Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:36 pm
Do people keep a RAW & JPG file.
The option to generate this on a 350D (and 20D and 30D) I think is primarily for backwards compatibility for people who used to own earlier digital cameras. RAW files didn't support embedding of thumbnails until the 350D and 20D. Therefore for previews of images, you needed a JPEG as well. Now I think it makes more sense to just capture in RAW or JPEG (not both)... unless you prefer to shoot RAW but save your images to a portable image viewer that can only preview JPEGs, in which case you would still need both.
Do people edit the RAW and delete the JPG
As the JPEG is the final output, I don't think you would delete that. You may be tempted to delete the RAW file, but then you miss the opportunity to reprocess the RAW file at a later date. I keep mine just in case.
Would people 'generally' edit the raw by applying an 'auto' or 'preconfigured' white balance with the assumption it does a better job than the camera?
I think magazines possibly make too much of getting the exact white balance. If you shoot RAW, you can decide what looks best when you process the image, rather than exactly what it looked like at the time. So I shoot on "Auto" white balanace and then change the colour temperature manually in RAW if it doesn't look right.
What do you save the modified RAW image as (filetype)?
2 JPEGS. One of original size, and the other PBASE size. The PBASE version I sometimes create from RAW, but if I need to process the full size JPEG further after conversion, I'll make a copy of that after processing and resize it instead.
Do you still keep the original RAW file?
Yes.
What software do you use?
I used to use Breeze Browser Pro exclusively to process the RAW files. It worked great on my 20D (and therefore will work great on your 350D). But I've upgraded to a 30D and the RAW images are softer out of the camera on the 30D than the 20D. Breezebroswer only sharpens up to "level 7", while Digital Photo Professional (supplied with the camera) sharpens up to level 10. So until Breezebrowser sorts this out I'm using a combination of both. For post-processing after JPEG conversion, I mainly use Paintshop Pro.
Note that I haven't got Adobe Photoshop as its so expensive, and I'd rather buy lenses with the money at the moment. However I'm seriously considering migrating to Adobe Lightroom when it is released.