DSLR - Shooting RAW on your DSLR

SHOOTING

RAW

FREE WITH Practical

Photography

on your D-SLR

From this...

...to this

in 60 seconds!

HOW TO

Get the best quality & ultimate control ✔ RAW converter help ✔ Workflow advice ✔ Sharpness tips ✔ White balance answers ✔ Easy exposure ✔ Contrast skills

CONTENTS By shooting RAW, Andrew was able to give the original blue-tinted scene a much warmer appearance by adjusting the white balance and boosting saturation.

RAW BASICS ■ What is RAW?

6

■ Camera settings

8

■ What’s possible with RAW

10

RAW CONVERSION ■ Choosing a RAW converter

14

■ Adobe Photoshop Elements 5

18

■ Canon Digital Photo Professional

20

■ Capture One Pro

22

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT ■ White balance

26

■ Exposure

30

■ Contrast

32

■ Saturation

34

■ Sharpening

36

EXTRA SETTINGS

Welcome from Practical Photography editor Andrew James OWNING A DIGITAL SLR and never shooting RAW files is, I believe, a bit like never taking the camera off auto. You’re simply allowing an inanimate object to control your creativity. I’m not suggesting that you should only ever shoot RAW, but I do believe that when a new technology comes along it’s up to us to make the most of it. In the days when it was all film, unless 2 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

you had the facility to develop and print your own pictures, you handed control of that process over to a third party. But now the opportunity to control the whole image-making process, from capture to print, is easily available to all. When you start shooting RAW you do add in an extra layer of work. Instead of allowing the camera to make many of those

processing decisions for you and presenting you with a JPEG, you can take the RAW file and enhance it to your heart’s content. Why wouldn’t you want to? If anyone feels that changing white balance, enhancing contrast or boosting colours is cheating, then in evidence I submit filters, darkroom techniques, and even the choice of films like Fuji Velvia. Anyway, enjoy this booklet and have fun with your photography.

■ Advanced contrast adjustments

40

■ There’s more...

42

THIS GUIDE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY... Shooting RAW on your D-SLR is brought to you by Practical Photography and is published by EMAP Active Limited. No part of this booklet can be reproduced without the publisher’s permission. For more about PP, visit: www.practicalphotography.co.uk Field guide editor: Ben Hawkins Field guide art editor: Chris Rigby Additional words/photography: Andrew James, Chris Rutter, Ben Turner & Bob Martin Additional production: Shane Collins Additional design: Rob Holmes

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3

RAW BASICS

SHOOTING RAW ON YOUR D-SLR

RAW basics

RAW files are your gateway to ultimate image quality and maximum control. Let’s start by weighing up the pros and cons, and seeing exactly what can be achieved and how...

RAW BASICS

What is RAW?

ENHANCED RAW

What you’re about to learn in this booklet could change your photography forever, as we’re going to show you everything that you need to know in order to master RAW. But don’t jump into the deep end just yet. If you’re not sure what all the fuss is about then you need to bring your knowledge up to date. Here’s our in a nutshell explanation of RAW and its key benefits...

RAW ingredients RAW is the name given to a whole group of image file formats, including CRW, CR2 and NEF, which are produced by digital cameras. Unlike normal image formats, such as JPEG and TIFF, RAWs don’t contain the finished image ready for viewing. Instead they contain the unprocessed data that’s read directly from the camera’s image sensor. At this stage it’s not really an image, much like a beef sirloin joint isn’t roast beef, but the finest quality raw ingredients are there waiting to be turned into the finished article for all to enjoy. To ‘cook’ our RAWs we use a RAW converter software package and this gives us loads of creative flexibility for changing the appearance of our photos.

The benefits

ORIGINAL RAW

This original scene looks okay, but it’s flatter than we remember it and a bit blue. All of the ingredients are here though, so a quick tweak in the RAW converter and you get the punchy image on the right.

The drawbacks

QUALITY

CONTROL

FILE SIZE

COMPATIBILITY

RAW is a lossless format, unlike JPEG, which means that all image detail is preserved. Correctly processed RAW images are sharper, more detailed, and contain more accurate colours. RAWs are also recorded in a higher bit depth, commonly 12-bit or 14-bit, rather than the usual 8-bit. This extra information can hold brighter highlights and darker shadow details, and the tonality is smoother.

It’s not just the usual contrast and white balance settings that we get to play with on the PC. Using a decent RAW converter package (turn to page 14) you have a massive amount of control, from contrast adjustments with curves through to noise smoothing. Also, some adjustments, such as sharpening, are often far more sophisticated than the methods employed by your camera so the pictures look even better.

Probably the biggest problem with RAW is the saved file size. They are roughly three to four times larger then the equivalent JPEG, so less images will fit on a memory card. However, CompactFlash and SD memory cards are becoming cheaper and cheaper, so a couple of 1GB cards will cure this problem for most people.

JPEGs are compatible with most software packages because they have been around for years and are strictly standardised. RAWs aren’t so accessible however, because every model of camera produces its own RAW file to a different specification. Unfortunately, you need to install a compatible RAW converter on your computer to view and enhance the RAW images.

EASY ENHANCEMENTS

Large files take longer to write to the memory card, which means that you’ll rely heavily on your camera’s buffer. The buffer is used to temporarily store new shots as others are being saved. However, the buffer is limited and can easily fill up when taking loads of pictures in quick succession as you would when shooting sports and wildlife. If it does fill up, you’ll have to wait a few moments before you can take another shot.

