MiroFoto wrote:
1. I always took photos in JPEG format ..some of them editing w Elements 9. Now, I have Elements15 and my question is : " Do I really get much better pictures using RAW and editing them with Elements 15? "
sure I know that without post processing with Photoshop and fancy programs I can not match the profi ...even 1/2 profi quality of pictures UHH members post here.
Can somebody post a comparison pics?.
2. Second question is ..how would they look on 4K monitor? It means what quality Megapix do I need to see the difference between 4k and 1920? I have a Nikon 7100 (can shoot RAW) and Nikon P90 (shoots JPEG)
3. Third question : I would like to buy a 24" screen 4K and 1920 laptop ......will it work ? OR do I have to have 4K laptop?
Thank you very much for your responses. OR just a direction to old posts will be OK.
Miro
1. I always took photos in JPEG format ..som... (
show quote)
The basic raw editing workflow will not produce an image that is "finished"- but it will produce a very good proof. There is always more enhancement that you can do with an image, in the form of local (not global) adjustments that you can make in a program like PSE or Photoshop. The raw editor in PSE - Adobe Camera Raw, or ACR for short - is quite good, but there are some tools that you can use to make local adjustments in the full blown ACR that is in Photoshop, that are missing from the ACR that is part of PSE. There is no adjustment brush, radial or linear gradient, color sampler, or spot removal tool in the PSE version of ACR. Also, PSE is missing some important adjustment tools - Tone Curve, HSL/Grayscale, Split Toning, Lens Corrections, Presets and the ability to make Snapshots. Also, the working color gamut and output of PSE is limited to a relatively small color space - sRGB. During editing you are more likely to end up clipping a color channel (oversaturating it), which results in bright colors without detail.
So if your needs are modest, PSE is "ok" but if you want to fully exploit the quality in your images, a better editing platform can potentially provide a better result. The rest is up to your and your abilities, and that will continue to improve over time.
As far as the recommendation to shoot raw+jpeg, this really only works for images of average contrast without lots of image data at the extremes of the brightness range. If you are shooting say, a waterfall, where part of it is lit by the sun and the rest is in shadow, and you have deep shadows cast by rocks and overhanging foliage - you have a large brightness range that simply put - exceeds the range that the out of camera jpeg can produce. Your highlights and dark shadows will be without detail, but your middle tones will not. You can bias the exposure to NOT blow out the highlights, but the resulting image will be dark, and the shadow detail will likely be even less recoverable. Adjusting the mid-tones is possible to create an acceptable image, but the shadows will be lost. With the greater tonal range possible with a raw file, you can bias the exposure to retain highlight detail, and still have enough data in the shadows to produce a much better end result. So for high contrast (wide tonal range) images you set you exposure differently to capture as raw than you would for an "acceptable" jpeg out of the camera.
brightest
This is an example of the exposure bias, set to retain the highlights. I set my meter to spot, read the brightest part of the image - the water between the two rocks in the center of the image, and added 1 stop of light to bring the value higher than the middle gray that would result had I not adjusted the reading from the meter.
First image is un-edited, the second is the same image but with tonal and color adjustments to create a balanced image. The third is similar to the jpeg a camera might produce - overall good midtones, but poor, deep shadow detail and blown highlights. The raw file of an image exposed like this may also have blown highlights. Exposure biasing to retain highlights, knowing that you can adjust the rest of the image, is a benefit of not even bothering with raw+jpeg in this situation.
I have not shot a jpeg since 2006.