Basics of Using RAW files

By Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence

So, you’ve decided to give RAW mode a

 try. Here are a few tips on how to get started with RAW files.

First, before shooting, set the file mode in your camera to RAW. Other than this change, shooting photos is just the same as before. If you have been shooting jpeg files, you will want to check your storage capacity for files; raw files are larger than jpegs, so you won’t get as many photos on your storage card. For the Canon, you will get a set of files ending in “.CRW” denoting a raw file.

When you are done shooting, you will need to download your files to a computer for processing. To our knowledge, no printers will let you print raw files straight from the camera. Sooner or later someone will probably come up with one that does, but we have no idea why anyone would want to do this since the benefit of RAW files is in the editing.

You will need software to convert the raw data to a standard imaging file. This software can be the package that came with your camera (e.g. Canon Zoombrowser) or third party software. When we first started shooting raw mode, we found that we didn’t like Zoombrowser, so we bought a third party package, Breezebrowser (www.breezesys.com). Other software that handles RAW files include C1 DSLR (www.phaseone.com ), and Adobe’s Camera Raw which is available as separate purchase, and is built into Photoshop CS, (www.adobe.com ). All of these work with a number of different cameras’ raw files, and may be worth checking out. We use Breezebrowser, and have been quite happy with it. We have also just recently upgraded to Photoshop CS (review coming one of these days), but have not formally compared file conversion with Breezebrowser. Other packages (e.g. YARC Plus www.pictureflow.com) will covert files for specific cameras or camera lines.

Once you have your conversion software, you simply need to instruct the package how you want to convert the files. For anything we might print, we convert to 16-bit TIFF files. You can also set the white balance and make adjustments to exposure and contrast. You can also set parameters for sharpening, which we almost always set to the minimum amount possible, and sharpen later while editing. Then simply set the program to convert the files, either one-by-one or by batching an entire directory.

That’s all there is to it! When you are done, you have a set of files that can be read by any standard photo editing or printing package. This way, you have a file that takes advantage of the full range of information that the camera can capture.

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