Processing Raw Photos

About what John?
I'm with Prieni on this since I don't see any diference between the files. Except that in DNG there is also the information JPG development settings.

These are the settings in your menu of the camera about saturation, sharpness and brightness. These are saved with the raw and are used as standard when opening the raw (I think).
You can also have the software set as a standard preset when opening a raw file.

ps. I''ve printed a test sheet, it's now drying

Kenty, don't worry. I think we are in "academic interest" territory, i.e. the differences we worry about do not matter much.
It's a bit like talking different waxes on Formula 1 racing cars...

Prieni

No difference what so ever in the photos, didn't upload it since it would be a waste of time.

I won't say "I told you so".
Oops, just did

Prieni

Stefan, you lost me, I'm afraid. So which of the RAW formats keeps the jpg settings, PEF or DNG?
Then, it seems it's up to the software if it uses the saved setup, is that correct? I use Linux software like RawTherapee or UFRaw - I'm not sure if they can use them. At least it seems that they don't looking at RAW picture when opened.

Prieni,
I already said that I didn't see a difference before I did the test.
Although I compared some profiles to the chart I've printed and there really are some differnces.

Michal,
Both of them and the preview jpg that is fitted into the RAW also get those settings but your software can or do change those settings when you upload them. Atleast that's my understanding of the matter.

I don't know those software so I've no idea how they work.

I don't think this is right Gwyn ?

When you save an image you have processed from a raw file you save it as TIFF;JPEG;PSD....etc, you are not saving the changes to the raw file itself ?

I know that with most software, if you were to open the raw file again you would see the adjustments you made (because the software records the information), but by selecting default settings in the raw converter you would be back to the original unprocessed raw file ? This is certainly how it works with Silkypix.

Stefan:
Thanks. Seems that the software I use they use settings much different to the camera's - the result (if I do not change settings at all) differ totally from the jpgs produced by the camera.

Peter:
I'm not sure how other applications do, but at least RawTherapee I use saves my changes into separate files (same file name, different extension) and next time I open 'edited' RAW files it just loads the changes from them - so my changes are visible, but I can reset them in any time.

I am also just trying to get to grips with Raw. Can someone explain what is the differnce between PEF files, which is the raw files that my camera captures, and the DNG files you talk about?

At the moment I edit my raw files and save as Tiff files but reading above this is possibly not the best use of space if Tiffs are larger than the raw files. Perhaps I would be better just keeping the raw files and converting to Tiffs if and when I wish to print?

If I were to put some images on a web portfolio would JPEG be the best format to use?

Also not sure what the PSD files are.

I am using Elements 7 and my camera is a K200D. Finally do I need to keep checking for downloads, as above someone mentioned downloading an update to the raw converter?

Cheers

Johna

If you have a K10d like me, or a K20 (presumably) you have a choice of RAW formats. You can select to use either PEF or DNG. I use DNG because that seems to be the more universal system. Photoshop, CS2 which I use, automatically opened up some PEF files as DNG when I accidentally had the camera set to shoot in PEF instead of my usual DNG, so no problems there.
david

PEF and DNG files contain the same raw image data, just in a different format. The pros and cons of each have been discussed on this forum (search the archives). Ultimately it doesn't matter because you can get the same results from them.

It's sensible to keep the RAW files for any future re-working. TIFFs or JPEGs can be made from them at any time.

JPEG is best for web portflios as it is universally supported and compressed - so is quicker for people to download than TIFF. But keep the amount of compression low (aka quality high) to prevent nasty artifacts appearing in the images.

PSD is a Photoshop format - that I don't know about because I don't 'do' Photoshop.

To summerize those discussing.
DNG that the camera make aren't really that compressed and take up twice the room as a PEF file from the camera. DNG is better supported so the best idea we came up with to do was shoot in PEF and use the Adobe DNG Converter to convert them from the card to DNG on the harddisk, since these are compressed by the computer they are even smaller then PEF.
All formats are loseless so theoreticly their won't be any lost of quality.

PSD is quite a large file and only useable when saving your photoshopped image if you want to do some photoshoping later. TIFF is the prefered file to save your photoshopped image since that's also loseless but the quality of losely compress JPGS are certainly also very good. JPGS aren't loseless so you will lose some quality with every "save" that you do, so do the processing in one go and leave it with that.

I hope that I make a good summerize here, if you want to add something please do so

Thanks all

Your comments have certainly helped me understand a little more about RAW. Guess I've still got a way to go but first impressions are that (and I'm sure no one is surprised at this) RAW produces better pictures!!!

Cheers

John