Well, I have spent the better part of the last 2 1/2 days reading my new instruction manual and have become ‘basically’ familiarized with ALL the features and settings of the Rebel. shooting from the basic modes is a piece of cake as the camera does it all for you. However ……
Experimenting today with Canon’s RAW format I seem to be missing something. On the dial (atop the camera) are the shooting modes – half of which are ‘basic’ modes and the other half are ‘creative’ modes. I set the mode to ‘P’ which is a fully automatic creative mode and allows for selecting the RAW format. After taking a picture my card reader has two files CRW_0032.CRW and CRW_0032.THM. Neither of which will open in PSE2 or iPhoto. iPhoto ‘pretends’ to download the image, and after waiting a couple minutes it seems to finish the download only to find no images in the ‘last import’ folder. Launching PSE2 and the File>Open command ……. the two images on the card are greyed out as not selectable to open.
Apparently there is something with the RAW format I need to learn. I’ll be studying the manual again after posting this …… maybe I’ll discover the answer while waiting for any of your thoughts.
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RAW photos need to be converted with a conversion program – Canon provide one which is slow and not particularly vesatile – it allows you to fiddle with white balance and contast and aharpness and saturation but Not the exposure compensation – which is most of the point in RAW as far as i’m concerned.
Photoshop CS has a RAW converter built in – I don’t know if it supports the 300D; (the old plug in for PS7 is now not available and didn’t support the 10D or 300D anyway – each camera hs its own individual RAW format differences) For the PC there are several downloadable but not free converters with superior feaures available. There is nothing at reasonable cost for the Mac that supports my G3 RAW :- (
You need a plugin for the .crw file (which is the actual full RAW image) Adobe sells one, but it’s about $100. New full Photoshop CS comes with the RAW capability for a variety of digicams.
The .thm file is just a tiny thumbnail file used by (I guess) the Canon software.
You’ll have to use the supplied Canon software (I forget what it’s called) to process the .crw file and bring into Elements. Perhaps the included Canon software contains a PS capable plugin? (I’m not a Canon digicam user, so haven’t kept up with that).
..CRW is the raw file and .THM is a thumbnail that the Canon uses for fast refresh on the back of the camera monitor. You will not be able to access these by File>Open but …. if you have installed the TWAIN driver that came with your Canon you can import the files into Element and just about anything else File >Import > Canon Digital Camera RS 232
Mac, AFAIK, Adobe does not sell the Camera Raw Plugin anymore. Canon’s utility is called the File Viewer Utility. Canon does not ship any plugin for Photoshop.
Others, but not free, converters that people like using are Breezebrowser and C1LE (Capture One Limited Edition).
What ships with Canon is Zoombrowser, to categorize and organize pictures (so-so), File Viewer Utility and another software (Photo Record, or something alike) to create albums. It’s basic, but good.
So RAW conversion can only be done via TWAIN using the camera’s firmware itself to open image in an editor? No actual conversion from .crw to .tif (or whatever), just the TWAIN placement? If so, are there any options for conversion, or is the RAW conversion just "automatic" paramaters?
The twain brings it is as a matrix and when you save it in Elements that is what determines the conversion. It is like opening a TIFF file into Elements, while it is in Elements the file has no meaning and you can save it what ever way elements will permit. The twain driver with Canon usually allows some manipulation …well mind does 🙂 but this is not necessary as Elements has all the tools to do this.
I didn’t know about the TWAIN conversion, the only way I did it so far was to copy the files onto my hard drive, use the FVU and save as either TIFF or JPEG, depending on the usage of the pictures.
In the FVU, you can adjust every parameter, including digital exposure compensation (say you underexposed, you can correct it at processing time, to a certain point). White balance, sharpness, saturation, etc. All the regular parameters in the camera can be adjusted in the FVU.
The problems with FVU are : speed (it so slow it could take 4 hours for 20 pictures), lack of control and the interface is bizarre (at least, for me)
Sorry I forgot one thing. The TWAIN driver will allow you to import RAW Canon data from anywhere not just the camera. So if you have your raw files stored on the hard drive or a CD ROM you can easily get them. While this is not the fastest program on the block it is the cheapest … well as long as you do not factor in the cost of the camera.
