Raw or DNG? Photoshop or Elements?

[jmoors]

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Hi - I'm very new to photography and on a very steep learning curve with my D-Lux 3.

 

I can imagine wanting to shoot RAW from time to time, so am trying to work out whether to stick with my existing setup (Photoshop CS - no D-Lux 3 support) or use the Photoshop Elements that came with the camera?

 

Would my best workflow be:

 

1. RAW image - Elements - save as jpeg - Photoshop.

 

or

 

2. RAW image - DNG Convertor - Photoshop.

 

Is DNG effectively Raw by another name or does it involve data loss / compression?

 

I'd like to try the ISO 'pushing' in black and white that I've been reading about here, but the Elements Raw support only gives me the option to adjust white balance.

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[stunsworth]

Push the images through the DNG converter and use the converted files in CS (or consider upgrading to CS3).

 

DNG = RAW, there's no loss in quality when converting to DNG.

[leica dream]

Just a thought......I bought a VLUX-1 recently and the Elements disk supplied was version 4. I floated some questions on this forum and was advised to update to version 6. Excellent advice as 6 is so much better.

Good luck

Richard

[jmoors]

Thanks for your help. Does anyone know if I'd be able to do the stop-pushing described here if I go via DNG convertor then CS1?

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/digital-forum/29129-d-lux-3-iso-800-pushing.html

[phlogiston1]

If I were you I would consider using Adobe Lightroom. This is designed for Photographers and a great workflow solution. Yes you can do the spot pushing. If you really want to.

[jaapv]

There are two types of minds, digitally-processing speaking. One group finds Lightroom easy and user-friendly and Photoshop unwieldy, the other group cannot wrap its mind around Lightroom and finds Photoshop easy. Personally I belong to the latter and I would advise you to start off with Photoshop Elements and progress to CS3. Books by somebody like Scott Kelby are a great help (I've said that before....)

[andit]

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Hi there jmoors,

 

You asked about the differences between RAW, DNG and JPEG.

 

When the camera records in RAW mode, it writes the value from each and every pixel on the sensor to the "image" file. This means that this is exactly what the sensor saw without any loss or compression. You will also see that the file size is very much larger than a JPEG file - there is so much more information.

 

Over the years the different camera manufacturers have implemented different ways of writing the RAW data to file. Infact, this changes even between different models from the same manufacturer. Thus the many moans about software packages like Aperture in which it can take a few months before the software can work with a new RAW file (if I remember we had to wait almost a year before Aperture could work with M8 files). The file layout of the RAW files that the different manufacturers use, are closely guarded secrets.

 

To try and bring some sense into this chaos, Adobe (the company that makes Elements and CS3 amongst others) has tried to introduce a standard file layout and method for recording RAW data. This is where the DNG file comes from - the abbreviation, if I remember correctly, stands for Digital NeGative. Here there were also differences. This is why M8 users had to wait so long - it was one of the first camera's to implement the DNG 2.0 standard.

 

JPG on the other hand is a highly efficient way of storing picture information in a compressed file. This means that when the computer reads the file, it takes the information, runs it through an algorithm and recreates the pixels values in that way.

 

Obviously a great deal of information is lost in the compression. This can often be seen in areas of overexposure. In RAW, there is a lot of information stored in those pixels, which can help to recover details in that part of the image. In the JPG file, these values have been averaged out and you have virtually no chance of recovering any details.

 

Now comes the big question, RAW/DNG or JPG? It depends on a couple of factors. If you're going to be publishing work in magazines or other high quality print, then you don't have much choice other than RAW. Likewise if you're going to be doing massive enlargements. If you're shooting for Internet use or for private use in which you're not going to be tempted to do massive enlargements, then JPG is fine.

 

One other factor that people often forget - the amount of space and processing power of your computer. Since the RAW file is so much larger, you need a great deal more hard disk space. I did not do a great deal of shooting over the last year, yet the images total something like 49 GB hard disk space. Working with RAW is a real number cruncher for the processor. So you need a powerful processor and lots of memory to avoid frustration.

