A little quick RAW help, pleast

[dwbfoto]

I need a couple paragraphs on benefits of shooting RAW, ease of learning the additional "processing" steps, etc. Is it something to try on a job, or something to master before using. thanx

[easternherp]

Raw format is like a safety net if you are not sure of the situation. It allows you to change the colour balance, sharpness and tone after you have shot the images. It also allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the image afterwards by up to 3 stops under to 1 stop over exposed. You can also get a better finished file as it converts to a tiff rather than a jpeg. It shouldn't take too long to master. I use it all the time. It takes longer to process the images afterwards but I feel it is worth the time and quality that you can get.

[Tom Nolle]

The "raw" image is a direct recording of the output of the S2's CCD with no interpolation or conversion. In a sense, it's a true digital negative. Also recorded with the image are the settings for color, white balance, sharpening, etc. and a jpg preview image based on those settings.

When you run the EX converter, you are reconstructing the image you shot from that CCD output. The same parameters you controlled on the camera (color, white balance, etc.) can be varied for the conversion, so you can redo or undo any of these paramter values. In addition, you can make fine adjustments to color balance and exposure. The output is a TIFF file that contains all of the pixels; no compression.

When you shoot JPG, you are telling the camera to first produce an image based on the CCD output and the current camera settings for WB, etc. Since JPG is a compressed format, the camera then creates a condensed version of the image by a sort of pixel averaging that will lose some fine detail. Even if you process that image in Photoshop you cannot recover what was lost in compression.

If you shoot in TIFF format, you get the same CCD-to-image conversion based on current settings that you'd have gotten with JPG, but without the compression loss.

If your application of the camera involves only JPG output, the RAW process requires an extra Photoshop conversion from TIFF to JPG, but if you are using any other format of output, you'd have to convert anyway. The conversion time required for RAW has to be balanced against the extra control that the EX converter gives you on thigs like white balance and exposure. If you don't get those spot on when you shoot, fixing the image in JPG form in Photoshop will likely take almost as much time as converting with EX, and you'll not get as good results.

Tom

[jknights]

I would say that shooting RAW allows you to extract all that you can get out of the image.

With JPEGs if you over/under cook it then there is no going back......

The best RAW converters for Fuji S2 RAFs are the Fuji EX (HyperUtility) and also Bibble or Adobe RAW plugin.


Both Adobe RAW and Bibble produce some artifacts.
The Fuji EX software is not such a good interface but results are good.
The choice is yours. Happy processing ;-)