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In The RAW

     Let me make my opinion very clear. If your camera can produce a RAW file, you should ALWAYS use it! I am going to assume that if you’re a photographer who’s reading this article you use Photoshop. As such, you probably know about Adobe Bridge. Just like the other raw converters out there, Bridge allows you to adjust white balance, exposure etc. to a number of images at the same time. The number of images is really only limited by the capabilities of your computer. It should be no problem though to open 20 or 30 images at a time in Bridge and make your adjustments.

     Thanks to the functionality of Bridge and other similar converters it is now much faster to process RAW files than it is jpegs. If you were going to adjust the white balance of a set of images in Photoshop that were jpegs in the quickest manner possible you would need to start with an example image. Then, you would need to write an action for the various color balance, levels, and curves adjustments that would be necessary. Then, you would need to run the action as a batch processing job on the images that had similar lighting. The problem comes when the lighting changes…maybe your bride and groom stepped outside for the cocktail hour, maybe your portrait clients moved inside. Whatever the case may be, you now have to go through the process all over again.

     There are some new programs out now that make this difference smaller. For instance, Adobe Lightroom can adjust the white balance of jpegs now, but it has a smaller adjustment range than if you had shot RAW from the beginning. Also, you still have the other drawbacks of jpegs to consider. For instance, jpegs are only 8 bit files when they come out of the camera, whereas most cameras produce 12 or even 14 bit RAW files. By limiting yourself to only 8 bits from the very outset you are throwing away a great deal of information. An 8 bit file only has 256 levels of information, whereas a 12 bit file has 4096. Now, we aren’t really comparing apples to apples here, but the fact remains that you ARE discarding information. I never agree with doing that!

     Raw also has a higher dynamic range than a jpg straight out of the camera does. If you know how to work with layers and can build up your image with different “exposures” from the original raw file, you can increase the dynamic range even further. RAW is truly beautiful in the level of control you have over adjusting the image to look just how you want it. Memory is cheap these days, not just CF or SD cards but hard drives as well. The old theory of using jpegs in order to save space is a bit silly when you consider how affordably you can add massive amounts of storage. There are a few people out there who benefit from jpegs. For instance, a newspaper photographer who has a tight deadline and is working out in the field might want to just send jpegs straight to his editor who will have the photo techs work their magic. However, I think that the vast majority of photographers can benefit from a RAW only workflow. It really IS faster than jpegs and offers you a much simpler way of editing a large number of files in bulk.