Appendix B: Exploring RAW Capture
If you want the highest-quality images from the EOS 60D, choosing to capture RAW images is the way to get them. Of course, you can have RAW images processed in the camera, but in more traditional terms, processing RAW images on the computer gives you more control and the highest-quality images. During RAW conversion on the computer, you have the opportunity to determine how the image data from the camera is interpreted. While RAW capture offers significant advantages, it isn’t for everyone. If you prefer images that are ready to print straight out of the camera, JPEG capture is the best option. However, if you enjoy working with images on the computer and having creative control over the quality and appearance of the image, RAW is the best option.
This appendix provides an overview of RAW capture, as well as a brief walk-through on converting RAW image data into a final image.
Learning about RAW Capture
One way to understand RAW capture is by comparing it to JPEG capture, which most photographers are familiar with already. When you shoot JPEG images, the camera edits, or processes, the images before storing them on the media card. This processing includes converting images from 14-bit files to 8-bit files; setting the color, saturation, and contrast; and generally giving you a finished file. The same is true if you shoot RAW and have it converted to JPEG format in the camera. JPEG images can be printed with no editing. But in other cases, you may encounter images where you want more control over how the image is rendered — for example, you may want to recover blown highlights, tone down high-contrast images, or correct the color of an image.
Of course, you can edit JPEG images in an editing program and make some corrections, but the amount of latitude for editing is limited. With JPEG images, large amounts of image data are discarded when the images are converted to 8-bit mode in the camera, and then the image data is further reduced when JPEG algorithms compress image files to reduce the size. As a result, the image leaves little, if any, wiggle room to correct the tonal range, white balance, contrast, and saturation during image editing. Ultimately, this means that if the highlights in an image are overexposed, or blown, they’re blown for good.
If the shadows are blocked up (meaning they lack detail), then they will likely stay blocked up. It is possible to make improvements in Photoshop, but the edits make the final image susceptible to posterization, or banding, that occurs when the tonal range is stretched and gaps appear between tonal levels. This stretching makes the tonal range on the histogram look like a comb. And digital noise is revealed as the shadows are lightened during editing.
By contrast, RAW capture enables you to work with the data that comes off the image sensor with virtually no internal camera processing. The only camera settings that the camera applies to a RAW image are ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Because many of the key camera settings have been noted but not applied in the camera, you have the opportunity to make changes to settings, including image brightness, white balance, contrast, and saturation, when you convert the RAW image data into a final image using a conversion program such as Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP), Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, or Apple Aperture.
In addition to the RAW image data, the RAW file also includes information, called metadata, about how the image was shot, the camera and lens used, and other description fields.
An important characteristic of RAW capture is that you have more latitude and stability when editing converted RAW files than you do with JPEG files. RAW images have rich data depth and provide significantly more image data to work with during conversion and subsequent image editing. In addition, RAW files are more forgiving if you need to recover overexposed highlight detail during conversion of the RAW file. These differences in data richness translate directly to editing leeway. And maximum editing leeway is important because after the image is converted, all the edits you make in an editing program are destructive. Another advantage of RAW conversion is that as conversion programs improve, you can go back to older RAW image files and convert them again using the improved features and capabilities of the conversion program.
Proper exposure is important with any image, and it is very important with RAW images. With RAW images, proper exposure provides a file that captures rich tonal data that withstands conversion and editing. For example, during conversion, you must map image brightness levels so that the levels look more like what we see with our eyes — a process called gamma encoding. In addition, you will also likely adjust the contrast and midtones and move the endpoints on the histogram. For an image to withstand these conversions and changes, a correctly exposed and data-rich file is critical.
Proper exposure is also critical, considering that digital capture devotes the lion’s share of tonal levels to highlights while devoting far fewer levels to shadows. In fact, half of all the tonal levels in the image are assigned to the first f-stop of brightness. Half of the rest of the tonal levels account for the second f-stop, and half into the next f-stop, and so on.
With digital cameras, dynamic range depends on the image sensor. The brightest f-stop is a function of the brightest highlight in the scene that the sensor can capture, or the point at which the sensor element is saturated with photons. The darkest tone is determined by the point at which the noise in the system is greater than the comparatively weak signal generated by the photons hitting the sensor element.
Clearly, capturing the first f-stop of image data is critical because fully half of the image data is devoted to that f-stop. If an image is underexposed, not only is important image data sacrificed, but also the file is more likely to have more digital noise in the shadow areas.
Underexposure also means that during image conversion, the fewer captured levels must be stretched across the entire tonal range. Stretching tonal levels creates gaps between levels that reduce the continuous gradation between levels.
The general guideline when shooting RAW capture is to expose with a bias to the right so that the highlight pixels just touch the right side of the histogram. Thus, when tonal mapping is applied during conversion, the file has significantly more bits that can be redistributed to the midtones and darker tones, where the human eye is most sensitive to changes.
If you’ve always shot JPEG capture, the exposing-to-the-right approach may seem wrong. When shooting JPEG images, the guideline is to expose so that the highlights are not blown out because if detail is not captured in the highlights, it’s gone for good. This guideline is good for JPEG images where the tonal levels are encoded and the image is essentially pre-edited inside the camera. However, with RAW capture, adjustments are made during conversion with a good bit of latitude. And if highlights are overexposed, conversion programs such as Adobe Camera Raw or Digital Photo Professional (DPP) can recover varying amounts of highlight detail.
In summary, RAW capture produces files with the most image data that the camera can deliver, and you have a great deal of creative control over how the RAW data is converted into a final image. Most important, you get strong data and color-rich files that withstand image editing and can be used to create lovely prints.