FLEXIBILITY The RAW data is hardly touched by the camera’s image processors before it is saved to the memory card, which allows our computer to perform a lot of the camera’s usual corrections post-capture. So if we don’t get the white balance, contrast or sharpness settings right when we take the shot, we can correct this on the PC (turn to page 10). Even poor exposures can be sorted, to a point. 6 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

Making good-looking corrections and enhancements to RAWs in a RAW converter is much easier then the equivalent enhancement to a JPEG using Photoshop or Elements. In just a couple of minutes you can completely overhaul an image to give it much more impact. Most corrections can be made by dragging a few simple sliders.

WRITE TIMES

PROCESSING TIME A RAW image generally needs to be converted into a standard TIFF or JPEG before you can do much else with it. This potentially adds an extra step to your digital workflow and could hold up a busy pro shooting press pictures. However, if you do need to make any corrections to your images, you’ll probably save hours with RAW because most enhancements are quicker to make. 7

RAW BASICS

Camera settings Before you can start to explore the creative potential of RAW files you need to set your camera to shoot the right image format. Every digital SLR and even some compact cameras give you the choice of RAW mode in

OLYMPUS

E-400

the file format menu. This isn’t a complicated process, but it’s still worth checking the options available on your camera. Here’s how to set the Canon EOS 400D, Nikon D80 and Olympus E-400 to shoot RAW files…

CANON

400D Step 1: The easiest way to access the file formats on the E-400 is to press the OK button while in any shooting mode. This will activate the camera settings on the rear LCD screen. Using the four-way navigation buttons, highlight the file settings at the bottom of the screen and then press OK again.

STEP 1: Before you can set the RAW format on the EOS 400D you must be in one of the creative exposure modes such as aperture-priority, shutterpriority, program or manual. It doesn’t allow you to use RAW in the automatic scene modes or the fully automatic ‘green’ mode.

Step 2: Once you’ve set the exposure mode, press the Menu button on the back of the camera to bring up the first camera settings screen. Go to the Quality menu and use the four navigation buttons to scroll through to highlight the RAW option, and then press the right-hand button to confirm the setting.

NIKON

D80

STEP 1: All Nikon cameras allow you to use RAW in any of the exposure modes, but there are two ways of setting the file format. The quickest way is to press and hold the QUAL button on the bottom left of the back of the camera. 8 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

STEP 2: While holding the QUAL button turn the rear input dial to scroll through the format options on the top LCD screen (shown in the bottom left corner) until RAW is displayed, then release the QUAL button.

Step 2: This will open the file format options on the rear LCD with the current format highlighted. To change these you can scroll through the options using the main input dial or the four-way navigation buttons. Highlighting the RAW setting then pressing the OK button will set the camera to RAW mode.

RAWTIP You don’t have to sacrifice the convenience of shooting JPEG images when you want to use RAW files. Most cameras allow you to shoot both file formats simultaneously by setting the appropriate option in the file format menu. But why would you want to record duplicate files of the same images? While there is no doubt that RAW offers many more options and potentially improved quality over JPEG, you need the right software and extra time to view and process RAW files. By shooting JPEG images as well you can quickly sort through your images, share them with friends and family or even get prints directly from your camera (or memory card). Shooting two files for each image does mean that you’ll need more memory, but many cameras allow you to choose a low quality JPEG option to make these files as small as possible. While these files won’t give you the best images they will still be okay for small prints or screen use. |9

RAW BASICS

What’s possible with RAW

ENHANCED RAW

Shooting RAW opens up a huge range of exciting corrections and enhancements that you can apply to your pictures post-capture. You can salvage pictures with poor colours and bring flat shots to life, but RAW converters can’t perform miracles. There are still many things that you must get right while you’re taking the shot to ensure your images are of the highest quality. So what must you get right in-camera and what can you get away with sorting back on the computer? Find out here…

Get it right in-camera Here are the major things that you need to get right in-camera – if you forget to pay attention to any of this then RAW won’t help you at all.

ORIGINAL RAW

Aperture You can’t change depth-of-field once you’ve taken the shot. If you want both close and distant objects to be in sharp focus then you’ve no option but to use a small aperture (f/22). On the flip side, a wide aperture (f/2.8) is needed if you want just a thin band in your image to be in sharp focus.

RAW files allow you to change white balance post-capture for improved colours.

Shutter speed

Exposure

Freezing quick subjects with a fast shutter speed or blurring moving subjects with a slow shutter speed are other effects that are impossible to accurately recreate using a RAW conversion software package.

Get the exposure as close as possible in-camera. If you overexpose a stop or so then your highlights may block-out to pure white and the detail will be obliterated – not good! Drastically underexposed shots will be too noisy to be useful once brightened.

ISO Using a fast ISO creates a grainy effect known as noise. Although many RAW converters have tools to suppress the levels of noise, there really is no substitute for using a slow ISO (such as ISO 100) for really smooth tones. 10 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

Focus You can’t make a soft image sharp. Once the detail has been blurred, it’s lost forever. If you’ve focused poorly or have visible camera shake in your shots, then forget it.

The possibilities of RAW Although we’d always recommend that you get the shot as close as possible incamera, you can actually control quite a lot of settings back in the RAW converter. Let’s take a quick look at your post-capture options.

White balance/tint It doesn’t matter what white balance you have selected when you take the shot, you can always override it in the RAW converter. White balance is a software effect, so opting to change it won’t degrade the image at all.

