fuji S2 and printing images , from raw to tiff

i just received my fuji S2 and i've now everything to shoot digital after several years of film.

but i m a bit lost:

Ive heard it ll be much better to catch raw files ("the digit negative") with the camera and then transform it to tiff files with the fuji dedicated software .

I m ok but i ve just read that the images would be in 8 bit and not 16.

Does it affect something ?

What i want to do is pictures 25cm/38cm and i hope it will be sharp enough so.

i went to the photo shop with my first tries without changing anything with PS (just transformation from Raw to tiff files) , the guy made some changes in my presence it seems to be great.

So i m asking you : what are your methods ?

is there a better one ?

Well, the answer is "that depends." :-)

I convert the RAW files to TIFF at 12 megapixels. When converting, set white balance, hue, and exposure.

Open the TIFF in Photoshop or similar and it WILL need sharpening. I sharpen USM 120, .7, 0

Next adjust curves or levels to adjust the color and fine tune the exposure.

Save the file as a 16 bit TIFF

Then convert to 8-bit Mode for printing and save as another filename like "8bitphoto.tiff" or something like that. Most printers can only handle 8 bit TIFFs.

Does that answer your question? You will need a class or a book to learn how to get the most out of photoshop. It's not intuitive. Or get a "guru" to come over and walk you through some of the capabilities.

HTH

James

James -

when importing RAW files can you just convert them to TIFF first then adjust hue, saturation and white balance? Or, is it better to do these adjustments first before saving as TIFF file?

M.

It's always best to make as many adjustments as you can using the RAW converter. Check out our article in the Features library about RAW conversion.

Cheers

James

Hi James-

thanks for pointing me to the features area of wetpixel. One thing, as I adjust brightness, etc. how do you know a particular channel is being clipped? I see the R G B histograms moving around left to right but is there something I should see that would indicate a particular channel is being clipped?!?

Thanks!

you see, you get a new camera (d70 ) that shoots RAW (NEF) and and I have to learn all over again.... )

Hold the ALT key down as you slide the exposure and shadow slider and the colors you see pop up are the ones that are being clipped. This is a trick "discovered" by Craig Jones.

Cheers

James