RAW SHOOTING

Is their any reason to use AEB when shooting in Raw?
Canon 7D
Canon18-135 STM, 70-200 F2.8
2X Extender
580EX
Canon Elph 330HS
Canon Elph SD750
Solved!
Go to Solution.

You need to use the AEB feature because the RAW format can provide true EV range of only +- 0.5 EV.
If that's the range you need, then no need to bracket the shots.
But if you need a +-2 EV or something like that, using RAW file would cause loss of data and details. That's why it is best to use EV bracketing.

Similar Messages

Moving from Raw Shooter to Lightroom to Lightroom 2

Hi Folks: I have a problem. I used to use Raw Shooter fully paid up. When Adobe bought out Pixmantec I was sent Lightroom when it became available and I've happily used it for a year or so. I've had a hard disc crash and have almost everything backed up. But I don't have Program Files backed up so can't find how to get my licence number. When I download the upgrade to the latest Lightroom it asks for the old number. I don't actually know if I had one but the lightroom I was sent worked OK for the past year.
So, am I merely confused? Should I have had a number to use the previous Lightroom? I realize that I have to talk to Adobe directly but wondered if anyone has met this problem. Does, for example, Lightroom store the password anywhere I can retrieve it?
Thanks, Donald

When the process was done to get your copy of LR you should have created an account with Adobe and registered the license there. Try going to Adobe dot com and login to your account and recover the license key through that source. Hope this helps.

Help with RAW files and custom white balance.

ive long had this issue with RAW shooting and adobe photoshop and lightroom, my main subject is a saltwater reef aquarium that is lit by artificial lighting, i shoot canon and use the custom white balance setting to get everything looking proper and it works good.. to an extent.. if i shoot jpg the photos all turn out as shot, if i shoot RAW the white balance in adobe programs is totally messed up and you cant fix it.. if i use DPP by canon, its perfect and looks just as shot or just a a jpg would look.. my question is how can i get adobe lilightroom to render my RAW files correctly.
below are all 3 images, first one was converted and exported to jpg in canon DPP without any adjustments and is what the photo should look like, second has been exported from photoshop, and 3rd i added a link to the actual RAW file. why cant my lightroom interpret these properly?
heres a link to the actual RAW file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5a39ctllwgrem7a/_MG_8971.CR2
this was a raw converted in canon dpp, and its what the aquarium looks like, and is what the photo should look like. just to note, any other editing or viewing program besides adobe products all render the image correctly.
this is what photoshop and lightroom do to my Raw files, theres no way to adjust anything to get even remotely close to correct..

The white-balance Temperature of this image as computed by the camera is way beyond the 50,000K upper limit as you can see when you open the file in LR or ACR, so Adobe cannot reach the As Shot WB temperature number and stops at 50,000K which is still too blue -- although EXIFtool says: Color Temp As Shot : 10900, so maybe Adobe's wildly high 50,000K number is based on a faulty camera profile that exaggerates blues:
However, using the Camera Standard makes things not nearly so garish blue, and it is possible to use Photoshop to neutralize things even more:
However, as you say, other raw converters do ok with this image despite the high WB temperature, so I think the Canon T3/1100D profile needs some work, but probably won't get it since it is not a high-end camera.
For example, here is the default conversion from LibRaw that is part of RawDigger, and in my opinion is an improvement on the camera rendering though perhaps lacks a bit of saturation:
As another example, here is RawTherapee's conversion, after I neutralized the auto-tone and color values it applies by default, and appears to be a bit too saturated but that could be easily adjusted:
I would agree that Adobe is doing something wrong with this camera in this lighting. A clue is the bright green color of the top-central coral which seems to be yellow in the non-Adobe renderings.

Unable to upgrade Camera Raw with CS4 in Lion...

