Aardvark

RAW gives you enormous freedom in editing your images. You will need RAW conversion software, which comes with Canon cameras tha support RAW capture or in programs available from Adobe or Apple. Adobe Camera Raw and Canon's Digital Photo Professional are the most common software. With RAW you get all of the image data, uncompressed, so you can change basically any value you want, such as white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. One photographer friend of mine calls it the lazy way to shoot because you can easily correct little flaws or mistakes from the time of image capture (although ideally you still expose properly in camera as far as aperture/shutter goes - but you can change ISO I believe later with RAW). Note that the files sizes will be MUCH bigger, so you will need to have large hard drives if you want to save the RAW images. Also, it's important you develop a solid workflow for yourself. Good luck!

enormous thanks for your great overview. I'll be sure to look into Photoshop as a possibility, as you seem to indicate & another person confirms. Can't wait to get my feet wet! Cheers.

Hi, don't know of exactly what the technical requirements are - I would say you need a RAW-compatible editor like Photoshop or LIghtroom. I know I have received a number of RAW-compatibility updates from Apple for my Mac. As for technique and knowledge/experience you don't need any. Start shooting in RAW and off you go. The big advantage is the ability to better correct incorrect exposure when shooting. At a wild guess you can easily correct 2 full stops over or below the shot exposure and not worry about the image being damaged or shifted into a different colour space. You can also easily and non-destructibly correct white balance and hue etc. I realise you can do this with jpg up to a point. RAW simply moves that point much further away so you stress less while shooting. Hope this helps

Thanks!

no problem. Good luck and enjoy

You'll need lot of time (or shoot in raw only when makes sense), lot of disk space (or transform all pictures to jpeg and keep the raw format when makes sense), bigger memory cards, little experience in photoshop or similar (or read some basic tutorial about raw post processing). HIH!

What do you mean by "lots of time"? Do you mean that one needs a lot of time to work with RAW image processing on Photoshop (more than with JPEG, for example?)

I mean that is REQUIRED to do post-processing in all your RAW pictures to be able to share / see / upload, etc. in the standard way. If you shoot in JPEG anyone can share / see / upload directly but in RAW you have work to do. You do not NEED much more time to work with RAW than JPEG, but you will have much more control and more tweeks to do, so you will spend more time improving your pics...

I'm doing this shift right now, and I was advised to start with Lightroom instead of Photoshop. Lightroom is a more limited sftw, but specialized in photography editing and workflow, being an easier start for beginners.

Regards, Grego