Arnoud Quanjer Wildlife Photography

All of the DSLR's that are sold by the main manufacturers have the option of either producing JPEG files, RAW files or a combination of RAW and JPEG files. When you shoot in JPEG the camera’s internal software will read the information off the sensor (the picture) and it will process that information and save it as a JPEG file. These JPEG files don't need any post-processing, you can for instance use them for publication on the Web. When you shoot in RAW mode the camera will read the information off the sensor and it will save that information as is. The camera will not process this data in any way. Because the data has not been processed by the camera you'll need to do the post-processing on your computer. To do this post-processing you'll need to use specialised software that can read and convert the RAW files. Your DSLR will come with RAW conversion which is supplied by your camera manufacturer.

What should you shoot, RAW or JPEG?

This question has turned into something of a religious debate on the Internet. Some people will always shoot RAW mode (like me), other people will shoot JPEG most of the time. I suppose that you can let you choice depend on a number of things. The first thing to consider is the quality of the JPEG's that your camera produces. If you're happy with the quality then by all means shoot JPEG. Make sure to do an honest comparison though, shoot in a mode that produces both RAW and JPEG files and see if you can so a better job than your camera at converting the RAW file to JPEG. If you practice a bit with the RAW conversion software then I'm sure that you'll get better results than you get straight from the camera. There are also other considerations to be made. If you shoot hundreds of pictures a day then you probably won't have time to convert them from RAW to JPEG. In that case you'll probably want to shoot in JPEG mode.

I always shoot in RAW mode because I want to have total control over how my pictures are converted. I want to able to influence the white balance, tweak the exposure, control the shadows and highlights and I want to do that without compromising the quality of the picture. In my opinion this is only possible by shooting in RAW mode and using a RAW conversion program to produce the final image. I use Adobe Lightroom for conversion of my RAW files.

RAW file considerations

As RAW files are proprietary file formats you can't be sure that you'll be able to open the RAW files from your current DSLR with new software in the future. This means that for archiving purposes you should store your images in a popular file format like TIFF or JPEG. Which format you select depends on what you want to do with the pictures in the future; if you'd like to work on the pictures in the future then select a file format that stores the image without loss of quality (e.g. TIFF). If you just want to store the images then you can select a file format which uses non-lossless compression algorithm (e.g. JPEG).

Another option, and my personal choice, is to convert your RAW files to DNG (Adobe Digital Negative) format. DNG is a public, archival format for digital camera raw data designed by Adobe. By addressing the lack of an open standard for the RAW files created by individual camera models, DNG helps ensure that photographers will be able to access their files in the future. Within one year of introduction, several dozen software manufacturers such as Extensis, Canto, Apple, and iView have developed support for DNG. And respected camera manufacturers Hasselblad, Leica, Ricoh, and Samsung have introduced cameras that provide direct DNG support. In addition to the Digital Negative specification, Adobe provides the free Adobe DNG Converter, which easily translates RAW files from many of today's popular cameras. By converting your RAW files to DNG files you keep the option of being able to post-process the images without compromising the image quality, and you can be pretty certain that you'll be able to use the images in new imaging software in the future.

What software is good to use with RAW files

There are a lot of third-party RAW conversion programs available. The most commonly used ones are probably:

• ACD See
• Adobe Lightroom (my personal favorite)
• Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3
• BreezeBrowser Pro
• Capture One
• DXO Optics Pro
• IrfanView
• Picasa
• Picture Window Pro
• Portfolio Extensis 8