I think the twain driver was only available with the early G series cameras – there wasn’t one with my G3 (not even for Windows AFAIK) For the G3 on the Mac the Canon FVU does *Not* allow alteration of exposure compensation – the software is crippled for no good reason. Because you are working with the original image data (rather more bits than after importing into Elements) you can get a much cleaner result by manipulating the RAW format before conversion – particularly noticeable for white balance fiddling
It should be on your CD that came with you camera, of course it may be buried but this is the standard plug-in for Photoshop et al. If you can’t find it you can down load it from here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * Technology Without An Interesting Name and that is the truth not a joke … Well maybe a joke to the by the people that developed TWAIN
Grant – from that table it looks like TWAIN is not available for the Mac (and the plug in which I guess is the Mac equivalent of TWAIN for the earlier Gs only work in OS9 by the looks of it) Looks like the Windows version should work for the later cameras tho – altho I still don’t think that it came on the disc!
My Olympus E-20 came with a RAW plugin for Photoshop (on the disk with the Camedia software, which I never use). I have not tried it, so I don’t know if it will work with PSE or only with full-up PS 7.0. I uploaded it from the CD a few days ago and put it in the Adobe Plugins folder. Now, when I do File->Open, it shows a RAW format…trouble is, I can’t remember if that was there before I loaded the plugin. When I get a chance, I’m going to try taking some pix in RAW format and see if I can open them in PSE. The Camedia software also has a RAW converter, by the way. Bert
TWAIN doesn’t seem to be an option for Windows XP. And untill I downloaded the WIA a few moments ago, it was never an option in either PSE / PS7. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.
Well, actually, according to the official TWAIN organization, that’s a puter urban legend, as nifty as it sounds:
"Question: What is TWAIN an acronym for?
Answer: An image capture API for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. The standard was first released in 1992, and is currently ratified at version 1.9 as of January 2000. TWAIN is typically used as an interface between image processing software and a scanner or digital camera.
The word TWAIN is from Kipling’s "The Ballad of East and West" – "…and never the twain shall meet…", reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers. It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym, and then to a contest to come up with an expansion. None were selected, but the entry "Technology Without An Interesting Name" continues to haunt the standard. ""
There you go bursting my bubble of joy with boring facts. Na …. I think I like my idea better and if I were an academic on the board of standards for TWAIN then I would be upset with a technology that had no name. On the other hand they should more advanced thinking after all the same scenario worked for Clint Eastwood. Ya … that is it … that is what I am going with. After all the was it not the greatest of Twains (Mark that is ) that stated "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story". He said this as he stood on the back of a train and when it pulled out of the station and as this happened everyone notice the number of the train as 22. This incident in Mark Twain’s life (the writer of the greatest of children’s books) has been immortalized by all children to this day and when they see a steam locomotive pass they shout out with glee " Look … there goes the Two Two Twain" Now I best be off before some one throws a shoe.
Altho’ I still don’t have a plug in and I still can’t change exposure compensation on G3 RAW files there is a new update for the Canon Mac OSX Fileviewer and imagebrowser apps on that link that Grant gave – I knew there was one coming but that link was one I lost when my bookmarks file went missing in the process of reinstalling my system last week. It’s really hard to find stuff on the various Canon websites and they are really bad at dating their software updates so it’s a bit of a nuisance trying to work out whether you have the latest of everything
If it is a true Twain plug in it should work with any program that supports TWAIN. The TWAINs I have for my canon and my scanners work with my copies of Corel Suite, Photoshop, Elements, PaintShop Pro, ACDSee and IrfanView. But it only works under import not File Open.
Buz, You should have gotten a disk w/ your Rebel, the EOS Digital Solution Disk, ver 6.0 On that disk there should be a program called File Viewer Utility 1.3.1 plus a buch of other stuff including the TWAIN diver. From File Viewer you can send an image directly to Elements. RAW files are viewable and are sent to Elements as either JPEG or TIFF depending on your choice. I’ve seen some threads that dealt with the RAW format but I haven’t really used it except for shooting a couple and then using the File Viewer Utility to send them to Elements. I’ve been mainly shooting in the highest quality JPEG in the Program AE mode.