Hi All,
very frustrating; I have been unable to upgrade Camera Raw despite several attempts.
I've downloaded the latest version as an upgrade; I've done Software upgrades through PhotoShop, but for some
reason these do not seem to have taken, ie., the version of ACR in Bridge preferences remains 5.0.
This makes it impossible for the computer (a brand new MacBook Pro) to read or convert to DNG raw files
from a Nikon D300S.
Oddly, ACR 5.0 converts raw files from a D700 just fine.
Also puzzling is that my attempt to upgrade to ACR 5.7 in a 5 month old iMac have been smooth as silk (OS 10.6.7)
Help!
Stu Rosner

At one point, I was one of the most vocal critics of camera raw in the CS4 / Lightroom v2 days. In short, I felt that there was not enough control over noise reduction and fine detail rendition when processing digital camera raw files, especially at higher ISOs, although I had been quite pleased with earlier versions. That all changed when CS5 / LR v3 was released. You now have an enormous amount of control over exactly how much sharpening and how much noise reduction will be applied to an image. The amount of fine detail one can extract from a low-ISO raw file is extraordinary. When you crank up the ISO and an image gets noisy, you now can choose whether or not you prefer a smoother look at the expense of some of the more subtle texture details, or a slightly grainier look where one has a feeling that no significant fine details are lost from the original capture (what I prefer). The raw processing defaults in Adobe's latest software are good starting points, but for my personal tastes, I generally do modify them a bit with less NR and slightly more sharpening at a smaller radius.
Even out-of-camera JPEG files will benefit from the new processing engine. I find that turning down the sharpening and NR in-camera, and then applying some subtle tweaking in LR, for example, makes for much better looking images even when starting from a JPEG. If you are a raw shooter, like I am, then upgrading to the latest Photoshop and Lightroom is absolutely 100% worthwhile in my opinion!
I personally feel that the quality of raw conversions in Adobe's latest software are pretty much the best there are. I have used many other raw converters (Capture One, Aperture, RAW Developer, Silky Pix, Canon's DPP etc.), and while each have their strengths, overall I far prefer the look of the final image from Adobe's latest software. Sure, I might find the colour rendition slightly better, in some cases, from some other raw converters, but colour I can fix. Poor detail rendition or heavy-handed/crude noise reduction I cannot.
EDIT: Also should mention how good the lens correction controls are. Not only are there automatic lens corrections available (possibly of limited use with an M8 due to potential lack of lens EXIF information), but the manual corrections are extremely useful. Chromatic aberration, vignetting, highlight fringing and distortion control all work extremely well and are minimally harmful to image quality, unlike performing those same corrections in Photoshop after the raw conversion stage. You also have excellent perspective corrections that, amazingly enough, seem to have very little impact on image quality even when fairly dramatic adjustments are made.
Lastly, I own both Noise Ninja and Topaz DeNoise and since upgrading to Adobe's latest software, I don't think I have felt the need to use either of those two third party NR plugins once. Purely from a noise reduction standpoint, upgrading to CS5 or LR v3 is almost like getting a new camera, almost like moving from a cropped sensor to a full-frame as far as high-ISO image quality.
I would suggest you download Lightroom v3 and give the 30 trial version a whirl. Spend some time in the Detail section of the Develop module and make sure that for each image you are looking at, ones that you may have edited in previous versions of Camera Raw or Lightroom, that you have "2010(Current)" chosen in the "Process:" section of the CameraCalibration tab in Develop. That will ensure that you are fully benefitting from the latest raw conversion engine. Zoom in to 100% before you tweak the Detail settings to make sure you are seeing actual pixel-level detail. I think you may be amazed at what you can do...
Regards,
Mike Mander

Iphoto08 not compatible with RAW shot via Canon Powershot SD850 IS

Lifehacker posted an interesting article recently whereby you could enable RAW shooting mode on a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera by using a free open source project called CHDK.
http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-your-pointand+shoot-into-a-supercamera
I've installed this software on my camera (Powershot SD850IS) but unfortunately iPhoto is unable to upload RAW images captured on my camera. I'm guessing this is because RAW on a Canon SD850 is not supported (naturally, when RAW isn't a supported feature on my Canon).
Does anyone know if there is a way to upload these RAW pictures into iPhoto, or whether I will have to use a 3rd party app, like photoshop, to do my editing before being converting into JPEG before uploading into iPhoto08.
Thanks
VP

Adobe has an application that will convert the RAW files into DNG format which iPhoto can use. Get it here: Adobe - Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter : For Macintosh : Adobe .... You can check to see if it supports your Canon.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.≤br>
Note: There now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

Raw and DNG

Have been successfully using RAW and DNG conversion with Canon 20D in CS3. New Canon 5D Mark II. No longer able to covert to DNG or open RAW files. Have downloaded updates RAW 4.6 and corresponding DNG converter that are supposed to work in CS3. Still not able to open or convert. Any siggestions?

