Shooting Raw Workflow using Elements 5.0

[cavandre]

I been shooting with Canon film SLRs for over 30 years before moving to a Digital Rebel XT last year. Have recently been shooting RAW and wasn't satisfied with the options in Canon Digital Professional, so I just purchased a copy of Elements 5.0 (along with Barbara Brundage's "Missing Manual" for the same.)

However I'm still somewhat confused about the processing flow & would appreciate to know what others are doing.

When you're done tweaking in the Adobe Raw Conv., are you saving the photo as a 16-bit or 8-bit? Why?

If you want do further processing with layers, etc., do you convert the above raw file to a .psd or .tiff & work on it there?

[Linda559]

I just downloaded the trial version of Elements 5 and so far I really like it.

I shoot RAW on occasion. I'm doing it more and more lately.

The advice on this site is to keep the file in 8bit. Although 16 bit offers more file information, many of the features of Elements will be disabled in 16 bit.

Once you make your RAW adjustments, just click OPEN and the file will open into your Elements workspace. Edit as usual and save as a Tiff or Psd.

I have started using Tiff files, they can be read by any Editing program, they retain the layers and I can see the thumbnail images in my windows folders. Also, you can send them to a Print Lab in Tiff format, thereby never having to save them as jpegs.



Linda

[cavandre]

...The advice on this site is to keep the file in 8bit. Although 16 bit offers more file information, many of the features of Elements will be disabled in 16 bit.

Once you make your RAW adjustments, just click OPEN and the file will open into your Elements workspace. Edit as usual and save as a Tiff or Psd.

Linda

This is the part that is confusing me...If I save my file 16-bit, then open & save it as a .psd or .tiff, aren't all the regular options availbable then?

[baycruisers]

Phillips Andrews' book "Advanced Digital Photography with PSE 5" (I think that's the title--I'm at work now) has a nice chapter on RAW workflow and bit depth settings.

[Chuck S.]

Cavandre: If you specify in ACR that your RAW image is 16-bit, it will pass into the editor as 16-bit. Even if you then save it as a PSD or TIFF, it will retain the mode (8-bit or 16-bit) that you set in ACR. If you then proceed to save, re-open and edit the 16-bit image in PSE, many of the functions will be unavailable, unless and until you convert it to 8-bit(Image>Mode>8 bits per channel).

Just FYI, more functions are available for 16-bit images in CS2.

Chuck

[Codebreaker]

If you shoot exclusively RAW then you could find that Elements can be a little slow in your workflow. Essentially it can only process one image at a time and does miss out on some features found in full Photoshop or dedicated RAW processing S/W.

However, it does a good job. My advice would be to keep your image in 16 bit mode as long as possible. This way you get smoother adjustments and there are still a number of features within the Elements Editor that will work on 16 bit images. Sharpening for instance, Levels without layers, Hue/Saturation without layers etc.

Where it falls down is that it cannot support layers for 16 bit images and many of the filters wont work. It depends on what your ultimate aim is.

A word about colour space. Your RAW image provides you with the widest colour space possible. When you process the image in ACR the resulting colour space will be either sRGB or AdobeRGB depending on whether you have the colour settings set as 'Optimise for Screen' (sRGB) or Optimise for Print (AdobeRGB). This colour spaces are considerably smaller.

Elements also keeps all the adjustments for the RAW file in its database. Should you then wish to use another program to re-process your RAW images then any changes you've previously made will be lost. This also means that you must also backup this database as well as your images.

Colin

[cavandre]

Thanks for the info...Let me see if I got this straight?

The Canon Digital Prof. software will let me do batch processing & will let me adjust the raw file for the vast majority of the the things I shot.

If I'm still not happy, I can open the file in the ACR and further adjust the raw file. If that works, I save as 16-bit & I'm done.

If I want to do further tweaking, I can either open as an 8-bit or make a copy of the 16-bit and then open it as an 8-bit and then go on from there.

To Codebreaker: do you know the name/location of the database file that Elements keeps on the raw files that needs to be backed up?

Thanks for all your help!

[Codebreaker]

You can process your RAW images in DPP and then continue in Elements if you wish, although I'm not sure that Elements ACR would buy you anything that you can't do in DPP.

You can't go from Elements ACR to anything else.

Once you've finished processing the Pixels in DPP or ACR, then you can open the image in the Editor. My advice is to stay with 16 bits for as long as possible. Convert to 8bit when you come across something you'd like to do but can't because it wont work in 16 bit mode.

On my setup the Elements Raw Database is in Documents and Settings/Username/Application Data/Adobe/Camera Raw.

Colin

[Codebreaker]

There is an ACR update to v3.7 available. This now allows the use of XMP sidecar files which means the exchange of RAW data between applications that support this -e.g Lightroom, CS2/CS3 is now possible.

The XMP sidecar files exist in the same folder as the RAW file and have the same name just a different extension. I'm not sure at this moment in time whether or not the XMP sidecar file automatically follows the RAW file if you do a Move or Export from the Organiser.

Colin