RAW Challenge #2

MGraley:Sorry to hear that Malcolm! It was shot with the GX20 and losslessly compressed in Adobe Bridge/CameraRAW CS4. If anyone is having trouble with the file on Mac OSX, the free app Xee can open the file no problems.. if anyone has other suggestions for Windows? as I dont use that OS other than at work (where we have CS4 anyways)...

@johnriley: I guess the RAW aspect is only important for the added amount of room to play with regard to more data per pixel, other than that it is pretty much a variations exercise demonstrating how one shot can be processed to varying different degrees.. Already here we have a few different takes on an otherwise uninteresting image. Its more of a post-processing challenge than RAW I suppose (maybe a re-title for challenge number 3!?).

That was the question I was posing, because I don't see much evidence that the RAW aspect actually adds anything to this.

I just wondered how others felt about it.

Definitely worth starting with the raw. IMO
It is very interesting to see how much variation (ultimately data) can be drawn out of one file. I reckon that newcomers and veterans alike will get more from the challenge if it starts with a raw, whether they have a go themselves or just watch.

So far, the images above are 'darkroom' manipulations, rather than PhotoShop 'illustrations' - which is what you would tend to get if you only had a JPEG. (I reckon)
I'm happy to see lots of illustrative examples, but so far we're seeing purer examples of what can be done to fix or enhance a photo which seems fitting for a photographic forum.... and requires the raw file.

If you compare the original jpg preview of the RAW (ie straight from the camera) to the edited RAWs from iceblinker and Mike-P you can see exactly what RAW adds to this, there is no way you could pull those details and colours from the shadows out of a straight JPG as that is the data that is discarded by JPG processing to reduce file size.

If anything, these types of 'RAW' challenges will help to enlighten people to the absolute advantages to shooting RAW over JPG.

We've gone through all the explanation of RAW challenge in the raw challenge #1 topic and I thought it has been all said why it is RAW, what we want to see and why it is not just a photoshop or jpeg fun, so I'm a bit suprised this questions are raised again (and the subject still says 'RAW challenge'), on the other hand I know that Isdky knows what is this (RAW) challenge about, so will keep it going into the proper direction in #2.

Here's my variation on the theme.
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_G205786.jpg[/IMG]

I would also say that starting from a JPG would have most likely led to some posterisation. But unless I would try to repeat the steps from a JPG I cannot be sure...

Prieni

I kinda liked the picture so decided not to take too much out of it.
Just some sky cropped out for me.

[IMG]http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj132/CraigF1969/private/city.jpg[/IMG]

Interesting task. Imported into Lightroom, 9 images saved at 1 stop exposure spacing, HDR'd in Photomatix Pro 3.1, re-import into Lightroom for final editing. It's not cropped because I like it as it is and to constrain it to 8 X 6 loses some of the foreground interest.

Besides that, whenever I've been to Manchester, the sky always looked like that.

Warmer sky,bit of mist and more colour from me.Tony

Ok, mine try, didn't do any cropping, rather concentrated on the RAW work, that was dully day so I was trying to keep the final photo near to (what I think) the real view was.
What I've done was an exposure and white balanse correction, some play with curves, a bit of colour saturation, healed the dust spot and finaly sharpening.
In use was: UFRaw + Gimp (dust spot removal, downsize, sharpening, save).
[IMG]http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/7637/g205786rchal.jpg[/IMG]

Rain... sunset you mean?

[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/_G205786ps2.jpg[/IMG]

Used LR2 to get the base so played with colours and took the blue out of it, didn't played with the WB only set it to the right value, removed CAS and also played with the curves and added some viggeneting.

Only used in CS4 different layer modes, unsharpening, romeved the spot and noise and fine tuned the curves.

if you want I can upload the LR2 only file, if someone is interested that is...

Edit: edited the text

I wanted to try and incoorporate a nice rule of thirds into my image.

I also liked that it looked kind of dreary and overcast, so decided to keep that sort of aspect.

Oh yes... extremely dreary - had been heavily raining for the best part of the day and there was still a bit of drizzle when I took the shot!

[IMG]http://i564.photobucket.com/albums/ss87/sosbo/Myeffort660x800.jpg[/IMG]

Here is my effort. This is the first time I've used a RAW file. Good fun isn't it.

Almost everybody take the same crop, it might be interesting to see something differend and try to out the most of the abilities of RAW, I thought that was the attention afterall or is it simply who makes the prettiest image out of it?