I need some advice about using RAW capture mode. I have just started shooting in RAW mode but after some research on the Internet, I still have some questions about RAW. Why won’t Photoshop CS3 or Elements 7 open and convert the RAW files from my EOS T1i? Also, when using the Canon DPP software, should I save the photos to an 8-bit Tif or a 16-bit Tif. L.V.

Answer

The software that’s bundled with any DSLR certainly supports the unique RAW format produced by that camera. However, versions of Photoshop that are older than CS4 – such as CS3 – do not support the newer cameras’ formats.

That’s because Adobe ceased supporting the older versions. Both Elements 6 and 7 do support the RAW files produced by most of the recent cameras, including the T1i. Anyone who cannot open a RAW file with Elements 6 or 7 will need to download and install the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in version 5.5. See Adobe for the download and for installation instructions. (Photoshop CS4 owners should note that they may also need version 5.5 or later.)

The default with any RAW converter is 8-bit per channel color depth when converting to the TIFF format from a RAW file. Most converter programs also allow you to select 16-bit TIFF. A 16-bit image contains substantially more colour and tonal values: over 4000 intensity levels vs. 256 levels for each pixel. That allows for making more significant changes to an image without posterization: a loss of smooth gradations in tone and color.

On the other hand, stick to 8-bit TIFF unless your image editing software provides a great deal of compatibility with a 16-bit file, such as Lightroom, Aperture 2.2, Photoshop CS3 and CS4.

After your 16-bit file looks perfect – and will need no further adjustments – convert it to 8-bit. (With CS3, you can do so with this command: Image > Mode > select 8-bits/Channel.)

I recommend this step because 16-bit files are huge: twice the size of 8-bit files. Unless you have vast amounts of storage space in your computer (or an external hard drive), you’ll prefer to store the much smaller 8-bit TIFF photos.

You should also print from an 8-bit TIFF. While some software (such as Aperture 2.2) allows for printing from a 16-bit file, Adobe products do not. Even if they did, there is really no great value in printing from the 16-bit TIFF; this is another reason why you may want to save only 8-bit files.

By artificially darkening the corners and edges of images we can direct the viewer’s eye toward the center. The trick is to not overdo it, but to have it be subtle. If you look at an image and think, ‘Oh, darkened corners,’ you’ve most likely gone too far. There are several points along the way where you can employ this trick, but my preference is in Photoshop, after the image has been cropped and the contrast adjusted.

My personal method involved the Quickmask tool and an Adjustment layer. On you image, enter Quickmask mode (Q key command) and select a round paint brush of appropriate size. Then simply mask the majority of the image. Remember this is a mask, not a selection, so the areas you paint will not be affected by the next step.

After you’ve masked the appropriate areas, exit Quickmask mode (Q key command again.) The areas you haven’t masked will now be selected. Add a Curves adjustment layer (Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves) and bring the mid-tones down to the appropriate point. I usually use 10% as a good starting point. This is the area where you can go too far if you’re not careful, so take your time.

The great thing about doing this on an adjustment layer as opposed to directly on the image is the ability to edit the curve as well as the layer mask after the fact.

Sometimes we simply have to go with the situation presented to us. Those situations don’t always allow for full control at the time we shoot. But using a number of little techniques and gimmicks can really help a shot pull through.

One of the most common questions I get when teaching my Adobe Lightroom workshops, is whether Lightroom is enough. The answer to that question depends on your needs and goals. But it is worth spending a bit of time reviewing reasons a photographer who has Lightroom 2 might also want to invest in Photoshop:

• Graphic Design: If you are authoring your own web site or other publications, you may want Photoshop (or other tools) for laying out text over images, and so on.
• Healing Tool Differences: There are some really nice things Lightroom can do that Photoshop can’t (like synchronizing correction spots on identical compositions), but Lightroom’s spot removal tool works best on small spots. Photoshop’s healing brush seems a more powerful option for larger scale healing, such as removing linear defects like branches or cracks in scanned images.
• Soft-proofing: In general, color printers cannot reproduce the full range of colors that might appear in your images.  When printing from a color-managed workflow, Photoshop provides the ability to see an emulation of what your image will look like when printed, and similarly can provide a warning of where the colors of your image have exceeded the range of  what your printer is capable of. Lightroom currently lacks this facility. (This would be my first choice for “features  we might see in Lightroom 3.0.”)
• CMYK printing: Lightroom lacks the capability of producing or adjusting CYMK images, which are still a primary part of working with printers when producing greeting cards, postcards, and the like.
• Correcting Perspective:  Occasionally, I’ll photograph trees and find that the way the tops of the trees appear to converge near the top due to perspective is a problem. Lightroom doesn’t have a tool for correcting this, Photoshop does (the “Lens Correct” filter).
• Correcting Barrel or Pincushion Distortion: Photoshop’s Lens Correct filter can also correct for curved horizons caused by lens distortions, Lightroom doesn’t have the capability itself.
• Panorama Stitching: Photoshop has some integrated tools for stitching together images into a higher-resolution composite, Lightroom doesn’t. (Lightroom does have excellent integration with Photoshop on this feature if you have both, though.)
• High-Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging: Photoshop has integrated support for creating and  manipulating  high-dynamic range images out of multiple original exposures, Lightroom does not.
• Focus Blending: Photoshop has integrated support for merging images of the same scene with limited-depth-of-field into a composite that emulates a wider depth-of-field. Lightroom does not.
• Automation Tools: Both Lightroom and Photoshop provide a number of ways of automating some types of tasks, but Photoshop’s actions and scripting interfaces provide a more general interface for automating complex tasks. While many, even most of the tasks that I used actions for in Photoshop can be handled by pull-down menus in the export dialog, other tasks (such as automatically producing different sizes of each of a set of images, segregated into different folders by size) can’t be completely automated in Lightroom.