I can understand being angry when you find out your camera isn't supported by Adobe, as I remember I was, too, just not being angry enough to find JPG or DPP adequate instead of spending $200 on an upgrade. Adobe needs to pay their employees and not waste our money by hiring more people to keep all their old versions up-to-date, so once I got over being angry, I was ok with their policy. I suppose it's possible you'd need to upgrade your computer, again, to run CS4 or CS5, and that would be more than $200. My old computer will barely run CS4 and I don't have a 5D.2 so you're one step ahead of me.
Anyway, to summarize what the alternatives would be if you weren't avoiding them out of protest:
1) Upgrade Photoshop to a version that supports your camera, which would be CS4 or CS5 next spring. This would cost $200 unless you had to upgrade your computer again.
2) Manually copy your files from your CF card to your hard drive, then use the DNG Converter 5.5 to convert them to DNGs, then Bridge and ACR can work with them. This is free.
Another alternative I will mention, because this is what I do, is to use Lightroom, and then edit things in Photoshop if your processing requires it. Mine rarely does, anymore.
I used to shoot JPG and use Paintshop Pro to adjust my images and that worked until I found myself in a situation where I needed to correct white-balance more than worked well with JPGs, so I converted to shooting RAW, with a temporary phase of RAW+JPG because I wasn't sure.
Once I was doing RAW, it only took me a day or two to reject using DPP as very annoying. So I started using Bridge/ACR/Photoshop to process everything. At one point an independent company had a program call RAW Shooter, where they gave away the "lite" version for free, and it did a reasonable job. Of course Adobe bought them out, and then released a wonderful program called Lightroom based on the idea and some of the technology. Lightroom costs $300 for the initial version, $100 for major upgrades that mirror the Photoshop major upgrades, and has free minor updates for new cameras that correspond to the free interim ACR updates.
If Photoshop, itself, does what you want, and it's only ACR that you want to update whenever you get a new camera, then Lightroom is a cheaper alternative to updating Photoshop just to get a new ACR version.
As I said, I love Lightroom, and would hate to go back to use Bridge/ACR as my main processing model, again, let along use DPP or shoot JPGs.
The next version of Lightroom, LR3, which improves the detail rendering and color-noise-reduction (so far) is available for beta testing until April 2010, from http://labs.abobe.com/ It doesn't have luminance noise-reduction enabled because that is apparently still a work-in-progress after Adobe has fundamentally changed their RAW rendering algorithm and luminance NR is the quite difficult to accomplish, but Adobe wanted user-feedback on their new rendering and color NR without waiting to perfect the luminance NR.
I am enjoying using the beta although I have to go to Photoshop to use the Noise Ninja plug-in for higher ISO images.

RAW /RAF images not recognized by 10.4.11

My Fuji Finepix 900 (highly recommended by several Mac magazines-that's why I bought it!) has a RAW shooting option. The icon .RAF shows on the desktop when I upload the image to the iMac, but cannot be opened.
Neither Preview (loading an image to the desktop) nor iPhoto 5.04 recognizes the format. What can I do to display and save the image onto my iMac?

