Newbie Raw Question

[ditto1958]

I have an Olympus E-300. I have been shooting jpegs, but everyone says RAW is the way to go and I would like to try it. I have the Olympus Master software that came with the camera, as well as Photoshop Elements 3.0. What I don't know is how to acquire the RAW images from my camera and how to get them into Elements to work with them. Do I already have what I need, or do I need additional software/plugins?

[AlbertP]

A RAW file is a data file, just like a jpeg, so whatever software you use to download the pics from your camera should grab the RAW files for you. If you use a CF card reader, you can use Windows Explorer to navigate to the card and see everything that's there, just as though you were looking at a drive on your computer.

[ditto1958]

I can open the files in Master, but not with PS Elements. The browser shows it as a broken or damaged file. If I use Master to get the files and then go to PS to open them, it says it is unable to open the images.

[AlbertP]

Whichever application you attempt to open the file in must recognize the file for what it is. If this type of RAW file is not supported by Elements, you'll get what you're experiencing. Perhaps try updating the Adobe RAW module used by Elements?

[BigB]

Doesn't Elements support ACR 2.4? If so, you'll need to download it from Adobe and it will recognize the RAW files. I've found CS2 does pretty well with .ORF files now with 3.1, but before that I found using Master to convert the RAW to TIFF or JPEG is better than using ACR. Then, once in TIFF or JPEG, use Elements to do the fine tuning.

[JohnC]

What version of Camera Raw do you have in Photoshop Elements? It might not support the camera. Support for the E-Volt was added in Camera Raw 3.1. http://www.adobe.com/products/photos...l?camerarawnav

John

[CI Photography]

I use Photoshop Elements 3.0 also, but I'm shooting with a Canon 20d. When I put My card in the reader they download right in. At that point I'll burn my raw photos on a dvd or cd for safe keeping. Now when I go to edit on Photoshop Elements 3.0 it will ask me to save as a jpeg or tiff. Hope that helps.

Joe

[JohnC]

The 20D was supported in earlier versions of Camera Raw. The original poster will need to update to the latest version of Camera Raw for support of the Olympus E-300.

John

[ditto1958]

Thanks, all. I'll keep trying and see how I can do.

[hartcons]

I use elements 3 just fine with my e-300 raw images. You probably just need to download the latest version of adobe camera raw:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=2936

When installed into elements 3 adobe camera raw does lose a few advanced features relative to what you'd see in photoshop cs2.

To get the most from RAW I think you want to stay in 16 bit (actually 12 under the hood I believe) mode for as long as possible (look in acr for a setting that controls this). RAW is really nice if you fouled up the white balance in-camera. Even with RAW, though, I still find myself using adobe's shadow/highlight feature (a lite version is in elements 3 under quick fix I believe) post-raw to pull detail from shadows.

also consider if you are on windows:
http://www.dpmagic.com/
(adds raw capabilities to your operating system viewer)

I find that Olympus Master does a nice job with colors but as a raw converter it's pretty sluggish (move a slider and wait 5-10 seconds). Also it doesn't seem to be able to do highlight recovery (like bringing back some clouds in a blown sky) whereas adobe camera raw can do some of that.

Raw Shooter Essentials is a free raw converter:
http://www.pixmantec.com/products/ra...ssentials.html

One nice thing about the e-300 is that you can shoot RAW plus high-quality jpeg (so you get the best of both worlds if you have a big CF card). With my d70 I can only shoot raw plus basic jpeg.

RAW takes you into another world but for the most part I'm still shooting high-quality JPEG (mainly because I find the workflow faster overall and I'm not very patient). Sometimes I shoot with exposure bracketing (set the exposure compensation to -0.3 and then dial up exposure bracketing so you get 0, -0.3 and -0.7) to make sure I get a properly exposed jpeg.

[Mr. Pickles]

RAW is really good, but isn't a all-in-one fixer. if you get your PSE RAW installed and working, you'll like it. Alot of folks like RAWShooter as was mentioned too. It is a pretty good program, and the FRE cost isn't too shabby either. Some rate it better than Adobe's RAW, but I'm still mixed about which is better.