Guess I’ll be rereading this thread a few times to glean all I can – but so far did manage to follow the link and update the FVU. Starting to gain an understanding of the RAW format.
Grant, Thanks…I wonder why File->Open shows the RAW format if you can’t open it. I did notice that all the other plugins have a different file extension. Well, I’ll give it a try and report back in case anyone else is interested in Olympus RAW plugins… Bert
As promised, here is a report on RAW format for Olympus E-20N. I loaded the plugin into the Adobe plugin folder. Then I shot some RAW format images and uploaded them. When I tried to import them, I got a message that QuickTime is required to process RAW images! It was included on the CD-ROM from Olympus, but I couldn’t understand why they were asking me if I wanted to load it. I thought it was a video-editing and viewing program! Anyway, I went back and installed it, and successfuly imported RAW images. It was interesting that I was given three processing options by the plugin: 1. RGB conversion only 2. RGB conversion and White Balance correction 3. All of the above plus "Auto image processing" or something like that. Don’t remember the exact words.
I tried all three. #1 gives a very dark, somewhat greenish image. #2 gives the same dark image with correct white balance, eliminating the greenish tint. #3 gives a decent image, although it can be improved in PS. All the images are soft, as no sharpening is done at all, as expected.
The image files are just under 10 megabytes, and they take quite a while to save to memory card on the E-20 which is notorious for its slow image transfer anyway. The E-20 RAW images have 10-bit color depth, which PSE converts to 8. I haven’t reached any final conclusions yet, but my initial reaction is that RAW isn’t worth the trouble…for me. bert
Bert, what a hassle – I don’t blame you for staying away from RAW. Canon’s tools are somewhat better, but not much. Hopefully, some day, there will be raw conversion built into Elements…
Hopefully, some day, there will be raw conversion built into Elements…
Chuck, Probably not until the camera manufacturers agree on a standard format for RAW image files, and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen. It really wasn’t that much of a hassle to work with the RAW images. The only problem was that QuickTime problem. Once I installed that, everything worked very well. I still don’t understand why it is needed. I still need to do some comparison tests between identical photos saved in JPEG, TIFF and RAW…well, I’ve already done the JPEG vs. TIFF comparison, and decided that the loss is not significant if I use the SHQ (best quality, least compression, largest file) compression option. The TIFF files are even larger than the RAW ones. I haven’t really ruled out using RAW for special situations yet, though. Bert
Just a follow up on the previous post. I took some photos in my backyard yesterday…identical shots, as nearly as I could make them, in RAW and best JPEG. The images were essentially identical, even when I blew some edges up to 500% in PSE to look for JPEG artifacts. I saw NONE! At this point, I am convinced that RAW format does not buy me anything at all. Of course, JPEG SHQ on the Oly E-20 is a pretty big file. Compression is onlly 2.7:1. Files are 3.5-4.0 megabytes. RAW files are almost 10 megabytes, and TIFFs are 15. I have convinced myself that with my equipment, best quality JPEG is the way to go. Your mileage may vary. Bert
I think that there isn’t much (if any) visible difference in the images straight out of the camera. I’ve convinced myself (with my G3) that there is some slight difference once heavy editing in Elements has been carried out on an image – jpgs don’t seem to stand up to that quite as well as an image that has never been saved as a jpg but gone from RAW to tiff (I’m not referring here to the issue of resaving jpgs). However the difference is very slight and I nearly always shoot maximum quality jpg unless i’m unsure of the white balance.
Because the Canon file viewer allows me to just click on the alternative white balance settings *after* the photo was taken and see how they would look, just as if I had chosen different white balances in the camera – my kitchen has fluorescent lighting, the family room that leads onto it has incandescent, and if I add bounce flash off the offwhite walls or ceiling the net result can be Very unpredictable depending on what way I’m facing and whichlight source is dominating. If I’m doing set up shots it’s OK I can do some tests and work it out in advance – but if it’s candids or once off shots of my children prancing around and being exceptionally cute it’s easiest to shoot RAW and then work out which setting works best afterwards. Susan S.
OK, I see. Makes sense, I guess. My camera seems to get the white balance right most of the time…and if not, I just go to Levels and it’s usually an easy tweak.
