RAW vs JPG and New Art for July 2014

-

New Art for July 2014

The Texas Longhorn Bull

Little known facts about the breed.

Genetic analyses show the Longhorn originated from an Iberian hybrid of two ancient cattle lineages: "taurine" descending from the domestication of the wild aurochs in the Middle East, and "indicine", descending from the domestication of the aurochs in India 85% and 15% respectively by proportion.

This shot was taken in Auto mode, thus the blown out background after lightening enough to see the subject in adequate light. Had it been shot in RAW the background would have been able to have been isolated in a layer, kept at a manageable exposure level while adjusting the brightness in the foreground for the subject. This is a perfect example why so many of us shoot in raw today. The jpeg is acceptable for perhaps an advertisment, but not for a high quality print in your home or office.  The take away is get comfortable shooting in raw, until it becomes second nature.

Expand the Sensors Abilities

Remember that setting your camera to the raw mode, gives your camera sensor instructions to include every bit of data it is capable of capturing, as opposed to jpg which is set for a more limited capture.

It may feel at first as if you are not in control, and indeed you are not. But that won't matter in the end, since you'll gain full control back when you ingest the image data from card and camera into Aperture, Lightroom or Adobe's Camera Raw (or ACR). ACR for example, gives you seemingly unlimited tool management choices for producing, or creating, your best image for any media, be it online, file storage or print.

When shooting in jpg your input from the sensor is initially limited to 8 bit data, as opposed to 12 bit data when in raw. Immediately you have instructed your camera to give you less to work with. Less color, less shadow detail, less contrast, less of everything you'll need to produce your best image file. Regardless which raw conversion software you choose, as I've listed above, so long as you have the original raw file, you can try another raw converter to see which one you prefer.

I have found that using Adobe's Photoshop and ACR software produces what I consider to be a prime set of tools for all image uses. If you choose Phase One's Capture One Pro, you are a session Pro who shoots in batch shooting techniques and manage files in bulk. For all the rest of us, Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop/acr are the defining tools of choice as they cost less and are designed for single image processing, unless you choose their batch tools internally. But certainly Canon's DPP is the free utility from the camera manufacturer itself and comes with the purchase. A very good tool, but far more limited than adding the Adobe tools mentioned.

Whatever you choose, the intent of this article is to convince you that shooting in raw is not only for the professionals anymore. If you decide you want to print truly great prints, not just (to coin a word) Instagramming them, then you'll begin to shoot raw files and take the time to work on them for better results.


1. Note that Apple is discontinuing Aperture and iPhoto in favor of the OS10 Yosemite app called "Photos", (news story link). Adobe is hot on taking up the slack, with a full tutorial on converting all of your images from Aperture to Creative Cloud Lightroom, (news story pdf link).


 



                           



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Dull to Dramatic Photography

-
Image
While this may not be dramatic in a bright happy colorful sense it is so, if in a dark and foreboding way. With this subject I will admit it was easier than if I had chosen an image which was bright and colorful with lots of sunlight, still even then one can cause an ordinary image to appear near HDR without all the added work and in many cases the use of software to produce the tonal mapping needed. Take this original image of a door within an abandoned barn, with the use of flash. From Drop Box As you can see the amount of light hitting this well defines all of the aspects of the term abandoned, the failing paint, the rust on the handle, the cobweb within the latch opening and generally the decadent condition overall. This much light reflects really more than I want in this photo, so rather than lowering the exposure and losing too much information (btw this works well in most well-lit sunjects, i.e. lowering exposure, I am not the best at flash adjustments, so I use PP or post
Read more

Shooting Christmas Can be Fun.......or........

-
Image
Shooting can be a lot of fun. Formal shots seem to take a lot of prep work if one wants to get everything perfect, like making sure nothing in the background conflicts with the subject which is your critical Aunt saying she doesn't like it that Bernie's coat is so ugly hanging on the wall behind me. Or just the usual clutter which can easily invade a nice grouping of the family. It pays to take the time to pick out a bare wall or large window so long as the flash will not bounce back at you. In the other hand if you are going for the candid approach, and want to avoid the background clutter which is unavoidable in most cases, try placing a lens of portrait class, say a Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM Lens for Canon SLR Cameras which when opened wide you'll produce enough bokeh, or background blur to avoid most of the stuff and leave you with a wonderful clear shot of your Aunt who won't be able to critique your photo without using a compliment. What I hear most often from re
Read more

Consciousness Coupled with Photography Art

-
Image
  Ever considered how Art affects our Consciousness? Sit down sometime, maybe now, eyes off your screen(s), awareness on your wall art, and feel the art change your mood. We are capable of launching our consciousness back from the brink of overstimulation and it should gift us with a pleasurable sense. Do not glance, but take it in. This is not meant to be family pictures, but art we have invested in. We chose it, we purchased it for a very special reason.  Much has been written about time on our screens, little about the sense we absorb, ingest and assimilate as we commingle with our wall art. There ought to be a lifting of sorts, an uncommon ground with which we find solace, peace, or energy and spirit, with our art. The very reason the art was hung, is to bring to us a feeling that nothing else in our homes, or offices can.  If you're feeling it, then you should find it more often. Screens are great for learning, and not so great for feeling it. There are too many distractions.
Read more

Soft Proofing in Photoshop

-
Image
Soft Proofing an image is the most accurate way to achieve the look of how the print will appear on paper. Ever noticed that your print doesn't come out quite as vibrant as it looked in Photoshop? Surely there are a host of reasons outside the scope of this article, but I'll make the assumption you already are familiar with image preparation and color profiling, paper selection and the how of printing basics. Once you have these down the next step is to get your image to the very closest that your camera's image sensor captured. Open your file in Photoshop. Next choose View, Proof Setup, Custom. The window reads Customize Proof Condition. Select Device to Simulate, then proceed to choose the paper profile you will be printing on. There will come associated with the imbedded profiles Photoshop and your printer software has already configured. You may also have added a few for certain papers or profiles from your print shop.  Select the one you wish to print to, for exa
Read more

Do you ever shoot for free?