Peter
Unfortunately this is quite straighforward. Either 10.4 supports this camera's RAW format or it doesnt, and the latter seems to be the case. Options include using a RAW converter to turn it to a format that Macs can understand. There are several, have a look on MacUpdate. Even a basic search using 'raw' produces several options.
Regards
TD

Iphoto raw conversion

I have a new Sony ax65 SLT camera and I would like to know if Iphotos converts raw images into jpeg better than if I were just to shoot in jpeg mode and let the camera compress it all
I know you can get photoshop or lighthouse to convert raw images but from what I have read it can be a bit of a process on a imac

Rainer,
for the following cameras is the raw format supported in iPhoto: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5955
I cannot find your camera "Sony ax65 SLT" on the list of supported camera. Is "Sony ax65 SLT" the same model as "Sony Alpha SLT-A65"? Then it would be supported, but if not, you cannot use the RAW format from the camera directly with iPhoto.
and I would like to know if Iphotos converts raw images into jpeg better than if I were just to shoot in jpeg mode and let the camera compress it all
RAW developement is widely a matter of taste. iPhoto uses the same RAW support as the professional application Aperture, and it is really good. But since it is specific for each camera, it is hard to give a general answer.
I know you can get photoshop or lighthouse to convert raw images but from what I have read it can be a bit of a process on a imac
Shooting in RAW is advantagous, if you need to do a lot of editing. But if you are not planning to do much editing and like the way your camera developes the raw, shoot JPEG. This way you will see directly when taking the photo, how it will turn out and are not in for surprises later. If you want to use in-camera settings and special programs your camera offers, you can only use them when shooting JPEG.

Raw Import Preview from EOS 30d

Hi All,
I've got a question regarding RAW importing from a Canon EOS 30D. There are no previews only blank boxes with the image no. at the bottom. If I'm importing jpegs from the camera it's fine I can see the preview image. Also, is it possible to tell Aperture not to import duplicate images? Kind of like iphoto does where it gives you the option of ignoring images on the card that are already in the library.
cheers
M.

Mike,
Thanks for your response. The camera was directly
connected to my MBP in both instances (with Aperture
and Lightroom). I do, however, have a SanDisk card
reader on order. Will see if that makes a difference.
Just an update: got the card reader yesterday and did a couple of RAW shoots to test-import previews showed up right away. Hopefully this has fixed the problem.

Does Photoshop Touch have a built in raw converter for Canon, Panasonic and Olympus raw cameras?

Does Photoshop Touch have a built in raw converter that you can use with your Canon, Panasonic and Olympus raw shooting cameras ?

Thank you for getting back to me on this. Hopefully, raw conversion will be available soon and this fact will be publicized so people won't miss the opportunity.
Walter

RAW+JPEG with unsupported RAW

I'm now using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 (and really liking it), whose RAW files aren't yet supported by Aperture. I figured out that Aperture silently imports the JPEGs with the RAWs (camera shoots RAW+JPEG), and also how to make a version from the JPEG master.
Is there any way to re-associate a JPEG master with a RAW master inside a project? I accidentally deleted a JPEG master. I could pull it out of the trash and reimport it, but then it was not considered associated with the RAW master. I ended up deleting both masters and reimporting to reconnect the masters.
The other question is there any way to edit externally the RAW file? Aperture's external editing feature seems to only export as TIFF or PSD, but my camera came with Silkypix which is a very capable (but odd) RAW editor. If I import the RAWs into Aperture I don't see any way to use Silkypix as an editor. Any ideas, or does it just make more sense not to put the RAWs into Aperture as long as I have to use Silkypix? RAW shooting is a new thing for me.
PowerBook 15" 1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

That seems a lot of effort, so can you not edit the
RAW's before importing to Aperture and then use
Aperture for image management, fine tuning, selects
etc.?
Exactly the course I've decided to take until Aperture supports my camera's RAW. After some photo comparisons I've decided to shoot RAW and ignore the camera's JPEG, develop to 16-bit TIFF with Silkypix and then import the TIFFs into Aperture. It takes a bit of processing time up front, but the quality is worth it.
I've put together a side-by-side comparison of the camera's JPEG and the JPEG I export from Aperture after going through the RAW-to-TIFF conversion. The quality difference is quite noticeable.
See the comparison picture at http://www.puppethead.com/misc/lumix_l1-compare.jpg
PowerBook 15" 1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

