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Shooting Raw - The Basics

The Videos runs for 30 minutes

Why should we shoot images using Raw mode? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

In this video we hope we have answered those questions with a brief explanation, but also we let our demonstration do most of the talking for us. Our before and after image probably says more about the benefits of shooting in Raw than any explanation. Raw has great flexibility, but we shouldn't think that the sole use of Raw shooting is to make up for mistakes or problems we may have got wrong at the taking stage. Raw is far more than that. Having said that, we had around 10 images to choose from to demonstrate Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and we chose the most least likely and you can see that image immediately below. This is how it looks straight from the camera.

The image above doesn't look very impressive, but despite what we have already said, the choice of this image is a great demonstration for what we can achieve using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). In this tutorial we do not get over complicated with the image and carry out practically every manipulation in ACR. By the time we open up the image and it is finally converted from its Raw starting point into an image as we know it,much of the work has been done using ACR.

We adjust exposure, colour, contrast, clarity, sharpness and also demonstrate how you can balance the sky with the foreground using layer masks. We show you how to fool Elements into thinking it is Photoshop giving you access to layer masks in Elements 7. We straighten the horizon and do the smallest bit of cloning once the image is open into Elements. If we can make such a dramatic difference in this case, think what we may be able to do when the starting image is already a lot better. In our view shooting Raw is the only way to go and as we see from the upgrades to Adobe Photoshop. ACR, it just keeps getting better and better.

Download our readme file HERE