All you old heads amateurs: do you stop with RAW?

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Mother Goose

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Edit My Images
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I got into digital photography in the early 00s when I was just graduating school. I enjoyed it for a good decade, and...as the tale as old of time goes, life got in the way. Twenty years later, I have a family, a job, and all the normal pressures of life taking away from our old hobbyist pursuits.

I got back into DSLRs/mirrorless cameras and I enjoy dabbling, but the truth is that I just don't have any time to process pictures. I'm trying to understand how I can somehow deal with this. The easiest workflows are the ones straight from my phone to a Google Album. I don't have much time to load in an SD card, process images, sort them, rate them, and heck...RAW editing? Forget about it. I can barely remember how to edit raw pictures. Half my software doesn't work anymore since Adobe went subscription.

I tell myself that: "At least the RAW file will be there in case you ever need to rescue some amazing picture", but let's be honest: I haven't really had the need to touch raw files for a decade. At the same time, the problems pile up, chief amongst those is storage. I have enough trouble deciding between 10 nearly identical shots of the same thing---but now I have to grapple with two image formats.

I don't really have a question in all this, but I just want to get some tips from all of you on how you've had to adapt to changing priorities and interests.

  1. Did any of you abandon raw images and felt better for it?
  2. Do you have any tips on how to try and get through processing images more quickly?

I guess for me, I want to be able to quickly process a year's worth of pictures, rate the ones I like, and shove them into a Google Album or physical album.

I wish my camera (an M50 Mk2) had better in-camera sorting and editing. I'd love to be able to delete stuff without fear of an accident, quickly select the images I like, and off it goes.
 
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1. Played with raw a few times but could never improve on SOOC JPEGs (in blind tests with other people).
2. Spend some time setting tour camera(s) up to give you good JPEGs SOOC. If necessary, even JPEGs can be tweaked.
 
I don’t use it myself but the owner of the studio I attend occasionally is using evoto.aI to cull and apply edits (mostly via creating a preset on the first couple of images for any particular shoot in his case but it can do more on its own). It’s a program where you buy credits and use a credit for each image you actually download after processing.

His demos, as an ambassador, seem very slick, but it is an AI based cloud system with all the potential debate that brings (ethics/morals/artistic merit etc).

I have also only seen it used on shots of people and have no idea how it would perform on other genres.
 
Not used RAW since I bought my second Fujifilm camera and tweaked the jpegs a bit,:)
 
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Another JPEG user.

For the sort of images I like, it's massive overkill.
 
Mother Goose said:
  1. Did any of you abandon raw images and felt better for it?
  2. Do you have any tips on how to try and get through processing images more quickly?
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1) Ex-film photographer here. To me, there's no such thing as an image 'straight out of camera' that doesn't need processing, and it's less work to process a raw image than it is a .jpg because there are fewer compromises and losses to try to balance. I started with .jpg via various compact cameras and it was an enormous relief to abandon the format and move to raw files.

2) I don't know what software you use, so I'll talk in generalities:
a] if you have 10 near identical images and you can't see an obvious difference between them, take the first one that looks good and process it. Save the others in case an older and wiser 'you' finds fault later, but if there's no obvious flaws in the first one then don't waste time trying to choose.
b] when you import, some software like Lightroom will allow you to apply basic settings to all the imported pictures, saving a lot of time going through and changing sharpening, noise reduction, curves, highlights and shadows etc. If you can't import with a preset, then it may be possible to sync settings across multiple photos, leaving you to just do the finishing tweaks for exposure, black and white points and colour temperature.
c] If your software doesn't support your camera, download Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) converter gratis and convert the raw files en masse to .dng format which should be universally importable.
 
Mother Goose said:
I got into digital photography in the early 00s when I was just graduating school. I enjoyed it for a good decade, and...as the tale as old of time goes, life got in the way. Twenty years later, I have a family, a job, and all the normal pressures of life taking away from our old hobbyist pursuits.

I got back into DSLRs/mirrorless cameras and I enjoy dabbling, but the truth is that I just don't have any time to process pictures. I'm trying to understand how I can somehow deal with this. The easiest workflows are the ones straight from my phone to a Google Album. I don't have much time to load in an SD card, process images, sort them, rate them, and heck...RAW editing? Forget about it. I can barely remember how to edit raw pictures. Half my software doesn't work anymore since Adobe went subscription.

I tell myself that: "At least the RAW file will be there in case you ever need to rescue some amazing picture", but let's be honest: I haven't really had the need to touch raw files for a decade. At the same time, the problems pile up, chief amongst those is storage. I have enough trouble deciding between 10 nearly identical shots of the same thing---but now I have to grapple with two image formats.

I don't really have a question in all this, but I just want to get some tips from all of you on how you've had to adapt to changing priorities and interests.

