Printing from RAW

I have just been into my local (independent) camera shop and asked about large prints from my RAW files as I am limited to A4. He states that "you can't print from a RAW file, it has to be converted to JPG".

I am currently playing with a trial copy of Silkypix from which I appear to have printed my RAW images successfully as there is no evidence of a file with the same file name on my computer with a different file extension. I mentioned this to my camera shop man and he looked a little blank!

I would be grateful for some explanation please and quite what Silkypix does with my files

As I understand it when you open your RAW file into Photoshop it is displayed as a bitmap image. This could happily be printed at any stage by your computer.

The problem arises when you save it to a CD (or whatever portable device) to take your image to the shop. Their machines would not recognise your RAW data so you would save your image to the CD as a JPEG or TIFF file. Sometimes it has to be a JPEG, so for this purpose that's probably the safest option to use.

Their machine will be able to handle the JPEG file to make a print.

Software such as Photoshop and Silky can read the contents of a RAW image file and can do three things with it:

1 Send correct details to your PC monitor screen so that you can see it
2 If asked, send everything a printer needs to know in order to print your pic.
3 If asked, save a new version of your pic as a jpeg (or TIFF) file

Each of these jobs is similar in that the information in the RAW file has to be interpreted, and the interpretation has to be repeated each time you look at the picture, print it or save it as a jpeg.

A saved jpeg or TIFF file contains the INTERPRETED image, so that when you look at a jpeg or print one, no further interpretation is required.

Hope that makes that bit a little clearer - ask if you want to know more

Well thanks both for your response. So, a TIFF file is, let's say, more manageable?

If I were to save a RAW file as a JPG, would the resulting printed image be as good as a TIFF or no noticeable difference?

Silkypix does indeed print from RAW very well, but actually it processes the image first just as if it was creating a JPEG or TIFF, based on your current settings.

That is fine when using your own printer at home, but if you just give the RAW file to someone else then you won't have any control over the result unless you tell them what RAW program to use and with what settings. That is impractical and unnecessary, so you need to create a JPEG or TIFF.

TIFF is a better quality format as it is uncompressed, whereas JPEG uses lossy compression. However, a top quality JPEG is almost as good as a TIFF, and some printing services only handle JPEGs anyway. Ask the printing person/company what they require.

To get top quality JPEG from Silkypix, select the YC444 option and push the slider to 100%.

There could be complications with the colour profile, by the way. That's a whole different dreadful can of worms, or bucket of sausages.

The images I have printed with Silkypix (A4) are to my mind excellent so would a low compression JPG be as good?

Pete you answered my question as I was asking it

Thanks!

Yes, I reckon so.

You're welcome!

It's worth noting that high quality purchasers for book and magazine publications who use fotoLibra are now insisting on best quality JPEG images and no longer accept TIFF.

They also accept in-camera sharpening but not Photoshop sharpening, so clearly things are changing. It looks as though the quality of JPEG capture has improved and its universal nature is rather appreciated by all parties.

Of course (as others have said) it is possible to print from RAW - what the guy in the shop probably should have said is "our software/equipment will only print from JPG"

By not printing from RAW the shop is doing you a favour.

The RAW image ie exactly as shot with absolutely no processing is likely to be dull and lacking contrast and perhaps have other 'faults' which you can adjust out; your RAW processing will allow you to choose the colour temperature, fringing, vignetting, contrast, brightness etc, etc...

So process the RAW in your normal way, resize it to 300dpi and the dimensions you want to print at (see link for how to resize) and save as a TIFF or JPG to burn onto disk for the shop. If you save with a maximun quality JPG there will be very little difference in quality between that and a TIFF.

At the end of the day you need to give the machine in the shop the minimum chance to mess about with your picture as possible.

He also expressed concern, had he accepted RAW files as to the time taken to process such images. Time is money

Thanks Bob for your other comments, I will bear it all in mind!

Kodak's online print service will accept RAW photos I am told. I have never tried it myself, but someone on a course I did regularly sent her RAW files off to them for printing. The results were very good too.

Just picking up this point, I have found that if I have to adjust anything at all it is just the exposure bias (in SP). Everything else is OK; but that's the K-m for you

You can't see or print a RAW image at all without any processing. A great deal of processing happens even when you just use a RAW converter's default settings, or even when you turn them all down to "zero". Silkypix's default settings will make a good photo look good.