Show me what RAW can do

Hi,

I don't normally shoot RAW, but I have tried it. I have two reasons for not shooting RAW:

1) My camera (Oly C7070WZ) becomes very slow

2) I don't know what to do with them - I haven't seen great results

Perhaps you can change my mind regarding the second point? How much better can these two shots be?

(Pressing one of the links should start a download of a 10MB RAW file.)

PB130047

PB130106

I had a play with the second one. All I did was open it in Adobe Camera Raw and set the WB using the dropper (I actually clicked on the diver's camera).

The colours are still not perfect, but much better than straight out of the camera. Still needs more red in the shot, but this was a warm as I could make it in ACR while still keeping the water blue.

You could probably do something similar in PS. But it would be more work, would probably involving masking the image and layered manipulations. This is one adjustment to the whole image, and because it is done in the RAW conversion stage the histogram is still in good condition (rather than looking like a comb, had you done these manipulations in photoshop working on a JPG).

Anyway I am sure others will try different things.

Alex

That is a lot better than what I've been able to do, and all it took was the right tool. That's what I wanted to see!

I've had problems with the highlights on the camera and the diver's head. (My camera can't handle bald dive buddies.)

This is one adjustment to the whole image, and because it is done in the RAW conversion stage the histogram is still in good condition (rather than looking like a comb, had you done these manipulations in photoshop working on a JPG).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Did you try

SILKYPIX? It does everything in the RAW conversion stage; WB, noise reduction, lens correction, 16-bit TIFF export and much more...

It performs quite well on my iBook as well.

Hi Anders,

I've done pretty much the same process as Alex. Most adjustments were directly in ACR, with just a slight nudge to the curve in the Lab mode to refine colours a bit. Similarly, the histogram is in very good shape.

I've also played a bit with the shark pic, but there is very little colour information to start with, so the result is not fantastic. I think you must have quite a distance from the subject. Anyway, here's the result...

Cheers,

Mat

Here's my conversion. I adjusted WB, and Chromatic abberations in RAW. Then ran the image through Neet Image to get rid of the noise, and finally tweaked the cyan hue.

PB130106-.jpg

You've shown me enough - thank you! I'm a little bit surprised about what mattdiver manged to do with the shark picture.

I simply did not have the right tool on my earlier attempts (and I still don't have any potentially great images).

This is was I've done with SilkyPix. I only have the free version. There's a lot I can't do. (Plus I'm a total beginner.)

Still have the problem with a slow camera, and I really don't like to a have a workflow involving a series of files. I like iPhoto! The only problem there is that it can't handle RAW files from my camera. I did file a bug report regarding that with Apple, and they got back to me and asked for example images. Maybe next version...

BTW: My 16-bit TIFF files are 40MB in size!

I checked out SilkyPix and was concerned to see it wont support the CP 5000? Anybody got any info on that? Obviously I have a CP 5000 and I just brought back a bunch of RAW images from New Zealand.

As far as I know, only Adobe Photoshop RAW converter and Nikon View (supplied with your CP5000) support these RAW files. Bibble, Capture One and RAW Shooter all don't support them...