Fine-tune exposure Small adjustments to the exposure won’t degrade the quality much at all so you can tweak the exposure

to get your shots just right. Darkening a touch may even reduce noise levels.

Contrast Don’t bother with any contrast settings in your camera. Use the contrast sliders, along with the Levels and Curves tools, to get the perfect contrast post-capture.

Sharpness The sharpening controls offered in

RAW converters are far superior to the options offered by your camera. Just ignore your camera’s settings as the RAW converter can override this without degrading the quality.

Colour saturation Whether you want to tone down a colourful scene or give a flat shot more impact, it makes sense to make colour adjustments in the RAW converter where you can really see what you’re doing. 11

RAW CONVERSION

SHOOTING RAW ON YOUR D-SLR

RAW conversion For the best possible results you’ll need a RAW converter that offers control and quality. Let’s take a look at the best options and the basic features needed to convert your first RAW file.

RAW CONVERSION

Choosing a RAW converter When you finally switch to shooting RAW instead of JPEG, you will need to adjust your workflow slightly. Unfortunately, this does mean adding one more step early on but thankfully it will save you some time later in the process and improve the end results too. To

BUNDLED SOFTWARE

CANON DIGITAL PHOTO PROFESSIONAL Canon’s standard software is one of the most comprehensive packages supplied with any D-SLR. There’s a complete range of options available, PROS AND CONS the workflow is easy to use ✔Very comprehensive and there are some really for free software. nice touches. It offers you ✔ Enables you to make the option of selecting the the best use of PictureStyle, which can PictureStyles. produce some good results. Not very intuitive Overall, DPP is a pretty editing views. damn good package.

✘

BUNDLED SOFTWARE

RAWTIP If you buy a new D-SLR soon after its release, it’s likely that your RAW converter won’t support it straight away. New

make this step easier you need to choose the right piece of software. Here are the best bundled – plus one download-only software – RAW converters, and over the page what we consider to be the best RAW converter software packages out there…

SONY IMAGE DATA CONVERTER BUNDLED SR SOFT

While the name may sound less than appealing, the software that Sony bundles with the α100 is one of the best you can get. All of the options are accessible from the Tools palette, so there’s no hunting around for options. It’s not brilliant for first-time users but you’d struggle to think of any options that are missing – it even has a ‘Send to Photoshop’ command, which speeds up workflow.

WARE

PROS AND CONS

✔One click will send

the image to Photoshop.

✔Simple to navigate layout, with plenty of useful shortcuts.

✘Could be confusing for new users.

NIKON PICTURE PROJECT

BIBBLE LITE

Picture Project is supplied with all Nikon D-SLRs (even the pro models) but it offers little more than basic RAW adjustments. It’s useful for organising your images but RAW conversions can be a pain in the backside. The PROS AND CONS main reason for this is ✔Comes free with that Nikon wants you to every Nikon D-SLR. invest in Capture NX ✔ Excellent for (turn the page for organising your files. details), which is their ✘Converting RAWs is a excellent commercially bit of a struggle. available software.

Only available as a download from www. bibblelabs.com Bibble Lite has a lot to offer. The main window may look a little on the cluttered side but the range of options is PROS AND CONS second to none. In fact, it even puts some of the ✔Amazing range of extra features such as NoiseNinja. more expensive ✔Has a set-up wizard to help software to shame. you customise the software for Download the trial your needs. version and give it a go ✘The layout is quite cluttered – we were quite with the multitude of options. impressed by it.

14 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

cameras often have different RAW files to other models, so your software will need updating. Check its website for updates or click on the ‘Search for updates’ options in your software’s menu.

$69 (around £36)

DOWNLOAD ONLY

15

RAW CONVERSION

nverter Choosing a RAWsofco tware packages The best RAW converter

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 5 £70 You can convert most types of RAW file using Elements and it’s actually pretty comprehensive. A RAW converter pops up when you try to open a RAW file, where you can make your adjustments and then open the image straight into Photoshop. The controls are extremely comprehensive and are laid out in a very simple and intuitive manner.

Capture NX is something of a revolution as RAW converters go. The main reasons for this are control points – we think they are the next big thing where RAW converters are concerned. They offer precise control over any part of your image and allow you unequalled editing capacity. If only it could convert files from non-Nikon cameras...

✔You probably

already have Elements installed.

✔Massive range of RAW controls.

✘Not great for converting batch loads of RAWs.

PROS AND CONS

✔Control points have to be seen to be fully appreciated.

✔Offers just about

everything you could want from a RAW converter.

✘Only converts

Nikon RAW files.

16 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

The question with Aperture was ‘can Apple do for RAW workflow what it did for the MP3 player?’. Well, Aperture is certainly a good stab at it. It is one of the most stylish, well thought-out RAW converters on the market right now but it’s doubtful that many amateurs will benefit from its many awesome features. It’s also aimed primarily at Mac-using pro photographers.

PROS AND CONS

✔Offers some clever features, such as the virtual loupe.

✔Latest version can browse multiple storage devices.

✘Workflow is more suited for professionals.

CAPTURE ONE PRO £299

PROS AND CONS

NIKON CAPTURE NX

APPLE APERTURE £215

£119

Perhaps the most comprehensive RAW converter available, Capture One Pro offers just about everything you could want. There’s an excellent browser, and a whole host of editing and adjustment options that will really help you get the best from your RAW files. It’s not the simplest package to use but once you master it, you’ll be loathed to use anything else.

PROS AND CONS

✔Offers excellent workflow for most photographers.

✔One of the most comprehensive RAW converters available.