  1. Did any of you abandon raw images and felt better for it?
  2. Do you have any tips on how to try and get through processing images more quickly?

I guess for me, I want to be able to quickly process a year's worth of pictures, rate the ones I like, and shove them into a Google Album or physical album.

I wish my camera (an M50 Mk2) had better in-camera sorting and editing. I'd love to be able to delete stuff without fear of an accident, quickly select the images I like, and off it goes.
Click to expand...
I agree with @ancient_mariner and, for me, taking the photograph and processing the photograph are inseparable components of making a photograph, and I would be unwilling to give up the flexibility of using raw files. Probably, because I also come from the film days, and see the raw files as the equivalent of negatives.

But, using this approach, or just using SOOC Jpegs, is going to depend on circumstances. It's going to work for some, but not for others.

If I am in rush for a picture, I will sometimes use the embedded JPEG from the raw, and on other occasions, for speed, I will shoot JPEG plus raw (probably on these occasions, I could live without the raws). I don't do this very often, because as Toni suggested, I use presets to speed up my raw processing, and I can process files to a "good enough" state reasonably quickly.

Regardless of it being raw or JPEG, the files are going to need some sort of culling.

I don't take many photographs during a day of photography, normally somewhere between 30 and 60 pictures. Even on a day of photographing birds with 15-20fps, it's usually between 500 and 1000 pictures.

I cull with Photo Mechanic (PM) and Fast Raw Viewer (FRV). These are very fast and flexible, but the approach I'm suggesting will work with other programs. It seems complicated, but I've found that by splitting this into stages, it's far less of an overwhelming task.

Step 1: I scan through the files and delete all files that are obviously unusable.
Step 2: I scan through the remaining files for a second time, and give each file a 1-star, 2-star, or 4-star rating.

1-star indicates the file has been assessed
2-star indicates I want to keep a file as a "record" picture, but it doesn't need any processing
4-star indicates a file I may want to process.

Every file ends up with a star rating.

Step 3: I scan for a third time, but this is to delete "unneeded" 4-star files. The idea is to keep only two versions of the same photograph.

Because, I have already scanned the files twice, I now have an idea of how the different versions of the same photograph look. I pick the best file, and a second-best file, of each photograph and delete the rest. Occasionally, I will keep three versions of a file.

Step 4: At this stage, because I have been doing this in PM/FRV, I import the files that haven't been deleted into a Capture One catalogue, and use a smart folder to filter the 4-star files.

Step 5: When I'm ready to process the files, I go into the 4-star smart folder and re-assess the ones I want to process. The files I don't intend processing are given 3-stars, and they disappear from my 4-star smart folder.

Step 6: When I am processing the 4-star files, I change the ratings of the "best" ones to 5-star, which makes my best pictures easy to find.

This sounds very organised and disciplined, but because it's evolved over 20+ years, the reality is that my culling and rating, is far more disorganised than I would like.
 
Always RAW, and I backup the RAW and edit information (I.e. The .dop file as I use DxO). Minimal storage footprint, maximum versatility. Off site backup is via BackBlaze. JPGs are not kept locally, I can always recreate them.
 
I am competing at international level. My competitors will all be using Raw and editing so I cannot compete unless I do the same. Away from competitions, I visited the Canadian Rockies and took plenty of images and the dynamic range of the lakes and mountains scenery was 12 to 16 stops so Jpegs would have been useless. I have a vision of the final image I want and set out to achieve this by good capture techniques and post processing. I have used Raw from the first DSLR I owned right thought to my current mirrorless.

Dave
 
Images SOOC are a bit of a myth, to be honest. You can, of course, but in my experience they all need a tweak anyway. I used to shoot everything in RAW. Not so much now, though. I save it for the times I feel my photographic pretensions coming on. :D The truth is you don't really need it in general use.
 
Personally, I actually really enjoy the editing process using Lightroom and RAW files. I find it very satisfying to go back to a file which i have already edited 2 or 3 times and see that i can improve it still further in ways that I hadn't thought of previously. It sounds like you're hoping for a quick and easy way to get the best out of your files and I guess shooting jpegs is the easiest way of doing this, but you will never know if your image is the best that it could possibly be. In many cases with most subjects I know pretty well what I need to do to get the result I want so it isn't as long-winded as it sounds. Editing a RAW file is non-destructive and you couldn't say the same as editing a jpeg.

I still haven't rid myself of the habit from my colour slide days of bracketing three different exposures 1/3 of a stop apart. It was crucial on colour transparencies and sometimes even useful now. It means even more culling which is a bit boring but some times I find that out of the three one suffers from camera shake or something or if contrast levels are very high one might process better than the other two.
 
jerry12953 said:
But you will never know if your image is the best that it could possibly be.
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I think this is a bit of a contentious issue, to be honest, and possibly the nub of the issue. You can dress an image as much as you like, but you run the risk of divorcing it from the original subject matter. Really it's a question of where do you draw the line?
 