-
Give your opinion in the Comments section below after signing up. Our readers want to know how you feel. For those of you who'd rather not sign up answer the poll in the column to the right. I've created a typical scenario which I've discussed with many photographers over time who've shared their talent alongside starving artist status. The discussion is almost always the same, ENP (Every New Photographer) seems to feel the need to give freely of their skills in order to gain business. After all how do you get business without giving a little? The discussion usually goes something like this. RCPhotos: So when does one start charging for your photography skills? Do you? ENP: Oh I'm new at this so when a friend asked if I'd take a few shots of their new baby I said sure, no problem. My idea was that they'd see some really good results and maybe pass my name around. RCphotos: How did it go? ENP: Well they said they'd tell everyone they knew but af
Read more

Happy Mother's Day Mom

-
Image
Happy Mother's Day. This is in honor of my Mother, whom most of her friends call Dot. I caught her in the midst of preparing the kitchen for dinner.     I should say that Mom, Dot, is much more than a Mom to me, she is an Angel. She has been my inspiration for positive thinking for a lifetime and continues to inspire me. Why? I can recall when I was very young and was tied to the farm, milking cows, slopping hogs, feeding horses and chickens, gathering eggs, all of this twice a day, that I used to complain about not having enough time to spend with my friends who were all free of these (work duties - ahem) activities, and she'd say, "Well what would the animals do without you?" How could I argue with that? Or when I'd come in with near frozen fingers from winter's chill and she'd have a warm steaming wash towel for my hands. "Here", she'd say, "this will warm you in no time". Why else? She has spent many, many years helping
Read more

Not Having Much Fun With Photoshop?

-
I am guilty of this too. I am constantly learning about using tools in PS and learning new ways of using them. Time goes by and we just keep doing the same stuff, or variations over and over to increase our skills. But then we see someone else's work and we are awed by it. I recently saw some digital art from a photograph converted to a near painting and found out that it was done with brushes I don't have. Fortunately the link was included in the post. Jump to the link above or below, and you'll see more brushes that you'll ever use in your lifetime. Well I guess that depends on your age, but it's certainly true for me. If you like a particular set, check back in and share them with us. Also if you like your work, link us to something you've done. Have fun at Get Brushes .com
Read more

Soft Focus your Photos

-
Image
Let's take a photo I shot of our cat Rayden. He's slightly large and rather soft looking anyway but we thought we'd like to see an even softer version. So as you can see the original shows quite a lot of the photo in focus save some to the right rear. Understand that for this purpose I am pushing the results to demonstrate how far one can go to get maximum effect. You won't probably go this far, nor would I. Open your photo in PS, make a background copy, by dragging the background image in the layers pallet down to the create a new layer icon, just to the left of the garbage can, and release. You now see a background copy of your original image. Make sure that copy is still highlighted. Go up to Layer> Layer Mask> Reveal All. Next click on the photo so the mask is not highlighted, but the photo to its left, is highlighted. Then to Filters> Blur> Gaussian Blur and choose a rather high blur so that your brushing out the blur will be obvious. Of course this d
Read more

Photo Use Acronyms Explained

-
Ever wonder what exactly all those acronyms mean? You know the ones we use daily,such as PDF, GIF, JPEG and so on. Well here are a few most of us run across occasionally. * BMP – Windows Bitmap files * DNG – Digital Negative files * EPS – Encapsulated PostScript files * FAX – faxes * FPX – FlashPix files * GIF – Graphics Interchange Format files * HDR – High Dynamic Range Image files * ICNS - Apple Icon Image Files * ICO – Windows icon files * JPEG 2000 – JPEG 2000 files * JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group files * OpenEXR – OpenEXR files * PS – Adobe PostScript files (after an automatic conversion to PDF) * PSD – Adobe Photoshop files * PICT – QuickTime image files * PDF – Portable Document Format files * PNG – Portable Network Graphics files * PNTG – MacPaint Bitmap Graphic files * QTIF – QuickTime image files * RAD – Radience Scene Description files * RAW – Raw image files
Read more

Two very special prints at Fort Vancouver NHS a National Park

-
Image
I wanted to profile my 2 latest works at Imagekind. These both are within my Gallery called Fort Vancouver, and are titled 'Oregon White Oak' and 'Icy Fort'. I am building a collection of images from Fort Vancouver but slowly and partly becasue I am very fussy about the images I rate 5 stars, and even fussier about how I process the RAW files once converted to TIF format. Oregon White Oak by Rich Collins This image Oregon White Oak is very special not only to myself, but to the entire Clark County community. And that's partly why I have it for sale in 8x10" matted, at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site Visitor Center in Vancouver, WA. But soon, perhaps within another week or 2 at most, I'll have it for sale and on display, along with Icy Fort, in 20x30" matted size at the Visitor Center. These are such special prints to me and the community that I have built a unique frame for them. Once the frame is finished I'll add a photo of it to t
Read more