✘Can be very confusing for new users.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS2 £500 If you’re really into digital photography, no doubt you will already have CS2 and there’s no surprise that it’s good for converting RAW files. The layout and options are pretty much the same as those in Elements but there are a couple of advanced extra options. Whether or not you’ll use options such as Lens Correction is a different matter.

PROS AND CONS

✔Plenty of

adjustment options.

✔Produces great

results with good levels of sharpness.

✘Expensive but the

extra features make it more than worthwhile.

| 17

RAW CONVERSION

ing your first RAW nvertPHOTOSHOP CINoADOBE ELEMENTS 5

2 The Exposure and Brightness sliders are used for fine-tuning the exposure of the photo. The Shadows and Contrast sliders are mainly used for getting the contrast of your shot just right. Saturation is used to adjust the strength of the colours.

Here’s your beginners’ guide to opening, editing and saving your RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.

OPEN...

EDIT...

In Elements all you need to do to bring your image into the RAW converter is open it up as you would any other image. This can be done by first importing them into the Organizer, or by opening them directly, which is what we’ll look at here. Open Elements and go into the Editor by clicking on Edit and Enhance Photos from the Welcome screen. Now all you need to do is go to the File menu at the top of the screen and click Open. Browse through to find your RAW files, as normal, and double click on the picture you want to open once you’ve located it. In Windows XP, you may be able to see a preview of the selected image at the bottom of the window, which will help you determine whether or not you’ve got the right picture.

Working on your RAW files in Elements is very simple as all of the controls are pretty much on the one screen. Down the righthand side you’ll see the main controls, which adjust the appearance of your image. Before changing anything, however, we’d always

18 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

3 4

3 At the top right is the Zoom recommend that you uncheck the Auto boxes as these seldom give good results.

tool, which allows you to view the fine detail. Double-click it to view the image at 100% so every image pixel is visible. Hold Alt and click on the image to zoom out.

1 These controls affect your

4 When zoomed in, use the Hand

image’s white balance. The white balance eyedropper is located in the top-left corner of the window.

tool to pan around the image to inspect other areas.

boxes show you areas of the image that are so bright, dark or overly saturated that detail is being lost.

6 This can be used to change the default positions for the sliders and can also load the settings from your previous conversion.

5 The Shadows and Highlights

5

6 1

2

Click the Detail tab to reveal a few more sliders, which handle the fine detail in the image. Before you move any of these ensure you’re viewing your image at 100%.

SAVE... Once you’ve finished making adjustments don’t be tempted to click the Save button as all this will do is save a copy of the image in Adobe’s digital negative format. Instead click OK to open the converted RAW straight into Photoshop – this is great if you want to do some more work on the image, which is usually the case. When you’re ready, save the picture as you would any other by going to File>Save As. From the Format menu select one of the following – TIFF for maximum quality, PSD if you’ve used layers and want to keep them intact, or JPEG to compress the images so it takes up less disk space. If you do decide to use JPEG ensure that you use the maximum quality setting and try to only use it for images that are ready for print as re-saving JPEGs as JPEGs can degrade the quality.

If you’re saving your shots as JPEGs, select the maximum quality setting.

19

RAW CONVERSION

nverting your first RAW CINoDIGITAL PHOTO PROFESSIONAL A good quality RAW converter need not cost the world. Here’s an introduction to Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, which comes free with its D-SLRs.

OPEN... When you load Digital Photo Professional (DPP) your screen should be separated into two windows. On the left is the directory tree (click the folders icon if you can’t see it) and on the right is a list of thumbnail images displaying all of the

RAW and JPEG files located in the selected folder. First, use the directory tree to find the folder containing your RAW images and, once the thumbnails have loaded up, double-click one to open it into a separate editor window.

EDIT... DPP is not the most intuitive package but it’s all there if you know where to look. If you can‘t see the tools and options at first glance, then go to the main menu and select View>Toolbar to bring them up. It’s also helpful to remember that you can either have a floating palette or a docked one, as we have here – to achieve this go to Tools>Preferences, click the Tools palette tab and select Docking display.

always work though, so use your own judgement. Try the landscape setting if there’s lots of blue sky in your shot.

1 At the top of the Tools palette is a

your image use the options found under the View menu or use these shortcuts – Ctrl+1 to zoom 50%, Ctrl+2 to zoom 100%, Ctrl+3 to zoom 200% and Ctrl+4 to fit the image to the window.

Brightness adjustment slider to change the exposure of the image and below this are options for setting the white balance. You can either use the dropdown menu of presets or click where it says Click to directly select a neutral tone in the image.

2 The Picture Style menu changes the look and colours in the image to optimise it for different situations such as landscapes and portraits – they don’t 20 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

SAVE...

Click the RGB image adjustment tab to view more controls to enhance the converted RAW. Here you gain access to a great curves tool and also the option to add more colour saturation to your image – the other options here are generally best ignored.

When you’re done editing, click the cross at the top-right of the image to close the window – don’t worry, your changes have already been saved. Back in DPP’s browser, select the image or images you want to process and click the Batch process icon at the top right of the screen. You’ll now see a new window that lets you decide the batch settings. From the top, click Browse to choose a save location for the images. For the File format select either TIFF or JPEG and tick Embed ICC profile to ensure colour accuracy. Now you have the option of giving your batched images a new name by ticking New file name. When you’re ready, click Execute to save your image, which may take a few minutes.

RAWTIP To reset the RAW sliders and settings if you’ve make a mistake, go to Adjustment>Revert to shot settings.

