Tech [SOLVED] urgent help needed reading/converting a .RAW file (Read 1195 times)

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also, it's different since you took the pictures in JPEG and converted them to RAW. Try taking it in RAW and converting it to JPEG.
no... that's not what I did at all. That's what we would call 'impossible'.

I took the JPEG that the camera produced along with it's RAW companion, made the sample screens you see, and saved them as PNG.
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oh okay. It seemed like, never mind!
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The RAW picture was processed through Photoshop CS3. I matched the white balance and brightness as close as I could without getting too picky. Sorry if there's a little brightness variation... with a little more time, I could have made a perfect match. Also, I don't know if it matters, but the ones on the right are 16 bit PNGs, while the ones on the left are 8 bit.

I'm just saying, THAT there was any difference between them to begin with, means that there's some sort of loss there.
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Time to clear some things up.

  • Camera RAW is used to do color correction before working on the image in a program such as Photoshop. The RAWs are imported, adjustments such as color temperature and contrast are applied, and then the final editing is done. This is because RAWs contain a wealth of extra information that's lost when saving a regular file format with flat color information such as JPEG.
  • Lossless JPEG exists but is not in use by many programs. To my knowledge, not even Photoshop supports it. The chance of any JPEG being lossless is negligibly small, though if you save a regular JPEG at quality 100 it comes quite close.
  • If you want a good lossless file format for everyday use, try PNG-32.
  • You should always shoot your photos in RAW if the lighting conditions are imperfect.
Incorrect. Most cameras (all cameras?) - to my knowledge - save lossless jpegs.
Nope. Very few cameras do. Many just save a very high-quality JPEG. It's close, but not entirely lossless (but often good enough). Note that this is for practical reasons; very few programs can even decode lossless JPEG.

Actually you're right, but the RAW advantages are often overstated and overhyped.
If you're a professional or a slightly more serious amateur, this is absolutely untrue. The lighting conditions of the scene you're shooting are never perfect. If you save your image in JPEG, you'll lose your chance to adjust it without giving up some quality later.
Last Edit: July 27, 2008, 08:21:51 am by Dada