You really need to watch the darkness of images. A lot of folks tend to think that you should underexpose the shot, and fix it in RAW conversion or using the Shadow/Highlight tool. Actually the S/H tool is a pretty bad way to fix it, as the more you increase the blacks to brighten them up, the more NOISE you introduce into the image. You may have to run a Noise remover on them if you really underexposed the shot.

Nothing can really replace a properly exposed image. The best way to get that is to know alot about photography, or use the histogram to check the images.

[JohnC]

Even the histogram can throw you off. Canon tends to be a little too conservative and you might think you are too hot while still holding detail. Correct exposure is the key.

Check out some discussions about exposure and Camera Raw in the Adobe Camera Raw Forum at
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bbb579c/0

JC

[Mr. Pickles]

I agree about the correct exposure, as we both mentioned. if you study your images, you should be able to see inconsistancies in the histograms too. It isn't the best device, but it is better than auto mode....

[hartcons]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

You really need to watch the darkness of images. A lot of folks tend to think that you should underexpose the shot, and fix it in RAW conversion or using the Shadow/Highlight tool. Actually the S/H tool is a pretty bad way to fix it, as the more you increase the blacks to brighten them up, the more NOISE you introduce into the image. You may have to run a Noise remover on them if you really underexposed the shot.

Nothing can really replace a properly exposed image. The best way to get that is to know alot about photography, or use the histogram to check the images.

I usually try S/H on every image (JPEG or RAW). It's surprising how often a bit of shadow lightening (the S part) can help a picture (plus the H part can help dull blown highlights just a bit for something like flash glare on a forehead). I try to use S/H lightly (the default is way too much) and maybe because of that haven't seen big problems with noise but then again I'm mostly doing things for presentation on the web plus I tend to shoot at the lowest possible ISO. There's a light version of S/H in elements 3. I couldn't image life without S/H at this point!

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get it right at the camera but when you don't (or can't because you didn't take the picture or the dynamic range of the scene was just too great for the camera) it's S/H to the rescue. Various raw converters have shadow and highlight knobs but so far I haven't found one that I liked quite as well as plain old S/H (although Nikon Picture Project has an Auto Enhance button that does a surprisingly good job on my somewhat dark d70 jpeg images).

If I had to choose between an under-exposed image and an over-exposed image I'd take the dark one every time (and then try to fix it in post). I just don't know of many good ways to fix a blown image (especially if it was shot JPEG). What we really need is a tool where we can say things like "please bring back my sky but leave the rest of the image alone, thank you". Maybe when Photoshop AI ships

Just my two cents as someone who has to deal with a lot of fouled up images (mine and those sent to me by others).

[ditto1958]

Another "dumb" question: if you take a RAW image and convert it to jpeg in your computer to work with it, where does the advantage of RAW come from? I thought that the reason for RAW was that you would be using a "digital negative" where all of the information captured by the camera was preserved. What's the difference then between shooting a jpeg in the camera or converting it to a jpeg in the computer?

Also, I'm having trouble installing Abobe Camera Raw 3.1. It comes as a zip file. When I unzip it, my zip utility puts it in the "unzipped" folder. What do I do with it then?

[Mr. Pickles]

I think the file (there is one file? "camera raw.8bi"?) goes into the PS directory, under a subdirectory called "plugins" and then in the "File formats" directory. I'd save the one in there first though, or change its name to old or something.

As for the RAW conversion. With the RAW file, you have "tools" in the RAW convertor (PS or RAWShooter or whatever) that let you manipluate the file somewhat. You're just fixing the lightness, white balance, exposure, etc at this point. You can do some sharpening in the convertor, but I don't, as I save it for later.

Once you are 'done" converting and getting the image to look as good as you can, you convert. You do NOT have to convert ot a JPG. You can convert ot a TIFF if you want.

[ditto1958]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

I think the file (there is one file? "camera raw.8bi"?) goes into the PS directory, under a subdirectory called "plugins" and then in the "File formats" directory. I'd save the one in there first though, or change its name to old or something.

