Do you shoot.RAW or JPG?

[Wrench]

Just curious what format other fish geeks are using. I like the idea of shooting RAW and being able to adjust color temp and exposure but am unsure on converter software and processing.

If you're shooting RAW, what program are you using?

 

[MitchellB]

Raw all the time
Photoshop CS5

 

[Misled]

Always RAW, no matter if it's a tank or a bug.

Photoshop Elements and Lightroom

 

[Wolverine]

Raw, and I use Lightroom for adjustments.

 

[hobbzz]

Depends on what I'm shooting. My jpg's are still 5mb, so they're not a little 500kb file. Perfectly fine for anything being viewed on a computer or tv. If it's anything I think I might want to print, I'll switch to raw. CS3 for editing.

 

[buckster]

RAW all the way. Nothing better than being able to adjust exposure and white balance in post production.

 

[Snowape]

Raw all the way, CS5.5 for editing

 

[IslandCrow]

The reason most people are going to shoot in Raw is that aquarium lighting makes proper color balance very tricky. With a Raw photo, this can very easily be corrected, because you have the "raw" red green and blue data for each pixel. Once a photo has been converted to jpeg, that fidelity of data has been lost. Generally, we have plenty of time shooting aquaria, so you don't have to worry about how many shots you can get in a burst or taking time to swap out cards. If you're worried about space on the computer, you can still convert to jpeg after processing and then delete the raw file. . .but memory is pretty cheap, so I really don't see any reason for that.

 

[Wrench]

Thanks for the replies.

I went ahead and switched my settings to capture in RAW and "acquired" a copy of Lightroom 3.4. Liking the change already. I was never big on a lot of editing and LR3 does everything I need and does it faster. Looks like I wont be using CS5 any more.

 

[Reef Bass]

I also always shoot raw and also recently switched from PhotoShop to LightRoom. Then I wanted to add a drop shadow to a pic and couldn't figure out how to do that in LightRoom, so I'll be keeping PhotoShop around.

 

[BlueCorn]

I went ahead and switched my settings to capture in RAW and "acquired" a copy of Lightroom 3.4.

I always laugh when people who "acquire" their image processing software whine when someone "steals" one of their images. It's called karma. Stealing is stealing, no matter what you call it.


Photoshop's camera RAW processor uses exactly the same software tools as Lightroom; i.e. there's nothing you can do in LR, processing an image, that you can't do in PS. That said, I do my RAW processing in LR but I still use PS for some things I can't do in LR. I like the organizational features and the ability to instantly apply the same change to many images. You can do batch processing in PS but it's much clumsier. I also really like the print module in LR much more so than printing from PS.

I shoot RAW nearly exclusively. The only exception is if I'm shooting an air show. My 5D is no fps speed demon but shooting JPG helps when I need nearly continuous shooting. For everything else, I'm in RAW. White balance is something I tweak on nearly every shot. Canon tends to be cooler in the shadows than I care for so nearly every shot gets "warmed up" a bit.

 

[Hookup]

i shoot RAW for stuff when i'm trying to be a photographer..
I shoot JPG for when i'm just snapping photos of junk/events.

 

[laf-reef]

RAW for everything

 

[owentl]

I shoot in RAW with Lightroom for me too. And I always use a grey card for white balance

 

[juissed]

raw only
post process in lightroom
edit in ps cs5.5

 

[dlp211]

raw only for me, lightroom and Photoshop CS5

 

[corpse_grinder0]

RAW all the way!!!

 

[1shot1kill]

Always shoot in raw!