Thursday, April 03, 2008

Raw

I wanted to post a picture taken with my new camera. But the files are bigger than this site allows. So hence the photo of my latest idea. A clothes line for drying clothes. WB got the line for $.50 at garage sale so I thought I would try it out. In Southern Ca we always used a clothes line.

Last week WB and I went to Yosemite for four days of camping. While we were there I decided to take a few pictures using the RAW file format with my new camera. I took about 10 using the RAW format and about 80 using the JPEG format. Using the RAW format you get every pixel just like when using film nothing is deleted when the file is saved. When I got home and was done downloading into Photoshop I could not find the RAW files. I had thought Photoshop would convert them. I checked the camera and they were still there. So I loaded the software that came with the camera which can download and open the files. After about 30 minutes of downloading, registering, and rebooting the computer I hooked up the camera and started. I had 10 pictures using the RAW format. The 80 JPEG files downloaded like in 2 minutes or less. After 5 Min's of work I finally had 10 RAW photos downloaded. And my hard drive space was noticeably smaller. But everything is there. The other thing I learned was that I cannot run any other program while it is converting the files. I usually stay on-line and maybe had a Spreadsheet or two open. But when working with those files I found if I am running anything else just go away and have a cup of coffee while the computer grinds away computing all those little pixel changes you just made. So now I just run the one program and it works OK. Still I have only gotten one file to Photoshop. I guess today I go into help section and see what I am doing wrong. Last thing 80 more RAW files and my hard drive is full. Next stop a new machine with 500 G of hard drive vs 40 and a faster engine.

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