These aren’t the only ways in which Photoshop has a tool that Lightroom lacks, just those differences that are both frequently important to photographers (as opposed to, say, digital artists, graphic artists, web page designers and folks doing photo restoration) and that really accomplish something in Photoshop that would be difficult to accomplish in Lightroom.

Despite the length of this list, many photographers do just fine using Lightroom  sans Photoshop, many of these tasks just aren’t that important for many photographers. And many of these gaps can be filled in with software from other sources, such as PTLens, Panorama Factory and Photomatix.

Lastly, I’ll add that Lightroom has a number of features Photoshop (and Bridge) lack. Lightroom is far, far more than Photoshop’s little brother. The point of this list is just to help folks using Lightroom understand the ways in which Photoshop might be able to add to what they can accomplish. Let me know if you can think of anything I’ve missed!

For more great Photoshop tutorials check out the MCP Actions Blog. And for shortcuts to better photographs using Photoshop actions, check out the MCP Actions Shop.

Many times I’ve heard the understandable complaint that, after a good bit of working an image to get just the right color, that those colors are sapped by Photoshop or Lightroom when the image is exported to JPEG and then viewed on the web. There are all sorts of explanations on the web about this, and a lot of posturing about the “right way to handle things,” and there are all sorts of issues with the wealth of uncalibrated monitors out there, web browsers that don’t support color management at all (IE, Chrome, older Firefox) vs. those that do support it (Safari, more recent Firefox).

I figured it was time to do some testing. I started by making a sample colorful image as shown above, originally as a PSD file, created in the LAB color space. I then tested export using Photoshop’s “save for web” (after “convert to profile” with different profiles, and then with and without embedding color profiles), and Lightroom.

On color-managed browsers, on my sample, the best results were those that were either produced by LR, or those produced by PS with an embedded profile. That these two seemed equivalent should be no surprise, I surmise (and assume as we go on here) that LR embeds color profiles. For images with embedded profiles, on color-managed browsers, the results seemed very similar, again, I expected this result, most monitors can’t display much in the way of colors outside of sRGB, as I understand it.

On non-color managed browsers the best (err, most saturated) results were those for which there was an embedded profile (LR or PS) and for which the smallest [sic] color space had been specified. No difference was observed between those with and those without color profiles, which is no surprise, that’s what we mean by “non-color managed.” (If you understand color management and think about it, that we’d get the best color saturation from smaller spaces makes sense. A modest red might be “75%” red in RGB, a modest red might be “30% red” in a larger color space. Since non-color-manged browsers just stick “75” or “30” to the graphics card without context, of course the 75 is going to look more … red.)

On non-color managed browsers, it seemed like I was seeing a little more washout near the lightest (most luminous) reds on files prepared by LR relative to those prepared by PS. I don’t have a good theory as to why that is the case.

Images in LAB exported from Photoshop appeared perhaps identical to sRGB exports without embedded profiles; “Save for web…” greys out the profile embedding option on LAB images.

When this subject has been discussed on the web before it has been way too much fun to simply suggest that someone “get a real browser”, but that’s not a very practical solution for folks who are preparing images for the world wide web. While one could throw up ones hands and simply suggest “there’s nothing to be done at the mess the web is in”, and there is some truth to that, it makes no sense to me to entirely ignore how JPEGs will appear on non-color managed browsers.

So, this pedantry aside, this suggests, at least to me, the following recommendations for highest saturation results for general web usage:

1. Use Photoshop, not Lightroom, for JPEG export. I don’t know why this gives better results, but it appears to be the case. This choice benefits non-color-managed browsers.
2. Convert to sRGB using “Convert to Profile”. The choice of sRGB will benefit the vast majority of WWW users on non-color-managed browsers. (If you must use LR in step 1, this still applies.)
3. Use “Save for web…” and embed the profile. This last step will slightly increase the size of your file but make your image notably peppier for about 10% of your users (Safari users and the few of us using Firefox with CM turned on).

Until we get better support for color management in browsers, and for end-users in general, that’s probably the best we can do.

Result Data

(Also check out this follow-up article on saturation losses from sharpening.)

For more great Photoshop tutorials check out the MCP Actions Blog. And for shortcuts to better photographs using Photoshop actions, check out the MCP Actions Shop.