[audrey09]

Hi Guys,

I've been a bit lazy with my photos and have been shooting everything in jpeg.
I find it so time consuming to shoot in RAW and then edit everything when i'm still so new to Lightroom.

Does editing have to be to time consuming and fiddly or am i imagining things?!

Are there any good youtube editorials for basics in Lightroom? I have looked so many times but i get so overwhelmed that it does my head in.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This post has been edited by audrey09: 28/12/2012, 01:00 PM

[MakkaPakkaDad]

I'm a big fan of RAW - it's the digital equivalent of film! Makes it so easy to fix white-balance, etc and saves a lot of "fiddling" time when shooting. Getting it wrong in jpeg can mean what would have been a very nice photo gets sent to the trash. Also, RAW handles saturated colour much better (jpeg tends to fall apart in a screaming heap when red hits 255).

RAW doesn't have to be time consuming post-processing. I "tune" one image in a given set (same shooting/lighting conditions), then "past recipe" to all the other images. The other thing is you don't need to fix up every image. Only focus on the ones you really like (check-marks are great for filtering). If your shooting settings are close enough, you can often get away without any tweaking.

As always, practice makes perfect

[audrey09]

Thanks for the reply.

So does that mean that in raw some pics might be fine without any teaking at all?

One question that I have....after I've taken my pics in raw and tweaked them, do I need to convert them into a different file?
If so which file?

Btw it's a 5d mkII and I use Lightroom as well as the camera software.

Thanks!

[ILBB]

If you dont want to do any processing - why not shoot in jpeg to begin with and your camera does some processing for you???

[audrey09]

I've been shooting in jpeg for a long time and I think it's time to branch out!

[~Bob~]

Shoot JPEG when it doesn't matter. Capturing family events and all other ordinary times, JPEG is fine. But if you are having a 'photoshoot' ie, you want to enlarge for the walls, then shoot RAW so you have better ability to edit them.

I think you should export all RAW's as JPEGs to store them, as years from now, you may not have access to the RAW files. Perhaps technology will advance and your computer 10 years from now may not be able to read them.

[Corella]

Ken Rockwell writes a lot about photography and how to take the best you can with the equipment you've got. Perhaps have a look at his site and/or blog?