NOT happy with image quality of Lightroom 1.1

Sure, LR now launches faster and the interface looks a bit nicer. And the more capable sharpening controls and the clarity slider which mimics contrast enhancement with USM are nice additions, but has anyone else notice what happened to the image quality?
First, while formerly LR and ACR struck a great balance between detail and noise suppressionerring on the side of maintaining detail even at the expense of slightly higher noise levelsit appears the goal for the redesign has been to minimize the appearance of noise at all costs. It just so happens that yesterday afternoon, I'd shot some available light candids (up to ISO 800) of the staff at a local health care facility and was intent on using them as a trial run on Lightroom 1.1. Well, the difference in image quality jumped right out at me: there was no granular noise at all remaining, even in the ISO 800 shots, but neither was there any fine detail. I use a Canon 5D, and while I'm accustomed to slightly higher levels of chroma noise, images up to ISO 1600 in even the worse lighting are always full of fine detail. Fine structures like strands of hair and eye lashes have now lost their delicacy, and have instead become coarse, unnaturally painterly analogs. Looking into shadow areas, I can see the results of what seems to be luminance noise smearing at work, obliterating noise and detail along with it. I never used Raw Shooter because I'm a Mac user (2x2GHz G5 w/2GB RAM and 250GB HD), but if this is the result of incorporating Pixmantic's technology, the result is not a positive one from my standpoint. The images I shot yesterday are to be cropped to 4:5 proportions, then printed 20" x 25", at which size the processing artifacts and lack of fine detail in these LR1.1 conversions becomes even more apparent. I've even tried turning off all image processing options: Clarity, Sharpening and NR (neither of which I ever use in RAW conversion, anyway)... It simply seems this noise smearing is part of the baseline RAW processing, and it really, really bites. Am I missing something? Is there some way to actually turn off this processing that looks uncomfortably like the "watercolor" noise reduction that Kodak and Panasonic use for their compact digicams. Yuck!
Secondly, is there a way to get back the suppression of hot and stuck pixels that LR used to perform? Now, my high ISO files are riddled with them, the same as they would be when converted with Aperture or Canon's DPP. Default suppression of hot and stuck pixels was a major advantage of LR/ACR, and contributed in no small bit to my adoption of LR as my standard tool for RAW conversion due to the amount of high ISO, low light photography I do. What's even worse, is that the random-color speckles are now smudged into the image along with all the other noise data that's being smoothed out, resulting in images that looks more like impressionist paintings than photographs.
I thought about reinstalling LR1.0 and just continuing to use that, but if LR1.1 is an indication of the direction Adobe is going to take in the development of the software, I really don't see the point of continuing to use the softwareparticularly when I had a few existing problems with LR1.0 that were never resolved, such as crashing during the import of photos from a memory card and progressively slower preview rendering as the size of my library increased. So, I'm probably going to go back to using Aperture, which is itself not free of IQ foibles, but certainly looks much more attractive now in comparison to LR1.1.
Anybody notice the same things with IQ? Anybody got any suggestions of how to get more natural-looking conversions before I remove LR and go back to Aperture?

Jeff,
I mean no disrespect. But I would like to see samples of 1.1 compared to 1.0 of the same image (ISO 400, and/or 800), because I do not want to convert my library to a catalog until I know whether or not I like the image quality. Why is it so hard to get one good sample. That is all I am asking. I would just rather not jump through hoops to go back to 1.0 if I do not like 1.1....That is all
And yes, after well over 400 printed articles I can tell what an image will look like in print when I view it 1:1.... I can tell if the eyelashes or pores on someones face, the detail in a rug, or wood grain will be detailed on the off set printed page if I look at the image at 1:1 and see smudging...this means to me that the most detail possible is NOT going to translate to the page. If however I CAN see detail in those types of areas, clearly (ie no smudging), than I know that I will see those fine details on the page. If these fine details were not important than we would all still be shooting with 3 and 4 mp cameras. Those fine details that are only visible to our eyes at a 1:1 preview on screen, are important on the printed page.
Oh, and I am not chest thumping. You can check my history here, I do not have a history of that type of activity. I am simply asking to see samples before I update....
I am very discriminating Pro, not some over testing, too much time on my hands, complaining , over paid amateur who only has time to complain that their test chart is out of focus. Or that they can measure toooo much noise at ISO what ever, instead of actually making photos. I actually make my living taking photos. And my clients have come to expect a certain level of quality from me. They comment all the time how much higher quality my images are than some of the other photogs they use. And I am still shooting a D60, where as these others are shooting 5d's and D2X's.
Jeff, I am not against you or Adobe. Matter of fact, I LOVE LR. It has changed my work flow in a very positive direction. I think it is wonderful. I just want one sample.... I am asking nicely: Please with sugar on top :)
If you can't give me a sample, than please at least reassure me that it will be easy to go back to 1.0 for the time being. Is it as easy as uninstalling 1.1, reinstalling 1.0 and recovering my DB from a current backup? If so, than fine, I will go this route........... If not, than I am hoping for a sample.
Thank you very kindly Jeff for engaging in this lively conversation. I do appreciate your comments and participation on this forum. And please note that none of this is said with attitude or malice. I know that some times a writers intent or emotional state is easy to misinterpret in a forum like this. So please know that I am calm and not angry, just curious about image quality.
Ok. I will shut up now. Thanks again