4

5 1

3 Below the histogram, next to where it says Linier, you can set the contrast of the image. At the bottom of the dialogue box are options to change the tone, colour saturation and sharpness.

2

4 There is no zoom tool, so to zoom in on

3

5 Under the Tools menu are options to trim (crop) your image or to use the Stamp tool, which helps remove marks and blemishes from your RAWs. However, this is not as effective as the Healing Brush Tool and Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop Elements.

Select your images and then click Batch Process to save your edited RAWS as TIFFs or JPEGs. 21

RAW CONVERSION

g your first RAW nvertinONE CINoCAPTURE PRO

The Focus tab is used for sharpening the fine detail. At the top you can see a close-up preview of an area of your image with the sharpness effect applied. Click on your image to change the preview area. The Amount slider is used to change the intensity of the sharpening, and Threshold is used to reduce sharpening on smoother areas to reduce visible noise.

Learn the basics of Capture One Pro, one of the most powerful RAW packages available, and enjoy unparalleled control and headache-free workflow.

OPEN...

EDIT...

Capture One contains its own file browser, which makes the workflow amazingly efficient. First click on the yellow folder icon found at the top right above the thumbnail images. This will bring up the directory tree shown on the left-hand side of the screen (see below). Navigate through the folders and highlight the one that contains your RAW images. Capture One will then look through it and bring up a list of preview thumbnails. Simply click on a thumbnail image to start working on it.

The majority of Capture One’s image editing tools are found under the tabs located at the right of the screen. Click onto these to see a whole bunch of additional options and sliders in the grey pane on the far right of the screen. Here we’ve clicked on the Exposure tab...

1 Click the White Balance tab to view a comprehensive set of controls for fine-tuning and removing colour casts. With this option selected you can use the eyedropper icon, found just above the image, to select a neutral tone for a quick white balance correction.

2 The Exposure tab contains the all-important contrast and colour saturation controls, including Curve and Levels. The three sliders seen at the top are for exposure compensation (EC), contrast (CC) and colour saturation (CS or Sat).

3 1 2

3 Above the main image preview you have controls for rotating your image, zooming in and out of your image, and cropping them down. The majority of the other icons here are used for toggling various preview modes on and off so are not as important – hover over these to reveal a brief insight into what they do.

SAVE... To save your image, you must first click the Process tab. Enter a title for the image and then select either TIFF of JPEG from the File format menu. Now click on the icon, which looks like an open folder – it’s the second icon from the left under the Batch Editor heading. This will bring up a dialogue box that allows you to choose where you want to save your images. Either click on the Select folder and browse to choose your own save location, or just click Inside active collection, which will create a Develops folder in the same location as your original RAW files. Click OK to go back and click the icon on the left, which looks like a red cross hovering above a rectangle. Your image will begin processing and will be saved into the chosen folder.

Before you can process your pics make sure you choose a folder to save them in. Click on the green folder icon to do this. 22 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

23

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

Dull. Drab. Lifeless. But it’s nothing a few tweaks on a RAW conversion software package can’t solve. A little saturation enhancement here, a quick exposure tweak there and, hey presto, a brand new shot.

SHOOTING RAW ON YOUR D-SLR

Image enhancement

To maximise the potential of every image you’ll need to familiarise yourself with the white balance, exposure and contrast, saturation and sharpening controls. Here’s how...

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

White balance The ability to fine-tune the colour of your images is one of the main advantages of shooting RAW. This gives you the option of either getting a result that accurately matches the colour of the original scene or, just like using warm-up and cooling-down filters, to create a particular mood or feel to your image. Almost all RAW processing software gives you three main ways of adjusting the white balance. As with your camera, you can select from a range of preset options such as daylight or cloudy, but unless you forget to set it on your camera when you take the shot, these don’t offer many advantages over shooting JPEG. The two other options are to select a colour temperature and tint using sliders, or using an

AUTO WB

eyedropper to take a measurement from a neutral area of your image. There are pros and cons for all three options, but the great thing about this is that you can always use a combination of options to get the result you want. The presets are the simplest to use, but offer few of the creative or subtle adjustments of the individual sliders. Using the color temperature sliders offers full control and creativity, but relies on your judgment (and an accurate monitor) to get the right results. And to make use of the eyedropper you need a neutral tone in your image to take a reading from. Let’s take a look at the best way to use white balance to produce both neutral and more creative results…

Neutral or correct white balance Matching the white balance to the light source is the key to getting neutral results. Using the pre-set options will usually get you close to the right colours, although you’ll find that finetuning the colour temperature and tint sliders will allow you to further fine-tune the results. This does rely on your judgement and an accurate screen though.

A better option, assuming there’s a neutral grey or white area in your image, is to use the eyedropper tool. This is more accurate and controllable than using a basic automatic function, as you can choose the area that the software samples from. You simply click the eyedropper on a neutral area in the image and the software does the rest.

This technique relies on selecting the right area to take a reading from, and even areas that look neutral can contain different coloured pixels, so you will often find it easier if you zoom in on the neutral area to make sure that you click on the right tone. It won’t always get it right first time, so don’t be afraid to click on the area a few times.

Auto white balance can work with some subjects, but in this case the large area of blue has caused the colour of the image to be too warm.

DAYLIGHT WB

RAWTIP

When using the white balanct eyou eyedropper make sure tha t to choose an area that you wange. appear neutral in your ima 26 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

When using light or dark neutral areas with the eyedropper make sure that the tones are within the exposure limits of the image. You can’t take readings from burnt-out highlights or shadows without any detail. You’ll get the best results from grey subjects, or white ones that still contain some detail.

