Why I shoot in Raw and not RAW

I have been taking a Creative Live Photoshop Class with Lesa Snider dealing with Photoshop CS5. However, in doing so she made some valid points on the Raw vs. JPEG controversy we see. First let me say I love how she finally set the record straight that Raw is NOT an acronym it is just a word i.e. a Raw image. So I will refrain from yelling RAW at everyone and sounding like I am growling at them! 

 

Lesa made some great analogies when comparing JPEG and Raw to baked goods. She said, and I am paraphrasing here, that JPEG’s are like the already baked cookies. You can’t do much to add to it or change the cookie itself. You can frost it or put sprinkles on it but you are limited on what you can do. Meaning when you shot JPEG the camera is already doing some in camera correcting (or what it thinks is correcting) for you. It is probably changing the vibrance and doing some color correcting. So, once you pull this up in PS you can adjust the settings but you do not have full control since the camera has pretty much done corrections for you. Going back and trying to change the picture with all of the settings pretty much means you need to scrap that cookie and start again. 

 

I am a HUGE control freak…yes me..I see all of you out there smirking at me like this is no surprise lol. I can’t help it, I see how I want an image to be and I like to make that image come to life in PS. So bringing up Lesa’s analogy again, she said that shooting in Raw …not RAW… is like having the raw ingredients to make your batch of cookies. So now there are multiple possibilities to changing the batch of cookies. You can make it with real butter or that light stuff, or you can add nuts or pull the nuts out or add chocolate chips…yummmm chocolate…okay sorry back to where we were.  So even though when you upload your Raw photos they may look dull and lack that luster you wanted you can quickly bring it back to life the way you want it in PS.

I did recently accidentally photograph a session in JPEG and I did notice a huge difference. Thank God my lighting was pretty accurate and I didn’t have to do much to the pictures but it could have made me a very unhappy person. 

So the moral of the story is if you want that complete control over your images Raw is for you. If you think your camera has it down, then JPEG is for you. I will also add that shooting Raw will allow you to photograph in high resolution maintain the integrity and the quality of your original picture.

On a side note to the side note: Always save a PSD of your file before converting it back to a JPEG. This goes for if you photograph in Raw or JPEG. Having a PSD will give you a back up to the Raw file that maintains the original quality of the picture. So if you need to go back and change anything you can see your full menu in PS and change what you need to. I also think that you should keep a recipe on each photo you do. If you ever want to go back to that photo and know what you did, step by step, to get there it is all written or typed out for you. 

Okay so my eye is getting better and better and should be back to its old self very soon. Thank you for all of the concerns. I love my clients!

XOXO

Kimberlee Peterson

The Romantic Comedy Photographer

www.emotionalaccord.com