I've avoided taking photos in RAW format for many great reasons. 1) the files are bigger and take forever to copy to the computer 2) JPG is easily shared 3) JPG is quickly displayed by every photo editor known to man 4) there weren't many free editors/organizers that read in RAW 5) Nikon does a great job of getting the picture right in JPG format if I do an adequate job of photographing...
Google Picasa does read in RAW format but for the D50 NEF - it's just a little dull. The colours aren't vibrant. Sometimes the exposure for the RAW is horrid. Picasa does a lot of great things well. It's great for uploading and sharing to web albums like Flickr and Facebook. The thumbnail display is super fast. It continues to improve the easy editing like retouching (getting rid of skin blemishes, dust spots on the sensor or snot in baby's noses), red-eye reduction and if I was using JPG entirely, I would never use anything else.
But I got my hands on Photoshop Elements - which I recommend you try the free trial. Picasa has spoiled me on a few things. In Adobe Organizer, the thumbnails are slower, the interface is far less intuitive, and the editor brings my computer to an absolute crawl... However a LOT of my RAW photos that would have died in the recycling bin in Picasa have been completely revived. For absolute vivid control around colour, Adobe's RAW Converter is top of the line.
So when I'm in the field, and I know that I'm clipping highlights or I know I need a little flexibility when I get the shots home, I'll shoot RAW and have some lattitude with Adobe Elements to save those few mistakes that I would not have kept before. And for those perfectly exposed, perfectly composed and perfectly shot photos that would have been great even as JPG? Well that's what the Save As is for.
No comments:
Post a Comment