RAWtard needs some help.

[Joe Copalman]

So I decided to see what all this megapixel-hungry, speed-of-molasses superformat is all about today and shot nothing but RAW out at Willie.  Since I've never edited RAW images before, I'd appreciate it if anyone can steer me toward a solid, no-nonsense tutorial so I don't spend an entire evening following links that lead to poor walk-throughs written by idiots.

Thanks!

[Matt Ottosen]

RAW files will automatically open a RAW editor in newer Photoshop programs (it's an old stand-alone program that Adobe acquired a few years ago called RAW Shooter Essentials).  This editor will have some basic editing functions that will not affect your original RAW file.  Once you are done here it will open the new file in Photoshop for full editing, and your original RAW file will remain unaltered.

My suggestion is to just play around with the RAW editor, you already know basic editing and should be able to figure it out fairly easily.

[Joe Copalman]

I can dig that, but do I have to save my work in the RAW editor (what in the wide world of sports is a .DNG file?) before that, or can I just make the changes then click "Open Image" and edit as a jpeg in regular PS?  And how do I convert RAW to .tiff?

[Matt Ottosen]

No, you don't need to save your file before you open in PS, it will just open the photo with your RAW edits in PS.  The .DNG file just saves your RAW editor settings for that photo so if you open the RAW file again it will automatically adjust to those settings.  When you save the file in PS you can save as .jpg or .tiff depending on the compression you want.

[Joe Copalman]

Alright, I think I have it figured out.  Thanks for the help. 

I'll have to play with it a bit more to see if an advantage over .jpeg becomes apparent. 

[David Loera]

dont go blind

[Jay Beckman]

.DNG is actually a file format.

There are some who suggest converting every RAW to DNG becuase RAW is camera-maker specific (Canon = CR2, Nikon = NEF, etc...) and if one of them decides to change the formula, your images could be rendered useless while DNG is a recognized format like JPG, TIF, PNG...

I don't think the consequences are all that dire yet so I still hold onto the original CR2 format off my Canon gear.

You'll see the advantage of RAW Joe the first time you're able to recover some toasty highlights that would otherwise have been totally blown out in jpg.  RAW offers about 1 to 1.5 stops more headroom than JPG.  It's on of the nice "safety nets" that are built into digital.  One other thing to bear in mind is that the image on your LCD and the histogram derived from that image are JPG so even if you slightly clip the highlights in camera, they should still be useable once you open them with a RAW processor.

[Matt Ottosen]

.DNG is actually a file format.

Yes, .DNG is a file format, my mistake.  I was thinking of the .xmp file when I said:

The .DNG file just saves your RAW editor settings for that photo so if you open the RAW file again it will automatically adjust to those settings.

[Stephen Marshall]

As for the wonders of RAW, I've attached 2 photos. The first is what I was able to recover via RAW editing. The second is the original out of the camera photo, where the flash didn't fire. The edits included +4 stops exposure and pretty much maxed everything. It's not pretty but it gets the point across about how much info a RAW file retains.

RAW is a bit rough to get started in but once you get used to it and discover its benefits you'll never want to touch those silly Jpegs again unless you're trying to upload that image.