A JPEG is what the camera sees but I want more than that. I also shoot RAW because I am interested in the best image quality I can get. I often bracket when shooting landscape because the dynamic range is often greater than a RAW file can capture. I shoot RAW because the dynamic range of a scene is often greater than a JPEG can capture.
Modern camera sensors have greater dynamic range (they can record a greater range of tones) so there’s more leeway than there used to be. But if your image is just generally underexposed (and not out the the left of the histogram), you may still be able to recover a viable image, perhaps with some increase in noise. Similarly with shadows that really are completely underexposed. If parts of your image really are completely overexposed, those parts will have no detail and there is nothing to recover. Your camera “blinkies” are also based on the JPEG histogram. Usually for RAW you will have about two-thirds of a stop extra highlight room from what the histogram shows (and shadow room) but that varies for different cameras, exposure situations and probably lenses. This makes exposing to the right straightforward if you are shooting JPEG but more mysterious if you are shooting RAW. (Well, unless you have the rare and expensive Leica Monochrom). Your camera shows a histogram for a JPEG file, not a histogram for a RAW file. Exposing to the right is important because there is much more information in highlight areas with detail than in shadow areas.Ī histogram with a solid white line to the right, indicating overexposure There are partial exceptions to this where bright lights are part of your image such as concert lights, streetlights, the sun or specular highlights. This means that the histogram for an image in your camera should be as far as possible to the right side without there being a white line shooting up the border which indicates overexposure. Some people choose to shoot JPEG so they don’t have to process the image but that only works well if your subject has a limited tonal range and you expose accurately.įor any exposure, it is better to “expose to the right”. A JPEG file is a subset of a RAW file with limited capacity to make further changes. RAW files offer potentially greater quality for both tonality and colour than JPEGs though they do require processing. All images benefit from some processing, a few require very little. This is a stitched panorama with very little other processing. Post-processing is a very important part of that. The most important thing in Photography is to use your own vision to produce an image the way you visualise it, not what the camera or computer decides for you, or what fashions dictate. There is something for everyone and it covers quite a lot of ground so some may prefer to come back multiple times for different sections. The third part is a somewhat detailed survey of alternatives, including Fuji-specific issues, plug-ins, other RAW processors, Capture One and Luminosity masking.The second part shows a way to quickly process images in Lightroom using Autotone as a starting point.The first part deals with why you might want to assess images using FastRawViewer (the only way to see an accurate picture of a RAW file) and why you might want to consider bracketing files.However, there may be some ideas or information that you can adapt to your own unique processing style.
There is of course no ultimate workflow for processing RAW files. I originally wrote it for the Canberra Photographic Society. This post is of interest to people who use cameras and process images.