Similar to setting the white balance on your camera, RAW converters offer preset options but you can adjust them to suit your image. 27

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

White balance

AUTO WB

EYEDROPPER

Creative white balance Film photographers have been manipulating colour by their choice of film and filters for years. So while neutral images are technically correct, they aren’t always right for the subject or result that you want. Adjusting the white balance of your RAW files gives you the option of warming up or cooling down the colour of your images without having to worry about using filters.

DAYLIGHT WB

The simplest way to achieve this is to use the preset white balance settings. So for a sunset or sunrise choose the cloudy preset to add a little extra warmth or shade for a more pronounced effect. While these presets offer a good starting point, you can get even greater control by using the colour temperature and tint sliders to precisely adjust the colour of your images.

WARMER

With the colour temperature slider, increasing the colour temperature will produce warmer results, and reducing it will give cooler looking images. The tint slider is used to adjust the amount of green or magenta in the image – moving it to the right adds magenta that can be useful for some sunrise or sunset images, while moving it to the left adds green.

COOLER

Mixed light sources One of the most difficult situations to deal with is when you are shooting under lighting with different colour temperatures. The automatic setting can often give acceptable results, but taking a sample from a neutral or white area using the eyedropper tool gives you more control and more convincing results. Choose an area that is lit by all or as many light sources as possible and click the eyedropper to find the most convincing colour possible.

RAWTIP Choosing the correct preset white balance for a neutral result doesn’t always give the best result. 28 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

Using a higher colour temperature has a similar effect to adding an 81B warm-up filter.

For a cooler look select a lower colour temperature setting to give your image a blue tone.

After adjusting the white balance make sure that you check the exposure, as it can affect the distribution of tones in your image. This can mean highlights that still retained detail at one white balance setting can be pushed into overexposure when you change the colour temperature.

Red shows the burnt-out highlights, while blue shows the shadow areas lacking detail. 29

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Exposure

ENHANCED EXPOSURE

The exposure controls available in your RAW converter are really a means of fine-tuning your images, rather than a replacement for getting it right in-camera. This is because there are limits to the range of adjustments that you can apply to the exposure before you start to affect the quality of the image. Also, although you can retrieve more shadow and highlight detail than you can from a JPEG image, it’s still limited, especially in the highlights. So although you still need to get the exposure as close as possible when shooting, here’s what you can achieve with most RAW converters. The first and most obvious control for adjusting the

exposure is usually an exposure compensation (or just exposure) slider. This works in a similar way to changing the exposure in-camera – slide the marker to the right to make the image brighter or to the left to make it darker. Many are also marked in stops just like the exposure compensation on your camera. The other controls available vary between software packages, but are mainly there to control your images’ shadow detail, contrast and overall tonal distribution. These controls will either take the form of sliders for most adjustments, or curves for adjusting the contrast and tones.

BASIC EXPOSURE ADJUSTMENT The RAW converter in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 uses sliders for all adjustments, and works most effectively when used in the following order:

1 Exposure

3 Brightness

Firstly, carefully adjust the Exposure slider to get the highlights correctly exposed. To do this move the slider to the left or right until you can just make out detail in the brightest areas of your image.

Similar to the Exposure slider, the Brightness control lightens or darkens your image when moved to the left or right. The difference is that unlike the Exposure control it compresses either the highlights or shadows to retain as much detail in these as possible.

2 Shadows Once the highlights are correct you can then move the Shadows slider to the right to darken the shadows if necessary. Again, it’s usually best to move this until you can just make out detail in the darkest areas of your image.

4 Contrast This slider controls the contrast of your image by adjusting the midtone contrast. Moving it to the right increases contrast, while moving it to the left reduces it.

ORIGINAL EXPOSURE

SHADOW AND HIGHLIGHT CLIPPING Although you can get an excellent idea of the exposure adjustments needed on the preview image, most RAW converters also feature warning facilities to ensure that you don’t lose highlight or shadow detail. In Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 you can switch these on by using the tick boxes at the top of the screen. These then display lost highlights in red and shadows in blue. Rather than have these displays on all the time, you can also hold down the Alt key while adjusting the exposure or shadow sliders, and only the warnings will appear on the preview. 30 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

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IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

Contrast

UNPROCESSED RAW UNPROCESSED RAW

Most correctly exposed shots won’t need much adjustment in your RAW converter. The exposure controls come into their own when you want to make the most of high or low contrast scenes that are almost impossible to get right in-camera. Here’s how to use the adjustments to deal with these types of shots…

Many average scenes can look a little flat and low contrast when shooting in RAW. You’ll find that you can boost the contrast a little to give your shots more punch by adjusting them in your RAW converter. This is where the Exposure, Shadow and Contrast sliders really prove their worth. Follow these simple steps...

DEALING WITH HIGH CONTRAST SCENES RAW files can contain much more highlight and shadow detail than JPEGs, so they can produce much better results when the brightness range of the scene exceeds the tonal range available from your digital camera. Follow these steps to enhance your images...

1 Highlights and shadows The first steps to making the most of high contrast subjects is to adjust the Exposure and Shadow sliders so that the maximum amount of detail is shown in the image. You’ll usually find that you have to reduce the Exposure slider, and this will often mean that the Shadow slider can be set to zero as the exposure adjustment will naturally give dark shadows.

