PBase

Ive been using my Canon powershot G5 for about 6 months now and have always shot in jpg format. I thought I should give the RAW a try recently but frankly I have no idea how to processes them. I use photoshop but once I open the RAW I sit and think.."ok now what?" Can someone give me a rundown on what Im suppose to do with them? Do I minipulate the raw? Do I change it to tiff and then make my changes? Or do I convert to jpg and then make changes? Im really not sure what the benifits are to shooting raw in the first place.. please help.

I have not used photoshop to modify changes to RAW images, but I do use the software that came with my Canon 10d. The benefits are great because you can make the in camera setting adjustments as if your shooting it again. In other words, you can adjust contrast, sharpness, saturation....etc, it is the equivalent of changing a setting in your camera & taking the shot again. They have macros for each type of camera so the software more realistically produces the same changes as if your camera would make them internally.

Hope this helps?

fastuno is correct but that is just the first phase..

Next you can bring it into Photoshop and you are gaining the extra bits for selective usage. Example imagine you shoot somebody with one person in sunlight and another in a shadow. You can create a mask of the shadow area and bring up the level of just that area. The extra bits of the RAW file will give you the depth you need for making the picture more pleasent. The shadow areas of trees can often be recovered in RAW mode showing the branches inside the tree (behind the leaves).

I you are into dramatic effects RAW gives you more control when you tweak the curves on a picture.

Next you convert to 8 bit color space and then do whatever other Photoshop type effects you want and save it out.

RAW will not improve every picture, but it will allow you to salvage pictures that if shot in JPEG mode were pretty much unrecoverable.

It also has the advantage of not mixing JPEG compression artifacts with the noise of the sensor (especially on higher ISO values). This can make it easier for postprocessing programs (Neatimage, etc) to fix the file.

we shoot exclusively in RAW because it does allow more latitude with exposure etc. as has already been stated. but one of my favorite things about it is the custom white balance. LOL, sounds dumb but i am HORRIBLE about remembering to change it when shooting. i'll be in the shade and change it to the appropriate setting but then when i go back into the sun, i'll forget until like 50 shots later. with RAW, that doesn't matter because you can adjust it to whatever you want.

honestly though, RAW really is a great thing. you can save blown out areas or underexposed shadows without losing as much of the detail as you would in photoshop. if you decide to shoot that way though, i recommend Capture 1 over the 10D softwear. I think its easier to use and gets better results, in my own opinion.