RAW vs. JPEG

There have been many, many discussion on what is the better format to shoot in.
For normal pictures I stick with JPEG, but I have found that for certain applications RAW really is better.

I have been shooting some pictures of a play where they had very bad lighting (it is a small local group which do it primarily for fun).
The stage was lit by two tungsten lights (those 500 or 1000 Watt construction lights) and a couple of fluorescent lights.
I wanted to experiment a little there, but I kept shooting in JPEG until I found out that the auto white balance was totally wrong.
I shot a couple of pictures in raw as well. The raw pictures are easy to fix with adobe camera raw, but the JPEG's are a pain in the *ss to fix. I have to use all sorts of tricks to try to fix the pictures, but they do not end up very good...

Side note: does anyone know how to reduce the colorcast in photoshop? It is a yellowish/reddish colorcast from the lighting. I used the Kodak Digital ROC and SHO filters but they tend to screw up somethings as well.

I have found that it is better to stick to one format - RAW. Using a good RAW converter, like Capture One, actually makes image processing quicker and easier than using JPEG.

The point to remember is that RAW is never worse than JPEG, and usually better. Why take the risk of using an inferior format?

G

One of the basic points would be that tungsten light is way outside the limits at which AWB functions, so it's no surprise that the results are too orange. I would suggest using the tungsten setting, and things will improve dramatically.

In CS2 there are photo filters, so if you want to correct your colour cast use the 80 filter and then dial in the amount you need. In film photography an 80A would be the lightest, 80B darker, and so on.

In PS7 you could try Channel Mixer or Hue/Saturation andsee what you can achieve.

In extremis, converting to monochrome in channel mixer will side-step the whole issue.

AS for JPEG and RAW, it's all been said! Personally I still use JPEG for various reasons, but another thread has covered that one already...

mixed halogen and flourecsant lighting at a play Is a predicament to be sure. You may have to mask your subject and various background elements and create seperate layers and adjust each later seperately.
A tremendously time consuming endeaver.

Best to focus on the skin tones or most important subject, use your color cast eye dropper tool and find black/white/grey elements in the scene to get a general color balance.

Then follow the good advice already posted.

Once I started shooting RAW I couldn't go back to jpeg. I found RAW+Capture One a killer combo. I prefer to invest in memory and get this peace of mind, less things to think about in the "field" (I have enough trouble dealing with composition ).

Another thought: if we are talking about stage lighting and mixed lighting, does it have to be a "correct" colour balance at all? The lighting colour can be part of the impact - providing it looks good, accuracy may not be so critical.

I know, I totally forgot to set the white balance. The thing is that my old Minolta Dimage Z1 could correct for the same lighting perfectly.
But then again, a compact camera has it's CCD constantly in the light so doing AWB is a lot easier then. Mostly I use custom white balance with a piece of white paper.

Yes, I can tell you how to fix the colour balance in a JPG in PS.
I'll try and dig out a tutorial link or two

It'd be better still if you could email me a JPG and I'll verify the results for you (doesn't have to be large, say 500pixels).

Matt

matt, I will send you a small crop of a picture tonight when I'm home again.

I'll look forward to it

Here's the tutorial I was thinking of:
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/17164.html
Definitely worth reading!!

and this one turned up too:
http://www.bairarteditions.com/pages/tutorials/photoshop/cblevels.html

Hope that helps!
Matt

Matt,
Thanks for the links. I'll have to send the examples tonight hopefully. I will put them on a server with a link to this thread so that the others can see how I screwed up as well (and hopefully we can all learn on how not to take pictures...)

Ok, here is one "prime" example...
The noise comes from the fact that I had to shoot it at iso800 because I couldn't use the flash.
But if you get the images printed to 10x15cm it is not a problem.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?C2FA12BCC

This picture was taken under stage lighting, and I haven't corrected the colour balance because I though it looked nice and moody http://www.ammonyte.plus.com/galleries/showcase/slides/chicagoblues.html

Here's a very quick correction:
http://www.pbase.com/image/57265288

1) Added a curves adjustment layer. Brought up the RGB channel to lighten, then went into Red (first) and brought down, then corrected G and B channels to roughly colour balance

2) Added a Colour Balance adjustment layer and brought the colour balance more in line.

3) Noise reduced the image (PS-CS2 Reduce Noise, but would have used NeatImage on an original full size JPG)

4) Added a further curves adjustment layer to improve the lighting.

I'm not 100% happy with it, but it took about 5 min, and you should always take a break before double checking colour work

Matt

I've had a look at the soot, Ammonyte, and it's great colour - no need for any corrections there!