I think I may be regretting getting the Canon Digital Rebel and not waiting till I could afford the Nikon. I see that Photoshop Elements supports the Nikon .NEF RAW files while so far the only way I can open my images shot in Canon .CRW is to covert them to .tif using the Canon File Viewer that came with the camera. I see that there are several other conversion programs out there but I would like to know what kind of losses are involved in the conversion to tiff? What converter is the "best bang for the buck? I hate the way the Canon Software works it does not allow much flexibility in making corrections to the image prior to conversion. As a home user I just can not afford to spend the $500-$600 dollars to get CS that is half of what I paid for the entire camera..
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To some degree I am in the same boat – although I have no regrets with my 300D.
I would think that using the CFV and using it only to convert to TIFF would be lossless. Then using the full flavored PSE to do your editing would be the way to go.
There are those on the board here that may correct me if I’m in error – guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Being a Mac owner, myself, I don’t know why someone hasn’t written a program for the Mac Platform. I don’t think Adobe’s raw converter works with the Rebel.
Still, I would let that rain on my ownership of a Rebel.
Another option, and it’s the software I use, C1LE (Capture One Limited Edition). It has curves and levels, two very handy tools to help balance the colors and exposure when required.
I use BreezeBrowser and have been very satisfied with it. The price is right for me; I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend more than twice as much for Capture One LE although it’s no doubt a better converter.
Last week I purchased the C1 program after reading comments here and in other forums.. I’m still learning how various features work. But so far, I can say it’s a excellent program and highly recommend it to anyone. The only good feature I found in the software canon supplies with the camera is the photo stitch, that allows you to make panoramas
Stan
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 05:35:47 -0800, wrote:
C1 makes a version of it’s software just for the Rebel. It’s called C1 Rebel and is an excellent value at $49.00. http://www.pictureflow.com/CaptureOne/Pages/C1-Rebel-Purchas e.html You can convert to 8 or 16 Tiff. I have used this software for awhile now and can highly recommend it.
I use File Viewer for only a very few things: First, batch transfer to hard drive without conversion. Second, exposure tweaks on RAW files, then batch conversion to Tiff. Everything else is done in PSE. As Tiff is lossless, you could get rid of your CRW files at this point, the drawback being that the tiff files are much larger.
I tried an earlier version of C1 Rebel, and found that it was much easier/faster than File Viewer. However, the colours were off (muted). I have heard that this has been addressed, but have not had the chance to compare. Anyway, using FV in the way that I do just means that I walk away and do something else (get a coffee, eat lunch) during the ‘batch’ processing, which can take some time.
John you may want to consider keeping your CRW files as they are your digital negatives. While the TIFF is lossless you may find that at a future date you may want to process the file differently than you originally did. Most people find that burning the original RAW file to disk is invaluable. C1 did address the color problems, in fact I know have about a dozen different profiles I can use with C1 and the majority are better than the CFV profile IMHO.
C1 did address the color problems, in fact I know have about a dozen different profiles I can use with C1 and the majority are better than the CFV profile IMHO.
jhj1 – would expand on the ‘dozen profiles’ you mentioned?
At the picture flow forum there are many posted. Some for the 300D and some for the 10D, all will work. Some of the profiles are to boost saturation in general, some boost or lessen certain colors. There are B&W profiles available. Many of these profiles are free and some can be purchased for a reasonable cost. Remember the profile gives you a starting point, at times no other corrections are needed and sometimes you need to correct for problems that are still present. If you have trouble finding them I will gladly send you the free ones.
James, thanks for the info on current C1 release. I do usually save the CRW files (I have a CD-ROM writer). I suppose for some it does become a matter of space. An 8mb CRW plus 16-bit (or even 8-bit) TIFF takes a lot of room. I suppose if C1 is that good and that fast, then going back to the CRW each time and producing a new TIFF wouldn’t be as much hassle as it is in FV. I shall have to look again at C1.