 

I hope that this has helped you along a bit. Have a great day.

 

Andreas

[andit]

Almost forgot about the software question that you asked about. While a great deal of people may disagree, the de-facto standard in the world is Adobe CS/CS3. Once again it depends on what you're going to be doing with your images. If you are a professional photographer and are submitting your work to publishing houses etc. you don't have much choice. For most people though, this is my personal opinion, CS/CS3 is an overkill.

 

I make use of Aperture for 90% of my work. It has the basic image correction features built in and is a great image organizer. For work that I can not do in Aperture, such as working with different layers etc, I make use of Elements. This program has come a long way over the years and is very affordable. Should something come up that I can not do with these two packages, then I'll outsource the work - they inevitably make use of CS3...

 

Andreas

[ericperlberg]

I use both lightroom and photoshop together. I think Elements has one great weakness which to me would be a dealbreaker. It's rudimentary colour management tools, purposely weakened by Adobe, lacks the ability to do soft-proofing. While lightroom offers (IMO) a very intuitive and easy to control workflow, it also lacks soft-proofing. Unless you only do b/w work, you should consider how you're going to preview an image accurately before printing. Here's another useful article on soft-proofing from the late Bruce Fraser of Pixelgenius. (Aperture can do soft-proofing and there are other ways to add soft-proofing to an Elements workflow by printing from supplementary software like Qimage if you work on a PC or alternatively you can use picture window pro).

[tobey bilek]

Raw-Elements-CS will work. SAVE as .psd photoshop file and reopen in CS if there is work that still needs to be done that Elements does not support. Saving as a JPEG involves compressing and uncompressing and the photoshop file format is cross compatable. Make sub folder under each event for the originals-photoshop- and final JPEG. I title the final JPEG with the resolution and size as it needs a new title from original and I can tell what size it is without opening it, img 1234 300 4x6.JPEG. Now I know it is image 1234 300 ppi 4x6 inches.

 

Always save the work in uncompressed format as a master file. Return to that file to make every size JPEG which you sharpen at final size and resolution.

 

DNG is also an option

[Guest WPalank]

Jmoors,

There is now another option that was just released. See http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/digital-forum/49696-adobe-photoshop-express-beta-released.html#post523268

[jmoors]

Thanks for all the help. I'm probably going to go with RAW - Elements / DNG Convertor - CS. I've been trying the Photoshop CS3 trial, and the Camera Raw 4 has far more options than 3.6, but I can't believe all the other clutter that gets installed alongside it!

 

I work in audio for a living, and what's difficult to get my head round is DNG. In audio terms, RAW would be a .WAV file and Jpeg is MP3. When I import a D-Lux 3 RAW file, at 19 Megs, my brain struggles with it then becoming a 4 meg DNG, but I guess it's just the D-Lux RAW format that's not very efficient. So long as DNG isn't compressing, I'm happy.

 

Now I just need to figure out a way to do this within my setup!...

 

Flickr: Discussing D-Lux 3 and Ricoh GR-D vs Leica M6/Tri-X in Leica D-LUX 3

 

William - I've enjoyed looking at your India gallery. I'll die happy if I take just one photo that's half as good as most of yours!

[leica dream]

As someone who has only "played" with RAW on my VLUX1 I found this debate most interesting. Particularly the very thorough explanation from Andreas. Thanks for the clarity which encourages me to shoot RAW more by default.

Richard

[stunsworth]

When I import a D-Lux 3 RAW file, at 19 Megs, my brain struggles with it then becoming a 4 meg DNG, but I guess it's just the D-Lux RAW format that's not very efficient. So long as DNG isn't compressing, I'm happy

 

It's lossless compression, just like zipping a file. Nothing to worry about.

[redfalo]

I strongly recommend Adobe Lightroom, as well. It a good RAW converter PLUS a very powerful database for administrating your shots. Lightrooms user interface maybe looks pretty weird initially but once you got used to it you´ll love it.