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Raw Photography Part 1
by Keith Nuttall
What is raw photography?
Whenever you take a photo with a digital camera, the camera processes the raw data from its sensor, and produces an image. This process is quite complex, but the camera performs it very quickly, and the photographer sees the end result on the camera's LCD screen.
Image created in-camera
Many digital cameras provide settings which allow the photographer to fine-tune this in-camera processing, like Contrast and Saturation. But, once the image is processed, the raw data is thrown away, and the photographer is left with a processed image.
Some digital cameras provide the ability to save raw image data, and allow the photographer use it instead of (or in addition to) the processed image. Simply stated, the benefit of keeping the raw data is in the ability to perform the processing stage at a later time, in a more controlled way, as many times as required.
Image created with raw processor
Many parallels can be drawn between raw processing and film processing. Raw data can be seen as the Negative, and the finished image as the Print. In-camera processing is like using slide film, and raw processing is like making your own prints from negatives in a darkroom. Indeed, raw image files are sometimes called Digital Negatives.
Processed images are commonly distributed as JPEG files, because JPEG is an efficient space-saving format, achieved by throwing away many minor details from an image, and reducing the accuracy of the images' colours. The end result is perfectly adequate for display on a computer monitor, digital frame, or projector screen.
Popular image manipulation software can work on both processed and raw images, but the inaccuracies already present in JPEG images will be exaggerated by further processing, and detail which has already been lost during in-camera processing can never be recovered.