A little RAW help please?

Steve M

Steve M

Steve M

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14 Dec 2007
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Hi all.

I've just put my Panasonic TZ5 on the bay a bought myself a Panasonic Lumix TZ38. This shoots in RAW but i've no experience of this although i have a basic understanding of what it is.

I have Adobe CS4 and i've just downloaded the Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 plug-in. Is this all i need? I'm guessing if so then i'll be able to open the RAW files in CS4 and then just process them. Is that right? Then what file format do i save the processed images in? JPEG?

I haven't got my new camera yet so is there anywhere i could download a RAW file from and have a practice?

Thanks in advance.
 
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Personally I'd say save yourself the hassle of all the extra stuff that Photoshop does and get Lightroom. The workflow for RAW imports and simple image correction is way more intuitive. Once you're done fixing you just export in any format you prefer; JPEG, TIFF, DNG, PSD or the original format.

Lightroom 3 beta is currently a free download until April (or whenever it's released) from this page.
 
Lightroom is fantastic for bulk importing, cataloging and processing images, makes the process much easier. Whilst its 'free' its well worth a download. My only gripe with it is that the interface feels a bit sluggish.
 
Cheers again for the replies. I've just downloaded a RAW image from the net (taken with a TZ38) and processed it in CS4. I'll propably just stick with Photoshop when my camera arrives. This is the image i processed, not the best but i'm still learning:



Also CS4 lets you preview the RAW images before processing DB_SamX.
 
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Steve M said:
This is the image i processed, not the best but i'm still learning:
Click to expand...

To help bring you up to speed, here are some things that I would experiment with if that were my picture. Try them one at a time.

Slide "Recover" to the right for a more dramatic sky.

Slide "Fill Light" to the right to bring out some of the detail in the shadow of the barges.

Slide "Contrast" to the right for more bite.

Slide "Saturation" to the right for more colour.

In HSL/Color/Greyscale, Slide "Blue Saturation" for a better sky (but it will probably wreck the blue in the bridge)

Switch to Greyscale and play with the Orange colour sliders and watch what happens to the sky.

Lightroom++

Andrew
 
Gaffer said:
To help bring you up to speed, here are some things that I would experiment with if that were my picture. Try them one at a time.

Slide "Recover" to the right for a more dramatic sky.

Slide "Fill Light" to the right to bring out some of the detail in the shadow of the barges.

Slide "Contrast" to the right for more bite.

Slide "Saturation" to the right for more colour.

In HSL/Color/Greyscale, Slide "Blue Saturation" for a better sky (but it will probably wreck the blue in the bridge)

Switch to Greyscale and play with the Orange colour sliders and watch what happens to the sky.

Lightroom++

Andrew
Click to expand...

Thanks for that.

Original RAW file is here if you fancy showing me how it's done: http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/panasonic_lumix_dmc_fz38_review/sample_images/

Is this any better or have i now overdone it?

 
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Steve M said:
Original RAW file is here if you fancy showing me how it's done: http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/panasonic_lumix_dmc_fz38_review/sample_images/
Click to expand...

Ummm... my old version of Lightroom 1 doesn't seem to support .RW2 :-( Shame, I was going to try a high contrast b/w version.

Steve M said:
Is this any better or have i now overdone it?
Click to expand...

That's for you to judge according to your own taste and style. The blue in the bridge looks over-saturated to me.

I wasn't really trying to tell you what to do with that specific image, more trying to show you the ropes in LR.

Andrew
 
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