How many of you are shooting in RAW format? Have you ever even heard of RAW format?? If you're just a mama at home, shooting playtime pictures of your kids, do you need to shoot RAW? Nope, you don't have to. But should you? ABSOLUTELY! RAW format ROCKS! Need proof? Well, here you go ...
A Sarah Q screw up (turned into a Sarah Q FAVORITE!)
From blahhhhh sky to BLUUUUUUE sky!
From mid-day sunny blue skintones (YUCK!) to late-day warm golden skintones!
How CRUMMY are those "before" pictures?!?!?! Pretty bad, I know! Truth is EVERYBODY screws up sometimes ... even your favorite photographers :) Personally, I like to overexpose my photos a little bit since I like bright, fun colors. (When you underexpose and then try to lighten photos in Photoshop, they can get really muddy looking.) But sometimes, since I shoot in all manual mode, I'm off a little. Lighting changes pretty quick sometimes so there are often times when photos are overexposed TOO much, like the first example above. I use RAW format as a safety net for times like those. See, RAW format captures more data than JPG format. If that first photo had been a JPG file, I wouldn't have been able to bring back the color in Jakob's cheeks and neck. Since it was a RAW file, there was all kinds of hidden data to work with and bringing back the overexposed spots was as simple as sliding the exposure slider in Lightroom. A two second fix! Can't beat that :)
Let's shoot some RAW baby!First, grab your camera's manual or push the Menu button and find the "Quality" control. There should be lots of options and probably a few symbols and it might look pretty confusing. Skip over all those letters and put it on RAW! All those other options will give you JPGs, which are great for printing directly from a memory card, but now that we want to do some fun photo editing, we need more control! RAW is all about CONTROL and DATA! When you shoot in RAW format, you have more control over the final photo because it captures a lot more data and doesn't compress your files into JPGs. (Want to learn more about JPGs and RAW files? Click
HERE!)
First important difference you'll notice ... your memory card won't hold NEARLY as many photos when shooting in RAW format! I know that kinda stinks, but that's the price you'll pay for control. RAW files are MUCH bigger than JPGs because of all the extra data they collect. No biggie, though ... memory cards are cheap these days! Go out and grab a few 4 gig cards and you'll be set! :)
Try this when you shoot for the first time in RAW ... shoot some correctly exposed photos, then some overexposed, then some underexposed. Shoot in the shade, shoot in direct sunlight and shoot inside, too. Get a wide variety of shots so you can play with your editing later and see the RAW magic!The next difference you'll see will be when it's time to download the photos from your cards. RAW files aren't ready to print, can't be uploaded to Flickr and can't even be opened by Photoshop until they've been through a RAW Processor. So where the heck do you get a RAW Processor?!?!?! Well, if you have Lightroom - you're all set! Lightroom recognizes RAW format files and lets you edit them just like you would JPGs. Easy as pie! If you don't have Lightroom you can use Adobe Camera Raw, which is a plugin for Photoshop (and is included when you install it) or the software that came with your camera. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to be posting examples from Lightroom. To follow along, download a free trial from the Adobe website! You'll love it :)
Once you're in Lightroom, import the photos from your memory card. Once they're all there, click on the Develop tab on the top right. Now you'll have all your sliders right there on the right side of your photos. To see what RAW can do, find one of the overexposed photos you shot and then pull the exposure slider to the left to bring back all the detail in the blown-out areas. COOL isn't it?! Try that on one of your JPGs (that you shot before learning about RAW format) and see how much detail comes back. It won't be nearly as impressive!
Another GREAT reason to shoot RAW is the White Balance (WB) flexibility. What is White Balance?? Put simply, White Balance is the shade of white in your photos. Sometimes your whites will have a cooler tone (like when you shoot in the shade or the middle of the day) and sometimes they'll be warmer (like right before sunset or indoors). WB is HUGELY important in how your photo looks! See the photo above of the little girl and her lollipop? In the "before" photo, her skintone was blueish and cold and the background was funky looking. By simply changing the WB setting in Lightroom, I gave her skin a warmer tone and made the green grass behind her look great! Here's another example ...
This is Evie - the cutest baby ALIVE! She came by our studio earlier this week with her mom Gia and I got to snap some fun pictures of her with our newly painted blue wall. See how the blue wall reflected onto the floor and her skin in the "before" photo? All it took was a little WB tweak to give her skin a sweet, warmish pink tone. SOOOO MUCH BETTER!
Another fun way to play with White Balance is to go too far and give your photos a cross-processed look. This was a cute picture of Gia and Evie that I thought would be fun to play with. The look isn't "realistic" but it's fun and the blueish/green tones make the picture a little more interesting and edgy. (We'll play more with cross-processing in a few days. Your next homework assignment is going to be all about fun editing, so keep checking the blog!)
Once you've finished getting your color and exposure right on your RAW file, it's time to export. Until you export the photos from Lightroom, you won't be able to print them or upload them online. I'll do a little tutorial later this week to help you figure out the best way to organize your photos in Lightroom, but for now you can just export them one at a time. To export, click on the photo that you want and then go up to File-Export. Under "Export Location" pick a folder for where you want your picture saved. Under "File Settings" choose JPG and put the Quality at 100. Under "Image Settings" make sure the "Resize to Fit" button isn't checked. You can leave the "Resolution" at 72. Don't worry about the rest of the boxes ... just click "Export." Within a few seconds your photo will be processed and exported into the folder you selected. It's now ready to print! Whoo hoo!
Okay, so I hope I convinced you to give RAW format a chance! The files are bigger and there's an extra step involved in the processing, but I think you'll LOVE the flexibility and control over your results. Leave me some comments and let me know what you think!
XOXO, Sarah Q
