raw – Complete Digital Photography

ON1 Photo RAW 2018.5 adds profiles, LUT support, speed boosts

June 20, 2018June 20, 2018 by Rick LePage

Photo RAW Browse module

ON1 is now shipping ON1 Photo RAW 2018.5, the mid-year release of its photo editor and image-management app for Windows and macOS. The update adds support for embedded camera profiles in the Develop module; an expanded Transform function; a new LUT (look-up table) filter for the Effects module; a revamped import/export manager for presets, LUTs, and border and texture files; and the addition of nested albums and presets. The update also includes support for recently released cameras and lenses.

Profiles and LUTs

Photo RAW 2018.5 adds support for the built-in profiles that come with most modern digital cameras, letting you get the same basic look that you see on your camera back. In addition, ON1 has included a number of its own camera profiles for landscape, portrait and other scene types.

Lightroom CC, Classic updates add profile enhancements

May 11, 2018April 4, 2018 by Rick LePage

Adobe released simultaneous updates this week for Lightroom CC (desktop and mobile) and Lightroom Classic, with a number of new features and enhancements. The biggest feature is an expanded set of profiles for rendering raw files with camera-specific styles and artistic effects.

At their simplest, profiles are the initial transformation of tone and color characteristics to a raw image (before editing), and Adobe historically has applied a default profile (Adobe Standard) to every raw image processed in Lightroom. If people knew about profiles—which was rare—it was most often to apply a camera-specific profile to a photo inside Lightroom. These additional profiles would correspond to the image settings you would find in your camera; my Sony A7RII, for example, has built-in profiles, with names like Deep, Clear, Portrait, Landscape, and I could apply those profiles either in-camera or in Lightroom Classic. Adobe would add those profiles to Lightroom as part of regular Camera Raw updates, and those profiles were tied to the camera used to take the photo.

Profiles have been around for some time, buried at the bottom of the Lightroom Develop panel, in the Camera Calibration pane.

When Should You Shoot Raw?

July 7, 2017July 20, 2010 by Ben Long

A lot of beginning shooters think that raw format photography is a high-end technology that only professionals need. They fear that it’s complicated, and a different way to shoot, and generally something that beginners should stay away from. But it’s not! In fact, the safety nets provided by raw format shooting are a boon to beginners! With raw format, you can correct overexposure and white balance problems that are impossible to tackle with non-raw formats. This article will walk you through a basic understanding of what raw is, and why you might want to consider giving it a try. (And if you want to know more, take a look at my Getting Started With Camera Raw– a complete discussion of all things raw.)

Batch Converting DNGs to JPEGs

April 9, 2018March 30, 2008 by Ben Long

DNG Reader Bill Baum writes in asking if it’s possible to batch convert DNG files to JPEGs. Bill says that several years ago, he converted several thousand images to DNG, but now wants them as JPEGs to ease the process of working with them in Nikon Capture NX, which doesn’t natively read DNG files. Fortunately, if you have Photoshop CS2 or CS3, you can easily use Bridge to batch process DNG conversions into JPEGs, Photoshop files, or TIFFs.

Nikon Compressed Raw Format – Lossy or Lossless?

May 1, 2018October 15, 2007 by Ben Long

Nikon Like most digital SLRs, Nikon’s family of digital SLRs offer the ability to shoot in raw mode. However, Nikon’s raw offerings provide a twist, in the form of compressed raw. The promise of compressed raw files, of course, is that they take up less space and allow you to store more images on your card. Data compression algorithms fall into two categories: lossy techniques, which degrade the quality of your image; and lossless techniques, which reduce file size without affecting image quality. Nikon users often ask whether the compressed raw format is lossless or lossy, so I decided to look into the question.