Post Processing Tip 1: Do you shoot in the raw?

My friends often ask me for advice on how to clean up images they love but didn't turn out as expected. My first question is always "Did you shoot in RAW format?"

So I will spend some time showing and explaining some tips I've learned with photoshop. I am not an expert by any means, but simply enjoy sharing methods I use that help me clean up my images.

Over the next few weeks I will show you how to take an image (taken in raw format) that looks like this:

 and turn it into:

The steps we will take you through will be:
step 1: adjusting and setting the white colour balance.
step 2: tweaking the image
step 3: removing the noise
step 4: removing imperfections and the unwanted boat
step 5: learning a trick to making the image "pop"
step 6: adding a subtle vignette
step 7: sharpening the image. 


So tip number one is: before you take any image - change your camera's setting to shoot in raw format instead of the familiar jpg.

The file size of raw images are lots bigger than that of jpg, and for good reason - it contains lots more information for us to use and we will learn how to enhance these images.

To give a brief overview of raw, jpeg, tiff etc and what we will learn to do, consider the following three general steps back in the days of rolls of film.

step 1. shoot a roll of film and create a negative.
step 2. develop the negative by adding and adjusting colour, tone etc.
step 3. use the fixed negative to print off the image.


Most cameras are generally set to shoot and record as jpg files. These .jpg files take care of steps 1 and 2 above so you can simply print them off and show family and friends. So the camera controls how to represent the colours in the image. 

When shooting in raw format we get images (called digital negatives) that cannot immediately be printed off at your local department store or using your own colour printer. To each image we will apply a colour range (called a colour space or gamut) before saving them into a format that can be  printed off  (eg jpg or my preferred format TIFF).

Sadly there currently is no universal raw format amongst the camera manufacturers. But digital negative format (.dng) is very popular.

The next blog will look at using photoshop to control/adjust the white balance in your raw images.



have fun! ☺

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