However, if you decide to shoot RAW images, you also sign on for another step in the process from capturing images to getting finished images: RAW conversion. With RAW capture, the overall workflow sequence is to capture the images, convert the RAW data in a RAW-conversion program, edit images in an image-editing program, and then print them. You may decide that you want to shoot in RAW+JPEG so that you have JPEGs that require no conversion, but you have the option to convert exceptional or problem images from the RAW files with more creative control and latitude.
Canon’s RAW Conversion Program
Unlike JPEG images, RAW images are stored in proprietary format, and they cannot be viewed on some computers or opened in some image-editing programs without first converting the files to a more universal file format such as TIFF, PSD, or JPEG. Canon includes a free program, Digital Photo Professional (DPP), on the EOS Digital Solution Disk that you can use to convert 60D RAW files, and then save them as TIFF or JPEG files.
Images captured in RAW mode have a .CR2 file extension.
DPP is noticeably different from traditional image-editing programs. It focuses on image-conversion tasks, including correcting, tweaking, or adjusting white balance, brightness, shadow areas, contrast, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction, and so on. It doesn’t include some familiar image-editing tools, nor does it offer the ability to work with layers.
Sample RAW Image Conversion
Although RAW image conversion adds a step to image processing, this important step is well worth the time. To illustrate the overall process, here is a high-level workflow for converting an EOS 60D RAW image using Canon’s DPP.
Be sure to install the DPP application provided on the EOS Digital Solution Disk before following this task sequence.
1. Start DPP. The program opens. If no images are displayed, you can select a directory and folder from the Folder panel.
2. Double-click the RAW (.CR2) image you want to process. The image preview opens with the RAW image tool palette displayed with the RAW tab selected. If the Tool palette isn’t displayed, choose View→Tool palette. In the editing mode, you can
• Drag the Brightness adjustment slider to the left to darken the image or to the right to lighten it. To return quickly to the original brightness setting, click the curved arrow above and to the right of the slider.
• Use the White Balance adjustment control to adjust color. You can click the Eyedropper tool, and then click an area that is white or gray in the image to quickly set white balance, choose one of the preset White Balance settings from the Shot Settings drop-down menu, or click Tune to adjust the white balance using a color wheel. After you correct the color, you can click Register to save the setting, and then use it to correct other images.
• Change the Picture Style by clicking the down arrow next to the currently listed Picture Style and selecting a different Picture Style from the list. The Picture Styles offered in DPP are the same as those offered on the menu on the 60D. When you change the Picture Style in DPP, the image preview updates to show the change. If you don’t like the results, you can click the curved arrow to the right of Picture Style to switch back to the original Picture Style.
• Adjust the tonal curve. Sliders enable you to target the image Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows for adjustments. You can also adjust the black and white points on the image histogram by dragging the bars at the far left and right of the histogram toward the center. Then you can also adjust the color, saturation, and sharpness.
• Adjust the Color tone, Color saturation, and Sharpness by dragging the sliders. Dragging the Color tone slider to the right increases the green tone, and dragging it to the left increases the magenta tone. Dragging the Color saturation slider to the right increases the saturation, and vice versa. Dragging the Sharpness slider to the right increases the sharpness, and vice versa. You can further refine the sharpness level with the Strength, Fineness and Threshold sliders.
3. Click the RGB tab. Here you can apply an RGB curve and also apply separate curves in each of the three color channels: Red, Green, and Blue. You can also
• Click one of the tonal curve options to the right of Tone curve assist to set a classic S-curve without changing the black and white points. If you want to increase the curve, click the Tone curve assist button marked with a plus (+) sign one or more times to increase the curve. Or you can click the linear line on the histogram, and then drag the line to set a custom tonal adjustment curve. If you want to undo the curve changes, click the curved arrow to the right of Tone curve adjustment, or the curved arrow to the right of Tone curve assist.
• Click the R, G, or B buttons next to RGB to make changes to a single color channel. Working with an individual color channel is helpful when you need to reduce an overall colorcast in an image.
• Drag the Brightness slider to the left to darken the image or to the right to brighten the image. The changes you make appear on the RGB histogram as you make them.
• Drag the Contrast slider to the left to decrease contrast or to the right to increase contrast.
• Drag the Hue, Saturation, and Sharpness sliders until the image looks right to your eye.
4. Click the NR/Lens/ALO tab. Controls on this tab enables you to do the following:
• Set Auto Lighting Optimizer. Auto Lighting Optimizer automatically corrects overexposed images and images with flat contrast. This option can be applied automatically to JPEG images in the camera, but the only way to apply it to RAW images is in DPP. You can choose Low, Standard, or Strong settings, or turn off Auto Lighting Optimizer by selecting the check box.
• Control digital noise if it is problematic in the image. There are controls for both RAW and TIFF/JPEG images. Be sure to enlarge the preview image to 100 percent and scroll to a shadow area to set noise reduction for Luminance and/or Chrominance.
• Correct lens aberration. Click the Tune button to display another dialog box where you can view and adjust the Shooting distance information, correct vignetting using Peripheral illumination, Distortion, chromatic aberration, and Color blur.
5. In the image preview window, choose File→Convert and save. The Convert and save dialog box appears. In the dialog box, you can specify the file type and bit depth at which you want to save the image. Just click the down arrow next to Kind of file and choose one of the options, such as TIFF 16-bit. Then you can set the Image Quality setting if you are saving in JPEG or TIFF+JPEG format, set the Output resolution, choose to embed the color profile, or resize the image. In addition, you can resize the image and specify the width and height.
The Edit menu also enables you to save or copy the current image’s conversion settings, and then you can apply it to other images in the folder.
6. Click Save. DPP displays the Digital Photo Professional dialog box until the file is converted. DPP saves the image in the location and format that you choose.