CurleyB Loc: MAITLAND FL

I am a ‘return to photo’ hobbiest from the jurasic days of film. Many blogs suggest shooting RAW for best results. I’ve tried with good results, however my photos range from 35-50 megs per photo. My camera seems fine with this but my computer is struggling. Can RAW be reduced in size or is that the nature of the beast (pun intended)?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Nature of the beast. If you follow some of the RAW discussions, you'll see the suggestions for top-line computer equipment (RAM, processor, disk storage) and top-line software. It's more than a menu setting in the camera to excel in this format.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

To answer your question, yes, RAW files can be reduced in size. The cost of this reduction is the loss of valuable information collected at the time of making your exposure.
--Bob

Leitz Loc: Solms

If you reduce the file size you're throwing away useful information and won't get the best your camera is capable of. Kind of like putting a governor on a dragster.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

You do not have to spend a lot to get a pretty decent desktop or laptop for editing photos.

Curve_in Loc: Virginia

If the struggle is how much time it takes in post production, you may want to look at your workflow and how many other processes are going on at the same time. You might want to have a system monitor open so that you can see how hard your computer is working while you are editing.

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

I have a minimal PC using Linux. I do not notice any time lag when processing Raw.

Check what processes you are doing 'in Raw' and whether you can/should do them in Jpg or other file format.
eg. quick WB,Exposure, lens correction (if ever). Then save and do the bulk of any other alterations using Jpg.
That will keep the Raw file pretty much as shot....and you can still take advantage of all the rest of the 'gizmo's' available.
Your Raw file is less altered so in future you can go back to the basic and do it again as your new skills or wishes suggest.
Raw processing is now commonplace in many programmes. None Raw files can be processed in a huge number of different programmes....See what else is available to you and look at how each one 'stacks up' your file size.
In this game its all about 'horses for courses'...

Have fun

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Now there's a party we haven't heard from in a while.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

You probably need to become more familiar with the basics - what is a raw file, what does it contain, and what benefit comes from using it?

BTW - what software are you using?

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Yes, by setting your camera to a smaller image size.

Curve_in Loc: Virginia

That penguin lives at my house too.

blackest Loc: Ireland

For an existing computer system 4GB of ram is reasonable for basic processing of raw files. More is better and when you upgrade 4GB ram is not enough.

With a raw processor such as lightroom most of the time it shows you what the image would look like if applied to the whole file, this keeps it responsive, most of the time. If you switch to full screen view or export you make it work harder as it has to apply your edits to the full image.

with processing outside of raw you will use adjustment layers each layer is the size of your unpacked photo and can rapidly use a lot of ram.

Hard drive space is cheap these days a 4TB drive is roughly 4,000 GB or 4,000,000 MB or enough to hold 80 thousand 50MB raw files.

1GB = 1000MB or 20 50MB files. A laptops internal drive tends to be quite small say 250GB maybe 200GB free after installing software, Its pretty easy to take 200 photos in a day so really that internal drive could be full after just 3 weeks! so you really want 2 external drives one as a backup to the other.

The backup drive doesn't necessarily need to be connected directly to your laptop. But you will want one, your photos are unique, everything else can be reinstalled again.