The Basics of RAW files {and what to do with the darn things}

Raw. It’s the ultimate test of someone’s acceptance of your status as a professional because it’s one of the first things that a mildly keen just-starting-out-er will pick up on in their search for photography knowledge. But even though it’s one of the first things you’ll likely learn, it’s also one of the most confusing elements for a beginner.
I’m a control freak. I don’t want to work my butt off to pull every element of an image together and then lose control of my colour temp in post processing. I want to control everything about the final product. If it were possible, I would even come to every single one of your houses and calibrate the world’s computer screens to see things exactly the same. Before you can love raw, you have to understand it.
{Basically…}
If you’re shooting in jpeg and  you hit the shutter to let all the beautiful light flood your sensor and record the image onto your memory card, the camera collects the information and quickly compresses it down into a reasonably sized file. It judges things like the colour of the sky and the temperature of the light. Even when you’ve taken the image in manual mode and set everything yourself, the jpeg still needs to make some decisions as it smooshes all that information into one little file.
But if you shoot in raw, the sensor stays hands-off and says “ok, hot shot. YOU deal with it!”
…this means that you have total, blissful control of your entire image.
…but not without some work of your own.
RAW files need to be imported into a computer program like Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw and then either instantly exported as jpegs (yikes!)
…or perfected according to your vision for the image with editing and then exported as a jpg or other printer-friendly format.
So just to make sure you get it I’ll say it this way: a raw file isn’t an image. It’s information gathered by the sensor and delivered to you on a memory card. It’s totally your job to then do what you want with that information before compressing it into an ‘image’.
Also, a raw file won’t usually have included the in-camera sharpening that jpeg compression provides. So don’t fret when you think your image isn’t as sharp as it should be – this also needs to be done by you in the post production editing process.
Here are some links to set you on your path to opening and utilizing your raw files:
You can process your raws with Google’s free program called Picasa. This is an article about how to process raw files in Picasa and this is a list of supported file types.
This article from Apple is FAQs about processing your raws in iPhoto
Bridge is another option and also useful if you’re likely to be utilising many different Adobe programs from your computer. Exe: Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. It’s a base from which you can spring to any of these programs. If you’re only using PS, it’s not really necessary, although Helen Bradley has a great post on about the ways she thinks Bridge is useful.
This is a tutorial written by me, before I learned how to make videos. Full of screen shots to show you how I import my files into Lightroom and export them out when I’m finished editing.
This is the Wikipedia entry for ‘raw image format’. Scroll down to ’software support’ and you’ll find a pretty huge list of software at your disposal for processing your raw files.

Getting that sunset on lens....

This time of year, besides trying to figure out how to take pictures on gray days, I also like to start planning for when the sun will come out. Beyond the Vitamin D benefits, I enjoy sunset photos from a few local beaches spread around the Puget Sound. This year I’m creating a sunrise/sunset calendar, something that I’ve kept in my mind but never put down on paper (or the internet, where my copy will reside).
The concept is simple and works well for those further from the equator. Sorry everyone in the lower latitudes, the sun doesn’t move that far North to South for you to worry about this too much. For those of us from about the 10th parallel all the way to either Pole, this trick should be handy for making the most of your sunset photo time.
You will need a calendar. If you like the online version, here’s one for you for 2011 in ICS version. The idea is to number all the dates on both sides of the Summer Solstice or Winter Solstice equally. I start at the 21st of June and make that zero. From there, each day forward and back, is given a sequential number. Because of the number of days in a year, the calendar will have to be redrawn, slightly, each year except leap year.
The idea is to note where the sun sets on a given day, say the Vernal Equinox, to make life easy. Where I live, up by the 48th parallel, there is a mountain range across from Seattle known as the Olympics. All year long the sun marches left to right in its sunsets. When I mark on the calendar where the sun sets that day (maybe over Mt. Jefferson, for example) and check the calendar number, in this case 93, then I know that on the corresponding date in the Fall, the sun will be in the same position. This just happens to be a few hours before the day of the Autumnal Equinox, again, making life easy.
Armed with this calendar or a simple printed version, it is easy to plan ahead. This is handy if you are not able to shoot a sunrise or sunset on a given day or know of a better angle than the one you currently occupy. My first memory of this calendar idea was seeing a photo of the sun beaming down a street in New York City. The caption noted the photographer had seen that same view the year before and made a note to bring their camera to work in a highrise on the same day the next year. Maybe you notice the sun rising from under a bridge on your way to work or setting perfectly over a lake but can’t stop to take a shot.  Make a note to revisit the missed photo on the other side of the Solstice.
I hope this simple trick helps you record, and enjoy, more great days outdoors with your camera. It can certainly have many uses beyond sunrises and sunsets and I’d love to hear of unique applications of the idea.