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Workflow: How I do What I Do Part One- RAW Files

Being a photographer is MUCH more than pressing a button… and most of the work begins when the image is uploaded to my computer. Why? This series of posts will show you the process

Let’s start with a photograph from my latest senior session with Chynna Willard! Here is an un-edited copy of the original file- this is straight-up from the camera:

 

This is a great photo- I like the composition. The guitar is at a great angle, and the one loose shoe lace is a great touch for her personality. I like the angle of the park bench, and the background looks good. BUT, this photograph doesn’t look very attractive right now, does it? The colors are kind of blah, it’s too dark, and there isn’t enough emphasis on her face!

This is where the work begins. Having figured out what I like and dislike about this photograph, I open up Adobe Bridge and start to work on the RAW image file.

What is a RAW file? Wikipedia lists RAW this way: “A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be used with a bitmap graphics editor or printed.” Uh…yeah. So, basically, RAW is exactly what the camera sees. JPEG and many other formats are the camera’s best guess of how things really looked to you.

I prefer working in RAW because I am a better judge of how the photo should look than my camera, although cameras are getting very good!

It’s kind of like this: if someone wants you to translate Chinese into English, so they can read it, it may be easier to use Babelfish and then correct the inaccuracies, but it’s WAY more accurate to just translate it personally from scratch, if you know the language.

Using RAW enables me to “translate” the date to exactly how I want it to look. I have much more room to manipulate a photo this way. When you allow a camera to “translate” the photograph for you, it tosses out the information that it thinks isn’t important. This saves time and space, but what if you really did need that information? When using RAW, all the information is still there, giving me more “raw” ingredients to cook up a photograph with!

So, let’s get back to the photograph! After tweaking the RAW file using Adobe RAW, here is what we get:

That’s a little better, isn’t it! The colors are much warmer and more saturated, and there is much more contrast. Now we can see how the dark colors in the bench and Chynna’s clothing are going to make her face really stand out! Now the file is all ready for the finishing touches in Photoshop.

This is the final photograph. I went with a dark, highly saturated vintage look in this photograph. I bumped up the color saturation and “spot darkened”. The slight vintage tint was made by taking the black in this photograph and tinting some areas blue, and tinting other colors just slightly. I also lightened her face in comparison with the rest of the image. 

Let’s compare the original RAW image side-by-side with the finished product!

 

Yup, I like the second one better.

Of course, depending on the photograph, there is a lot of other step in between RAW and AWESOME. More next

 

time!

 

Luv,

Heather Kanillopoolos