working with raw images

egproductions

egproductions

Veteran
I am pretty sure what I am doing is right but there are a lot of issues that worry me that I might be messing up my image along the way so here goes.
I shoot witha 350D digital rebel xt.
first question is wether I should be using camera raw to open these raw files up to work with them in photoshop or wether I should be using a diffrent program to conver them to 16bit TIFFs to edit them in photoshop. Does it make a diffrence?
Second question is if I open them up in camera RAW should I be upscaling them on import to photoshop if I am going to be color correcting etc.
Where is the best place ot sharpen the pictures...in photoshop or in camera raw. and it also worries me about how much I am sharpening becaue I know that it is all digital and therefore can get out of control since its kinda a fake sharpening.
By default camera raw has certain settings for instance if there is not aut checked the shadows of the picture are set to 5. If I open up the shaddows by moving it to 0 does that cause my picture to become grainier than the ISO I shot it at. I ask this because I have noticed some breaking apart in the shadows when I do this and it looks kinda crappy.

If any of the questions can be answered I would appreciate it.
 
First of all, the nice thing about working in RAW is that your original image doesn't change. You edit in a .psd or .tiff file, and your RAW file remains untouched. So...don't worry too much about messing up your image since you can always go back to RAW.

If you have Photoshop CS2, use it for your RAW import. I haven't found anything better myself, with the possible exception of LightRoom or Aperture if you're bulk processing huge quantities of images. That said, it probably won't make a difference in image quality what program you use.

Whether you upscale the images or not just depends on what you need for output resolution. Are you printing billboards or 4x6 postcards?

Sharpen in Photoshop AFTER you're done with all of your editing. All digital images seem to need some sharpening in my experience...how much largely depends on the medium it's intended for. Prints need more sharpening than the web, for example.

The RAW format does have far more latitude than a .jpeg, but if you push it too far you will get noise or image degradation. Sounds like that's what is happening with your shadow settings.

Hope all that helped...
 
Unsharp mask, although CS2's Smart Sharpen filter works well too. Unsharp mask is a bit quicker though.
 
Look up 'Rawshooter Essentials' on downloads.com. It is one of the best raw conversion programs out there and it's free. Makes everything very easy.

As for the sharpening, it should be the last thing you do. Always leave a copy unsharpened on your computer in case you make prints. You usually don't need to unsharp mask much before printing (but it looks great on a computer screen).

If you want to sharpen for the web, first resize then sharpen for the best results.
 
Joey--

Do you work on a Mac or PC? Have you checked Apple Aperture out yet? Looks really nice. Working with those RAW images that fast sounds quite tasty.

CS2 takes forever and at 6 gigs of ram in my G5, it shouldn't.
 
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