Plain Nev said:
I think this is a bit of a contentious issue, to be honest, and possibly the nub of the issue. You can dress an image as much as you like, but you run the risk of divorcing it from the original subject matter. Really it's a question of where do you draw the line?
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In some situations, yes. But if you get jpegs from your camera (or phone) they will have been automatically edited by the "device".
 
Plain Nev said:
I think this is a bit of a contentious issue, to be honest, and possibly the nub of the issue. You can dress an image as much as you like, but you run the risk of divorcing it from the original subject matter. Really it's a question of where do you draw the line?
Click to expand...

It's an issue if you believe the image straight from camera is of special value and your image must illustrate the original subject. On the other hand, if you are making an image then all these things are just there for you to organise for your picture, and it's irrelevant whether it looks like a faithful representation or not unless that's a key part of your picture.
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's an issue if you believe the image straight from camera is of special value and your image must illustrate the original subject. On the other hand, if you are making an image then all these things are just there for you to organise for your picture, and it's irrelevant whether it looks like a faithful representation or not unless that's a key part of your picture.
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And the RAW file is never an accurate representation of your subject.
 
In LRc, AI noise reduction doesn’t work with jpeg files (as far as I know). So have started using RAW more than I have in the past. Comes in handy when images are captured in poor light on a 7Dii. Maybe I need a better sensor/camera, but am not taking enough pictures right now to justify the spend.
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's an issue if you believe the image straight from camera is of special value and your image must illustrate the original subject. On the other hand, if you are making an image then all these things are just there for you to organise for your picture, and it's irrelevant whether it looks like a faithful representation or not unless that's a key part of your picture.
Click to expand...

I think it is relevant, insofar as going to far and turning your image into a fantasy. I'm not against that, as such, but it would then be an artistic representation. Having said that I'm not circling my wagons around either camp. Both are equally valid.
 
I think the other consideration is to revisit old captures as your style changes. For example I edit to provide a nice capture of what the eye would have seen for most of my shots. Learning a more "arty" style is on my to-do list just to add a skill to my collection - I can easily pick some existing RAW images and play around with things, much more limited if they were JPGs.
 
Plain Nev said:
I think it is relevant, insofar as going to far and turning your image into a fantasy. I'm not against that, as such, but it would then be an artistic representation. Having said that I'm not circling my wagons around either camp. Both are equally valid.
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For me, since I'm not a press photographer, fantasy is what I want - produced by the camera and myself of course.
 
myotis said:
I'm not looking for fantasy, but I am looking for prints that match the way I saw and felt about the subject, and SOOC jpegs just don't do it for me.
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You just have different fantasies. ;)
 
LancsMak said:
I think the other consideration is to revisit old captures as your style changes. For example I edit to provide a nice capture of what the eye would have seen for most of my shots. Learning a more "arty" style is on my to-do list just to add a skill to my collection - I can easily pick some existing RAW images and play around with things, much more limited if they were JPGs.
Click to expand...
A technical example of having raw files available to revisit is the improvement in noise reduction tools over the years; the best of which only works on raw files.
 
myotis said:
I agree with @ancient_mariner and, for me, taking the photograph and processing the photograph are inseparable components of making a photograph, and I would be unwilling to give up the flexibility of using raw files. Probably, because I also come from the film days, and see the raw files as the equivalent of negatives.

But, using this approach, or just using SOOC Jpegs, is going to depend on circumstances. It's going to work for some, but not for others.

If I am in rush for a picture, I will sometimes use the embedded JPEG from the raw, and on other occasions, for speed, I will shoot JPEG plus raw (probably on these occasions, I could live without the raws). I don't do this very often, because as Toni suggested, I use presets to speed up my raw processing, and I can process files to a "good enough" state reasonably quickly.

Regardless of it being raw or JPEG, the files are going to need some sort of culling.

I don't take many photographs during a day of photography, normally somewhere between 30 and 60 pictures. Even on a day of photographing birds with 15-20fps, it's usually between 500 and 1000 pictures.

I cull with Photo Mechanic (PM) and Fast Raw Viewer (FRV). These are very fast and flexible, but the approach I'm suggesting will work with other programs. It seems complicated, but I've found that by splitting this into stages, it's far less of an overwhelming task.

Step 1: I scan through the files and delete all files that are obviously unusable.
Step 2: I scan through the remaining files for a second time, and give each file a 1-star, 2-star, or 4-star rating.

