Hi group! Last night I was asked about Camera RAW and thought I would share my reply.
?The joke going around is that in the new Photoshop CS2, Photoshop is now a plug-in for Adobe Camera RAW. Truthfully, Camera RAW has been vastly improved in CS2 over previous versions. In film photography all you have to do is set the exposure, aperture, and the film iso, take the picture, and worry about the processing latter. You drop your film off at Walgreen's and have no idea of the amount of post processing their computerized equipment has done to make you print look acceptable?you're not really that good :) With digital cameras there are far more settings to make because the ?camera does all the processing? as you take each individual shot?the reason for the slow performance of digital cameras. In RAW mode, the digital camera does not completely process the image, do JPEG compression, sharpening etc.; so you can just set the exposure, aperture, and iso, take the picture, and worry about the processing latter. Sound familiar? If your camera is capable of RAW mode?and if you have a high end consumer or professional camera it most likely has a RAW setting?you too can make processing decisions later. RAW is not an acronym. it is essentially a protocol for an unprocessed, uncompressed image, that varies with each manufacturer. On high end consumer cameras you may need to update the firmware to add RAW capability and select your camera plug-in from within Photoshop RAW. RAW support appeared in Photoshop 7 and has progressively improved through CS2. For everyday shooting and 4x5 inkjet printing I suggest that Program mode on your camera with JPEG High and Adobe RGB settings will handle most of your needs. If you have the time, Photoshop 7 or later?and want real control, RAW mode is sweet! Lastly, the default workspace for digital cameras is sRGB which is a gamut best suited for web/monitor usage. A better camera settings choice for print work would be Adobe RGB 1998 which provides a much larger gamut. On the latest and greatest digital SLR?s?like that new Canon you're eyeballing?Pro Photo workspace is available, which provides an even larger camera specific workspace."....jf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050617/55208a00/attachment.html