DEALING WITH LOW CONTRAST SCENES

1 Highlights and shadows

2 Contrast

With low contrast scenes you’ll find that you need to boost both the highlights and the shadows to get results with more impact. Move the Exposure slider until the brightest highlights just retain some detail, then move the Shadow slider to the right until the darkest areas just start to lose detail.

The Brightness slider generally doesn’t need much adjustment with low contrast images, but you may want to give the image more punch by increasing the Contrast slider until you are happy with the image in the preview window. How far you go with these adjustments is very much down to personal preference, although watch out for noise if your original image was underexposed.

PROCESSED RAW

PROCESSED RAW

2 Contrast Once you’ve got the maximum highlight and shadow detail you can then use the Brightness and Contrast sliders to adjust the image. If most of the image is too dark you can increase the Brightness slider to compensate. You will also find that reducing the Contrast slider will help you to get the maximum detail through the whole tonal range (reducing it too much can make your image look flat). 32 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

RAWTIP RAW files are much better at retaining shadow detail than highlights, so many people tend to underexpose their digital images to err on the safe side. This is generally a good idea, but be careful not to underexpose your shots too much, as the more you try to lighten the image the more

noise will be visible in the image. This becomes even more visible if you boost the saturation and apply high amounts of sharpening to your results. So when exposing your RAW images try to shoot so that the highlights just retain detail rather than simply underexposing every shot. 33

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

Saturation As the image is taken straight from the sensor without any in-camera processing, even the most perfectly exposed RAW image of a brightly coloured subject can look a little flat and dull. Like most other aspects of RAW processing the solution is simple, and can produce higher quality results than trying to boost the saturation of JPEG images. A saturation slider is the most common control for this in RAW conversion software. The adjustments that you make to the saturation of your images are largely down to personal preference. You can move the slider to the right for punchy, highly saturated images, or you can move the slider to the left to remove saturation, and even produce mono results in most software packages. Be aware that there are some pitfalls to watch out for when increasing the saturation of your images. Similar to adjusting the exposure, increasing the saturation too much will mean you’ll start to lose detail in the brightest areas. Trying to boost the colour of a low saturation original too much can also cause noise in the final image. These problems aside, it’s still a better quality option than boosting the saturation of a JPEG, so here’s how to get the most out of the saturation controls in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5…

RAWTIP Remember that the appearance of the end result isn’t just down to saturation. It’s also a combination of using the exposure, contrast and saturation controls. There’s no point simply boosting the saturation without adjusting the other controls to get the most out of your image. So once you’ve made the initial saturation adjustments go back and check the exposure and contrast again. 34 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

FINAL IMAGE

OVERSATURATED COLOURS

START IMAGE

Take care not to go too far when increasing saturation in your RAW files. With brightly coloured subjects it’s easy for certain areas to go over the top and lose detail. In this example some of the red areas in particular have become unsightly blocks of colour.

BOOSTING COLOUR

Getting the saturation right in your RAW converter gives you better quality than later adjustments in Photoshop.

1 Adjust the exposure, contrast and white balance If you adjust the saturation first you’ll find it difficult to get your colours right, so before you change the saturation make sure the contrast, exposure and white balance are correct. They don’t have to be precisely right, but ensure that the image contains a full range of tones with no blown highlights or shadows.

2 Adjust the saturation Once you’ve adjusted the exposure you can start adjusting the colour saturation. For most images you’ll find a value of between +5 and +30 will be enough to give the colours a boost. Increasing the saturation can cause changes to the overall exposure, so it’s also useful to tick the highlight clipping warning box at the top of the screen which shows when the colours have gone too far.

Too much saturation can result in blocking.

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Sharpening

Like many of the adjustments available with RAW, sharpening can be applied in image-editing software such as Photoshop. But applying it during the RAW conversion stage produces sharper-looking images and better quality results without increasing noise when compared to JPEG or TIFF files. Even so, it’s always best to apply the minimum amount of sharpening to your

FINISHED IMAGE

images necessary to bring out detail, otherwise you’ll still end up with noisy, over-sharpened results. Most RAW conversion software packages offer a choice of sharpening settings that use either presets such as low, medium and high, or a slider control. Here’s how to use the sharpening controls in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5…

APPLYING SHARPNESS

RAW images can look a little soft when you come to print them, but you need to get the settings right to avoid increased noise. The controls in Elements 5 use a simple slider to apply the amount of sharpening to your image. For most RAW images a value of between 20 and 40 will give your shots enough sharpening without introducing too much noise. The Luminance Smoothing and Color Noise Reduction sliders can normally be left on their default settings of 0 and 25 for most images shot at low ISO settings. You can increase these for images shot at higher ISO settings on your camera, but the Luminance Smoothing slider in particular tends to blur fine detail. This means that you have to apply more sharpening to try to overcome this, which introduces more noise, so they cancel each other out and you’ll still get less actual detail in your final image.

36 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

NO SHARPENING

WITH SHARPENING

TOO MUCH SHARPNESS Using high values of sharpening can cause ‘halos’ around the detail and increased noise, so don’t overdo it. It’s tempting to use these settings, but using values above 50 on the Sharpness slider in Elements 5 can lead to noise and image quality problems.

OVER-SHARPENING

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EXTRA SETTINGS SHOOTING RAW ON YOUR D-SLR

Extra settings It’s time to discover a few more advanced settings that will improve workflow, help you extract a greater range of tones and find even more detail in your RAW files...