1-star indicates the file has been assessed
2-star indicates I want to keep a file as a "record" picture, but it doesn't need any processing
4-star indicates a file I may want to process.

Every file ends up with a star rating.

Step 3: I scan for a third time, but this is to delete "unneeded" 4-star files. The idea is to keep only two versions of the same photograph.

Because, I have already scanned the files twice, I now have an idea of how the different versions of the same photograph look. I pick the best file, and a second-best file, of each photograph and delete the rest. Occasionally, I will keep three versions of a file.

Step 4: At this stage, because I have been doing this in PM/FRV, I import the files that haven't been deleted into a Capture One catalogue, and use a smart folder to filter the 4-star files.

Step 5: When I'm ready to process the files, I go into the 4-star smart folder and re-assess the ones I want to process. The files I don't intend processing are given 3-stars, and they disappear from my 4-star smart folder.

Step 6: When I am processing the 4-star files, I change the ratings of the "best" ones to 5-star, which makes my best pictures easy to find.

This sounds very organised and disciplined, but because it's evolved over 20+ years, the reality is that my culling and rating, is far more disorganised than I would like.
Click to expand...
That's a neat way to use your Stars. I will attempt to use it myself if I remember
 
Given your brain has already interpreted the scene in front of you, I have no difficulty with using a computer to interpret the RAW scene the camera has captured to approximate what I think I saw.
 
Pound Coin said:
Given your brain has already interpreted the scene in front of you, I have no difficulty with using a computer to interpret the RAW scene the camera has captured to approximate what I think I saw.
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For me, I find it very difficult to turn the raw files into matching what I saw, but I can still get much closer using a RAW file than I can with the SOOC JPEG.
 
Mother Goose said:
  1. Did any of you abandon raw images and felt better for it?
  2. Do you have any tips on how to try and get through processing images more quickly?
Click to expand...
1. No!
2. Just practice.

To me RAWs are indispensible. First, this relates strongly to exposure technique, where a a basic concern is protection of highlights - in many high-contrast scenes this means that mid tones & shadows need 'lifting' in processing.

Start manhandling tones in a jpg, & gaps will start to show - RAWs give the most scope. As a little experiment, look at the histogram (say in Photoshop) of an acquired jpg image. Then bang its curves & levels about, and take another look at that histogram. What can you see? Spikes & gaps - information has been sacrificed! A RAW is far more robust because it contains more information to start with. A jpg is a pre-baked extract that doesn't really want to be cooked differently for a asecond time after the event.

But in any image, wanting to squeeze & stretch the tones is basic, because how an image presents (along with its resultant emotional meaning to the viewer) will depend on how the tones are rendered throughout the frame. Tonal distribution is one of the basic components of a finished image along with focus & framing.

But that's my own use case, & I don't do scatter gun photography ...
 
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Yes and no

Anything lets say artistic for myself will get Raw. Currently purging my family photos and so many raws taking up space of pictures I will never come back and re edit so they are all getting converted to jpg and the raws binned off
 
For the in-camera sorting part, the M50 II already has a useful option: Playback > Rating, then Set image search conditions can display only that rating. I would try one star for album candidates, without trying to rank everything from one to five. Rating is separate from Protect images, so star ratings alone do not prevent deletion. Protect the irreplaceable shots too, and remember that protection does not survive formatting the card. That would let you shortlist on the camera before starting a computer session; the RAW-versus-JPEG decision can wait until you have a small set you actually want in the album.
 
Raw for me, have my own recipes and process that I apply, tweak and evolve, and I do sometimes revisit and reprocess. I’ve got about 3tb of photos, i back up with a couple of rotating hdds, cost is minimal over the years.

I have found revisiting very old raw files, like those out of a 5d2 with the modern CaptureOne engine does yield some nicer results, it’s fairly minimal difference though.
 
I've been on RAW since the original LR Beta which removed the processing complexity* and I've never gone back. Use the in camera profiles, LR will honour that (unless my import processing overrides all that), so eg shoot in B&W, then Lightroom shows you your images in that style. BUT, of course the raw file is underneath with ALL the data, so you can pull virtual copies, run all the different processing styles in LR you care, even back to full colour for eg. If it was a JPEG then that profile is locked, and you can't change your mind.

Then just export JPEGs from LR as required. I know some just export everything to JPEG once done, and a further bunch then throw away the raws which is an idea I just can't comprehend. I've all my decent (and a ton of crap) raw files back to 2006. Everything backed up to local backups & an online backup service so there's offsite copies too.

cRAW means the file sizes aren't too crazy, usually I'd just say drive prices are cheap, just buy bigger drives, of course that's currently out of the window.

*Also a switch from a Canon D30 with a tiny buffer to a 400D which had a far far superior buffer which made RAW files a lot more useable.
 
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