It looks like that worked. Thanks, Mr. Pickles.

[JohnC]

There shold be a readme file with it that tells you want folder to put the cameraraw filter file into.

If not, the readme is available on the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=2936

RAW lets you make big adjustments (white balance, tint, exposure, midtones, shadows, etc.) BEFORE creating the JPG. Once it is a JPG you can't do those so easily and without data loss. And you can go back to the RAW file and make further modifications without data loss.

John

[hartcons]

Originally Posted by ditto1958

Another "dumb" question: if you take a RAW image and convert it to jpeg in your computer to work with it, where does the advantage of RAW come from? I thought that the reason for RAW was that you would be using a "digital negative" where all of the information captured by the camera was preserved. What's the difference then between shooting a jpeg in the camera or converting it to a jpeg in the computer?

Ran across this article on RAW this morning:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdf...rawcapture.pdf

So it looks like "raw conversion" happens in-camera when you shoot JPEG vs. shooting RAW where you get to do it yourself using a program like adobe camera raw.

To me what would make a compelling argument for RAW is if someone could post side-by-side comparison images where they were shooting RAW+high-quality JPEG and they could show how manually doing the raw conversion produced a better result than what the camera did for the JPEG. Sometimes I'll start working on a RAW image and moving sliders around and it just all seems to go terribly wrong and I wind up with something I like less than the in-camera JPEG (especially when it comes to colors). Basically with RAW I guess you're saying that you think you can do better than the engineers who programmed the camera.

Is there likely to be a difference in quality between the raw conversion algorithms in the camera vs. those in software? So for example with my e-300 would olympus tend to use the same algorithms in-camera and in Olympus Master/Studio or with the external software programs can they use "better" algorithms because the in-camera algorithms have to work really fast? One thing I've noticed is that when I open an olympus raw in Olympus master it starts out looking like the in-camera JPEG which I find comforting and then I can tweak from there.

In terms of RAW being 12-bit and JPEG being 8-bit does this matter for printing? So if I print a 12-bit version of my image will that look better than an 8-bit version? Supposedly when you are doing regular photoshop manipulations to your images (levels and such) having the extra bits of data can help maintain high quality (you can avoid banding in your histogram) but if the output is JPEG eventually you are going back to 8 bits anyway (just like the in-camera JPEG). Is a computer monitor capable of showing you all 12 bits of data?

One point that stood out in the article is that if you shoot RAW you can potentially tap into future enhancements in raw development (i.e., you can re-develop your digital negative with improved software).

If you shoot RAW it looks like you'll never be bored because you'll be continually trying out new raw converters and forever fiddling with your images and reading up on raw conversion algorithms (such as demosaicing).

A companion PDF to the above article is here (raw capture, linear gamma and exposure):
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf

Here's an article about the advantages of raw on the apple site (iphoto can do limited raw conversion now but not for olympus raw just yet):
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300879
(but personally I'm not sure I prefer the raw version, for instance the red ball seems to be bleeding, so maybe it's partly a matter of personal taste)

[JohnC]

I don't know if I still have the images, but last summer I did a small test of shooting a Macbeth color chart with RAW and JPG and the difference was quite startling. The dark brown patch on the card did not record anywhere near its real color with JPG, but was right on with RAW. There were other colors that didn't match, but that one stood out a lot.

By using RAW you can often pull in some highlight detail that appears to be blown out. In the JPG it might be blown out if only one of the channels has maxed out. But with the RAW converter you can often pull out some detail from the other channels.

But going the RAW route does add complications. File sizes are much larger (need more cards or a way to offload images on location). You have to do the conversion. You can get caught up in trying different things in the converter, etc. It does add time.

Until recently I shot mostly large JPG and sometimes switched to RAW in tricky situations or when I really thought I had somethihng I'd want to work on. But now I pretty much keep the camera set to RAW. Sometimes I'll do RAW with small JPG if I want to have quick access to see what things look like and maybe get them on the web for someone quickly.

John