Improving your photography – Shoot in RAW

I received a few e-mails on the editing my pictures go through. Therefore I have decided to regularly write posts on the methods I use to take and edit my pictures. We start with the basics, but I will only discuss those techniques I use myself. So we will advance rather quickly.

A first thing to do when you want to improve your photography is check that you are shooting in RAW format. For Canon this is the .CR format, for Nikon it is .NEF. The fantastic thing about this is what it doesn’t do: it does not print the file to a jpeg. A camera sees a lot of data, but has to convert it to a jpeg. This file type cannot contain more than 8 bits on pixel level, so some data is inevitably lost. A RAW file is much larger (12 to 14 bit), so it gives you much more headroom to work with when editing.

But why shoot RAW if you want a jpeg as an end product for distribution or to give to your clients? And you cannot open a RAW file with just any picture program either … To make the benefit of RAW clear, suppose in this fictitious example that an 8 bit jpeg file contains 80% of the data that a RAW file contains. When you shoot in jpeg, you already fix that 80%. There is no more room to move. If you have bright highlights in the scenery of which you want to take a picture, but you expose for the shadows, those are very often gone in jpeg. The sky is basically an empty white stain. What you see on the LCD on the back of the camera is what you get. If you shoot RAW, however, you have more data available that you cannot see on your screen yet. When you go into photoshop, lightroom or any other software program that supports your RAW file, you can compress the data in such a way that what is available in the raw file fits into the 80% jpeg. In the example of the blown highlights you can go into lightroom, select a brush that darkens your picture and paint over your highlights (see the picture below). What this does is locally bringing down the exposure. Where in the jpeg this information was lost, you can squeeze it back in when using RAW (within certain limits, of course).

Another benefit of using RAW is the white balance correction. A camera is basically a dumb machine when it comes to measuring the color temperature. All of you have seen these orange or blue pictures (taken inside without a flash, mostly) that just look horrible. With a RAW file, you can either select a preset (daylight, cloudy, tungsten) or pick a pixel in your picture that should be white or gray. The software corrects all the other pixels, assuming that they were subjected to the same type of light. When you try this in jpeg, you loose image quality as – again – these color values were hardwired into the picture.

When you shoot RAW, none of the presets you have chosen in your camera will be burned onto your image. Saturation, overall contrast, white balance and even sharpness will not be hardwired. Therefore, when looking at them straight out of your camera, they can look flat, dull and unsaturated. You have to work for it. Almost every RAW file needs to be edited. Mine sure do (but more on that in a later blog post). But you can achieve a better look for your image. You choose it. Not the camera. And that is a good thing, since you are way smarter and sophisticated than a camera. No matter how expensive the camera is (or how cheap you are)!

While this is kind of a dull first post on improving your photography, this is where it all starts. Give yourself headroom to play with. You will need it. If you do not have a RAW format on your camera, you have no choice of course. But put this feature high on your priority list when purchasing a new camera. Much higher than how many megapixels it has. See you next time!

The right side of the image has its exposure turned down with a brush in Lightroom. This brings out the details and shows how it actually was over there.