Referenced Images Say They are Referenced But Are Not.

Is anyone having the following problem? I have about 4500 images that were Imported into Aperture as Referenced. Have been working with them over the past month. Tried making a Web Journal recently and after exporting the pages, many of the images did not show up in the web pages although the caption did. I went back to my Album and went through the images. The ones that didn't show up in the web pages were very strange looking within the Album. As a thumbnail they looked fine but when I put the loupe on them at 100% it was obvious that they were some sort of small jpeg or something due to lots of jaggies and poor quality. Even though the Reference icon was supposedly fine, telling me it was online since it did not have a yellow warning label, for some reason Aperture was not accessing the original RAW file.
I now have hundreds of images I have to try and find in the Album that say they are referenced but really are not.
Prior to this web journal problem showing up Aperture had been showing me many of these files were not online even though the drive was definitely hooked to the computer and I was able to go to the same images via the Finder and actually see that they were there. One minute the overall project registered images offline, I would click on an Album and they would register as Online. Then switch back to the Project and amazingly they register as online. Back down to the Album and it tells me they are off line. Back and forth from project to album and a different icon 50% of the time. I knew something was up.
I eventually tracked down many of the images that said they were online but by reviewing them it was obvious they were not due to the jaggies I mentioned above. When I would find one like this I went to Manage Referenced Photos and reconnected the image even though it's telling me it is already connected. After doing this to many of the images I reproduced the web pages and they then showed up. I nearly had all the images showing up except for one that I must have missed in reconnecting so I went back to do just that. As I scrolled through the Album and the Web Journal, many of the thumbnails would turn gray and then finally an image would show up. This happened to dozens of images. I found the one that had not shown up in the last export of the web pages, reconnected it (even though it said it was connected) and then exported the web pages again. Unfortunately I was back to square one. Once again dozens of images were now not showing up in the export of the web pages again.
I just can't believe how buggy 1.5.2 seems to be. I thought maybe it was something to do with Repairing Permissions so I went and did all of that. Still no luck! Anyone else experience anything like this? I'm about ready to give up on this software.

Victor,
Yes larger hard drives will help but the day they are large enough to fit in a laptop with a professional photographers entire collection is a long way off and may never happen. There is no reason why Referenced files needs to be so difficult. Two quality programs that handled it with ease was RAW Shooter (now gone having been bought by Adobe) and Photo Mechanic which is superb for some tasks. For Aperture to have this many issues with referencing images is unacceptable and the market place will bear this out. I've quite using the program all together and have gone back to Photo Mechanic combined with IView and Photoshop. There's still room for an Aperture like product but Apple better get moving to make it work better. Microsoft just announced some of the upcoming IView capabilities that will be available next year. Adobe has CS3 and Lightrooom and I'm guessing Photo Mechanic isn't resting on it's heels. I really, really wanted to like Aperture and I worked with it day in and day out for nearly two months. As time went on the Referenced files just kept getting more and more unstable and I lost a ton of work due to it no longer being able to see some of those files.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I am new to LR and needs some advice please