Shooting into the light was always going to result in too much contrast. But we can use the more advanced RAW converter features to sort this.

EXTRA SETTINGS

Advanced contrast adjustments One of the most exciting things about RAW is that you have access to extra highlight and shadow detail that’s not available in the equivalent JPEG image. But that’s not the end of the story because the knock-on affect of this is that there is a greater range of tones available in the midtones too. With all this extra picture information available to us it would be a shame not to make the most of it. So it’s time to bring out the big guns. When it comes to contrast, you may not be restricted to just moving a couple of simple sliders. Packages such as Canon Digital Photo Professional and Capture One Pro offer more advanced Levels and Curves controls that allow us to balance the contrast in even the most challenging scenes.

LEVELS Probably the easier of the two tools to get to grips with, Levels is mainly used for setting the black and white points in the image. This means that we’re ensuring our darkest tones are black and the brightest tones are white, rather then varying tones of grey as they often are in low contrast scenes. The effect of this is one that you’ll never get tired of. The contrast will be lifted and you’ll have much more clarity and punch in your shots – colours and shapes become much stronger as the difference between tones is exaggerated. To gauge where to set the black and white points we use the histogram, which is essentially just a fancy bar chart. Look for gaps between the body of the graph and edges of the bounding box, like the one shown here. If you spot any, then all you need to do is drag the sliders at the bottom corners of the histogram in to meet the edges of the ‘mountain range’. With some software there is also a third slider found in the middle, which sets the brightness of the midtones. Drag it to the left to make them lighter or to the right to darken them.

ENHANCED RAW

Align the sliders with the edges of the histogram for improved contrast. ORIGINAL RAW

40 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

CURVES

ENHANCED RAW

Using Curves is more of an art than a science and mastering it takes a bit of practice, but once you have you’ll have access to one of the most powerful contrast tools available. Curves enables you to change the brightness of different tones in your image by changing the shape of the ORIGINAL RAW curve. This is done by simply clicking and dragging on the diagonal line to add in little anchor points. The best way to learn what’s going on is to try it out for yourself, but to get you started here are a few of the most useful shapes to try out…

Curve up/ down A simple curve like this will brighten the midtones without affecting the very dark tones or highlights too much. Conversely, dragging the line down to create the opposite curve will darken the midtones and make them richer.

‘S’ curve This is probably the most useful shape. A simple ‘S’ will darken the dark tones and brighten the lighter tones, increasing the midtone contrast. The deeper the ‘S’ the stronger the effect.

Inverse ‘S’ curve Great for contrasty shots. Pulling up the bottom of the graph brightens the shadows, while the top anchor point ensures the highlights are not affected. Make sure the curve doesn’t flatten out in the middle.

RAWTIP If you have a landscape with a bright sky and dark foreground you can convert two versions of the same image, one exposed for the sky and the other for the foreground, and merge them in Photoshop using a large soft-edged Eraser. 41

EXTRA SETTINGS

There’s more...

Here are just a handful of the more advanced controls, options and features that the leading RAW converters offer. Master these and you’ll gain even more control over your images.

Preserve your colours

No matter what colour space you use, you need to make sure that Photoshop is looking at your profile so it’s displaying accurate colours. If you get a warning when opening a picture that says something along the lines of ‘Embedded Profile Mismatch’, select Use the embedded profile and click OK.

16-bit or 8-bit Most converters give you the option of saving your images as 8-bit or 16-bit TIFFs, while Photoshop lets you choose the bit depth before opening. On direct comparison you probably won’t notice any difference, but you just have to know what to look for. You may already know that standard colour images offer 256 levels of brightness for each channel – Red, Green and Blue. This equates to 256 different shades of grey. This is fine for the majority of images because the difference between tones is so minimal that the pictures appear perfectly smooth to the naked eye. Problems arise, however, if you want to make radical contrast adjustments in Photoshop. The difference between the grey tones is exaggerated and the 42 | Shooting RAW on your D-SLR

smooth gradated areas turn into obvious blocks of discrete colour – this is known as banding. 16-bit files cope with this much better. They contain double the amount of information and offer a whopping 65,536 shades of grey. With a tonality this smooth, you’re much less likely to experience problems with banding. 16-bit is ideal for any images that you really want to push to the limits in Photoshop, or for black & white conversions where the tonal quality is much more important. There are drawbacks though. 16-bit files are twice the size of 8-bit files and there’s a limit to what you can actually do to a 16-bit picture. You won’t be able to access many of the filters in Photoshop until you convert back to 8-bit.

Choosing the right colour space Colour space is a subject that will leave all but the most enthusiastic and technical photographers stone cold. However, it is important to know the basics because accurate and attractive colours hang in the balance. There are loads of different colour spaces to choose from (also known as profiles) but there are only two you really need to know…

Adobe 1998 This is mainly for the professional’s among us. Most image libraries

require this standard, as it contains a wider range of colours. It’s also useful if you want to do a lot of editing to your images in Photoshop, as it’ll help to preserve colour accuracy.

sRGB IEC61966-2.1 It’s not the most catchy name to remember, admittedly, but sRGB is the best option for the majority of us. It’s particularly useful if the image is for web use or is ready to be printed.

TAG YOUR BEST IMAGES Most browsers allow you to flag, tag or check your favourite images as you’re looking through them. This allows you to quickly see which ones you want to work on and save. There’s usually an icon or menu item that will tag any pictures that you have selected. If you want to process the tagged images all at once, there’s usually a menu option that will automatically select all tagged images so you can click to batch process them. 43