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Posted on 26/08/12 8:11:55 PM |
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ConnieR.
* Posts: 53 Reply  |
JPG or RAW?
Hi, I have the How To Cheat in Photoshop for CS5. It's areally amazing book, even though a lot of it is above my level. But I find it has a lot of good things in there to expand my photoshop skills. Anyway, I had a question that is probably too basic, so I didn't see anything about it in the book. Do you use jpg or raw files for the composites? I think it would be easier to use Jpgs, especially if you have a lot of small isolated objects to combine. Even for some of the techniques that aren't really composites, such as changing day to night, wouldn't it be simpler to use a jpg file that has already been processed, instead of having to work with an unprocessed raw file? Or am I overlooking something? Thank you very much. |
Posted on 27/08/12 5:14:22 PM |
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Sjef
Flying Dutchman Posts: 571 Reply  |
Re: JPG or RAW?
Your question is actually a photographer's question. If you are a photographer and you want to pull everything out of your camera it can be a good thing to use Raw. But when you take every photo in Raw, you need to convert al these photo's to readable bitmaps. That can take a lot of time. It seems like Raw is a magic word these days, but with a good camera you don't need Raw to take good pictures. To follow the assignments of the book there's no need at all to use Raw files, that's for sure 
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Posted on 28/08/12 07:33:48 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6997 Reply  |
Re: JPG or RAW?
Connie, Check out page 432 for a tutorial on using Camera Raw. Sjef's right - Raw is all about treating individual photographs, not working with composites. Once you put a layer into a montage it just becomes part of a regular Photoshop layer. |
Posted on 01/09/12 10:20:39 PM |
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ConnieR.
* Posts: 53 Reply |
Re: JPG or RAW?
So you guys just use JPG files for the layers, right? I know there's a ton of controversy in photographer circles about JPEG vs RAW, and I didn't really mean the question like that. I wanted to stick with JPEGs for composites, because it's much easier, but I wanted to know what the professionals like Mr. Caplin do. I figured even if the original photos were captured RAW, they'd already be optimized and converted to JPEG before being used in a composite, but I just wanted to make sure. |
Posted on 02/09/12 12:35:10 PM |
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Jota120
Ingenious Inventor Posts: 2615 Reply  |
Re: JPG or RAW?
Just a personal view I go for RAW most times. My cameras will shoot and save both at same time. Jpeg only has 8bits per RGB channel. My RAW has 14 per channel. This means a lot more pixel information you can be manipulate with filters etc before the histogram starts falling apart and get artefacts in PS. This might be an excuse on my part as should really take good photos at the start, but life not perfect. The other problem with Jpeg is the camera uses its algorithms to change the image (a Jpeg is encoded like a mobile phone). You can select them in your preferences, but e.g. get sharpening gets added and colour filters messing with the image which means the original information has gone and the colour profile maybe not right (see other discussions). In RAW, the camera software has done nothing apart from record in my case 14 bits per channel, err uses a lot of memory card space. When you open a RAW created file in PS it will be 16 bits image, vs Jpeg 8 i.e. uses a lot more memory and processing power. So I use both: quick pics use Jpeg, anything with PS and printing default RAW. RAW of course extends your workflow time, but does not seem much to me. One big advantage is when editing RAW in Bridge/PS an .xmp is associated wit it. The original RAW information is still in place, so you can always go back to original and have another go. Really good. Again this just my view. Take your choice Good luck Connie, Trevor |