I have been using Raw shooter and have been shy of going over to LR.I am not a hugely knowledgeable user nor that technically minded. I purchased Scott Kelbys, and Martin Evenings book on LR and am learning as I go, I have been reading several threads on this site and I am concerned about all the negativity I am reading about LR being buggy, with problems?
and how it seems that Adobe are not doing enough with LR to address any such issues? I am a canon user and issues relating to Canon raw are a particular worry. I am about to put my entire collection from Raw shooter ( On External LAcie drives) into the hands of LR in the future. Is this a wise decision? Please help.
Also I want to get started if it is the right thing to do, my PC is getting on abit, with 4 yr old tech inside and only 1gb ram. I will soon get somthing more powerful with 2-4 gb ram. my second question is this. I will be running my libraries on external drives only ( LAcie F.A. Porsche).
If I have imported my images without moving folders, with LR 1.2 loaded on my pc. If later I remove LR from it and reload onto a new PC will it see all my libraries again and know all my settings again without issue and without having to re-do everything. If that is the case then I had better wait until i upgrade the Pc, before I start any work with LR, which will be frustrating.??
Apologies for a long question, but I am technically challenged. If anyone can assist me in these areas I would be grateful
Paul Apps

LR is not buggy and it converts Canon RAW files just fine. I run LR on a PC without any significant issues except speed. LR is too slow in some areas (importing images, browsing thumbs and previews, in particular) compared to other programs such as Photo Mechanic and ACDSee, but it is very stable on a clean computer. Many features need improvement but hopefully that will come in time. Meantime LR is quite good and I bet you will like it. There is nothing better overall.
You should never risk your images to any software or anything else. Keep a backup copy of your originals separate from the copy you use for LR or other software. Plus LR is a non-destructive editor (pixels are not changed) so your images will be quite safe.
As Tomrock said you can transfer your database to a new computer without difficulty. I do recommend a new computer, a 4 year old machine with 1gb RAM will probably be frustrating. Other folks say that a quad core processor and at least 2GB RAM is the way to go. My 2 year old dual core Pentium with 4GB RAM is definitely too slow for LR. You might also consider switching to internal hard drives in your new computer and use your external drives for backups. Internal drives for your images and catalog file will be much faster.
Also Tom's advice about importing a few images at a time and then testing how things work is very good. It is definitely a mistake to import a huge volume of images until your are familiar with LR. It is very easy to delete a small catalog file and start over since a few hundred images imports quickly.
Good luck.

Using Aperture with Adobe Bridge: Can It Work?

I have used all the Adobe apps for ages and love them.
Photoshop and Bridge are a mainstay of our studio operation here.
I have been using Adobe LightRoom lately to deal with my RAW shooting.
I take it to a certain point with LR then I use Bridge to do other things with my files. LR and Bridge can see eachother's metadata and XMP info so they can be opened back and forth between the apps as need be.
This is critical for our work process.
What Im wondering is can Aperture be used in a similar way?
Can Bridge see Aperture's adjustment info and visa versa?
Do they read eachother's Metadata and or XMP info?
Does Aperture even use XMP data?
Reason Im asking this is I admire Aperture's interface and functionality.
I'd like to possibly use it in place of LightRoom for dealing with my RAW files.
But without the compatibility with Bridge it wouldnt work for us.
I read lots of Mac and Adobe publications and have yet to see this issue addressed in any articles.
Surely other people are in the same boat as me on this one...
Anyone have any knowledge to share on this matter?
Thanks.

Bridge and LightRoom can see each other's image adjustments because they are using almost exactly the same engine to do RAW conversions. Aperture and Bridge won't understand each other's image adjustments, in just the same way that Bridge and Nikon Capture, Canon DPP, Bibble or Capture One etc. can't.
When it comes to metadata you won't be much better off, as any changes you made in Bridge wouldn't be seen in Aperture unless you re-imported the file and vice-versa.
Basically, if your workflow is based around Bridge you are stuck with Adobe apps as they are the only ones designed to work with it.
Ian

RAW SHOOTING

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for