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For our first digital evening of the New Year (on 3rd Jan) member Barry Pearson gave us an expert presentation centred around the advantages of saving digital files as Raw Files.

Apart from choosing the required ISO value (which basically means setting the gain of the pixel charge amplifier) no other requirements are made of the photographer. The camera makes appropriate settings of Colour temperature, exposure value and such, but these values can be modified once the Raw image is loaded into the computer. Computer’s have inherently much greater ‘brain power’ than cameras and so it is logical to use the computer to fix the best settings.

Sadly each manufacturer presently uses its own proprietary Raw software, though efforts have been made by Adobe to produce a standard specification for a “Digital Negative”. Barry felt that in the years to come most manufacturer’s will have agreed to standardize on this .DNG format.

Although Photoshop Elements (from 3 onwards) is capable of dealing with Raw formats Barry used Photoshop CS2 for his demonstrations since this was the program with which he was most familiar.

Least prospective ‘Raw’ users might balk at the idea of having to apply the Raw converter to each and every image taken, our speaker illustrated the possibility of automatic bulk conversion of images. This still took time but allowed one to leave the computer for tea whilst the process continued. A book entitled Camera Raw had proved invaluable and our presenter highly recommended it. The levels Histogram is the basic information required when considering digital images. It provides data as to the tonal range and in particular indicates if parts of the image have gone outside this range. Digital cameras capable of saving Raw images used at least 12 bits of data. It was preferable to adjust these basic parameters using all the available bits. Eventually one reduces the data to 8 bits per colour (and some Photo-shop manipulations only work with 8 bits per colour). Early reduction of the bit range (from 16 to 8 bits) could possibly throw away useful highlight or shadow data.

Our speaker discussed and illustrated a variety of manipulations, such as how to combat chromatic aberration; whether to sharpen an image using the Raw converter or Photoshop, and took us through the process of setting up a sequence of ‘actions’.

He had an attentive audience, and a the spontaneous round of applause at he end left our presenter in no doubt that his efforts had been worth-while

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		For our first digital evening of the New Year (on 3rd Jan) member Barry Pearson gave us an expert presentation centred around the advantages of saving digital files as Raw Files. Apart from choosing the required ISO value (which basically means setting the gain of the pixel charge amplifier) no other requirements are made of the photographer. The camera makes appropriate settings of Colour temperature, exposure value and such, but these values can be modified once the Raw image is loaded into the computer. Computer’s have inherently much greater ‘brain power’ than cameras and so it is logical to use the computer to fix the best settings. Sadly each manufacturer presently uses its own proprietary Raw software, though efforts have been made by Adobe to produce a standard specification for a “Digital Negative”. Barry felt that in the years to come most manufacturer’s will have agreed to standardize on this .DNG format. Although Photoshop Elements (from 3 onwards) is capable of dealing with Raw formats Barry used Photoshop CS2 for his demonstrations since this was the program with which he was most familiar. Least prospective ‘Raw’ users might balk at the idea of having to apply the Raw converter to each and every image taken, our speaker illustrated the possibility of automatic bulk conversion of images. This still took time but allowed one to leave the computer for tea whilst the process continued. A book entitled Camera Raw had proved invaluable and our presenter highly recommended it. The levels Histogram is the basic information required when considering digital images. It provides data as to the tonal range and in particular indicates if parts of the image have gone outside this range. Digital cameras capable of saving Raw images used at least 12 bits of data. It was preferable to adjust these basic parameters using all the available bits. Eventually one reduces the data to 8 bits per colour (and some Photo-shop manipulations only work with 8 bits per colour). Early reduction of the bit range (from 16 to 8 bits) could possibly throw away useful highlight or shadow data. Our speaker discussed and illustrated a variety of manipulations, such as how to combat chromatic aberration; whether to sharpen an image using the Raw converter or Photoshop, and took us through the process of setting up a sequence of ‘actions’. He had an attentive audience, and a the spontaneous round of applause at he end left our presenter in no doubt that his efforts had been worth-while Bill Chadband
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