
Image 1: Camera JEPG, tweaked in iPhoto. Pretty good!
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
Pink Pipe
Image 1: Camera JPEG, tweaked in iPhoto. Difficult color palette, handled quite well.
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. Guess what? More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
It's a lot more work, and there's clearly a whole world of technical expertise I've yet to acquire. Fortunately, I have a pretty good technical background in image processing, both from my background as an analog printer (remember the silver print darkroom in days of yore?) and from years of working with digital images in circumstances where image quality was paramount. I can learn what I need to, and my eye is decent. The biggest challenge working from the RAW file is that there are so many instances, so many "interpretations" if you will, of the data that are viable. There is no one correct version. The hard part is to pick a vision for the image and then know when to quit tweaking. Ansel Adams would have loved this technology.
Blue Ice Puddle
Image 1: Camera JPEG, tweaked in iPhoto. Not bad!
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
Three Guy Wires
Image 1: Camera JEPG, tweaked in iPhoto. Pretty good!
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
Pink Pipe
Image 1: Camera JPEG, tweaked in iPhoto. Difficult color palette, handled quite well.
Image 2: Camera RAW, processed in Lightroom. Guess what? More accurate color balance, better tonal range, increased detail sharpness.
It's a lot more work, and there's clearly a whole world of technical expertise I've yet to acquire. Fortunately, I have a pretty good technical background in image processing, both from my background as an analog printer (remember the silver print darkroom in days of yore?) and from years of working with digital images in circumstances where image quality was paramount. I can learn what I need to, and my eye is decent. The biggest challenge working from the RAW file is that there are so many instances, so many "interpretations" if you will, of the data that are viable. There is no one correct version. The hard part is to pick a vision for the image and then know when to quit tweaking. Ansel Adams would have loved this technology.
posted by NT at
10:46 PM
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