Just to clear up a couple of things. Elements 2 (without the Camera Raw plug-in) will not open NEF files. Some cameras include a tif preview with the raw file. If you are opening a raw file in Elements without the camera raw plug-in you are really just viewing the preview.
Converting to Tif before working in Elements is losless, but as James said you should keep the CRW as a digital negative. There are certain things you can do in a Raw converter before the image is actually opened in Elements or PS, but no matter what, at some point the image has to be saved in a format like tif or psd or jpeg for printing, using filters, adding layers etc. Raw is not a file format that can be read outside the converter software whether that is a separate app or a ps plug-in.
If working in Elements only, keep in mind that it cannot use 16 bits TIFF files. It will open them, but will ask to convert the files in 8 bits before proceeding.
Appreciate it if you could supply me with a URL for a site that has the profiles. And if you, can email some of the free ones to me. Send to: stanri at cox dot net Thanks in advance Stan in Frozen Rhode island
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 06:50:41 -0800, wrote:
At the picture flow forum there are many posted. Some for the 300D and some for the 10D, all will work. Some of the profiles are to boost saturation in general, some boost or lessen certain colors. There are B&W profiles available. Many of these profiles are free and some can be purchased for a reasonable cost. Remember the profile gives you a starting point, at times no other corrections are needed and sometimes you need to correct for problems that are still present. If you have trouble finding them I will gladly send you the free ones.
To some degree I am in the same boat – although I have no regrets with my 300D. I would think that using the CFV and using it only to convert to TIFF would be lossless. Then using the full flavored PSE to do your editing would be the way to go.
There are those on the board here that may correct me if I’m in error – guess we’ll find out soon enough.
JMHO
Another option is Breezebrowser which has just been updated to convert 300D RAW files
I don’t have a DigReb…wish I did. Nice camera. I have an Olympus E-20, which for those of you that don’t know that camera, is a digital SLR…with some differences. No mirror, no interchangeable lenses. I’ve had it about a year-and-a-half and I love it. I’ve used TIFF and highest-quality JPEG image formats…mostly JPEGs, but I never tried RAW until recently. I finally got around to loading the Oly RAW plugin for PSE and then went out in my back yard and started taking identical pix in RAW and JPEG. Brought ’em in…opened ’em in PSE and blew ’em WAAAY up. I honestly cannot see the slightest difference! Bert
Interesting exercise Bert ….. waiting for comment from the ‘experts’ regarding your results.
James – I have yet to receive the files (they probably got caught up in my spam filter and I somehow ‘overlooked’ them as I reviewed the suspected spam) – so here’s my email addy (less the [nospam] ..
Not sure if I qualify as an expert but I do like to tinker. I do all sorts of test shots with my cameras this is to give me a feel of what I have to work with and trouble areas to avoid. My very old and hateful Canon was no exception to my tinkering and I ran a bazillion test shots with it. I found the same thing as Bert did, with my camera the RAW gives no better images than the high output JPG. I suspect this is because of one of the really nice things about Canon G series cameras is that they do not over sharpen.
Many many camera manufactures seem to over sharpen there cameras JPGs. I suspect that they feel most users will not manipulate images so they strive to present their equipment in the best possible light. If you have a camera that falls into this category RAW should return some of the control back to you as the photographer.
That is the addy I used. I am resending now. It is a 2.5 mb e-mail containing 4 zip files. After unzipping you will need to right click on file and click install now. They will show up in the colour management setting if you uncheck use only phase one profiles. If it doesn’t come through let me know and I will try sending each file separately.
I don’t have a DigReb…wish I did. Nice camera. I have an Olympus E-20, which for those of you that don’t know that camera, is a digital SLR…with some differences. No mirror, no interchangeable lenses. I’ve had it about a year-and-a-half and I love it. I’ve used TIFF and highest-quality JPEG image formats…mostly JPEGs, but I never tried RAW until recently. I finally got around to loading the Oly RAW plugin for PSE and then went out in my back yard and started taking identical pix in RAW and JPEG. Brought ’em in…opened ’em in PSE and blew ’em WAAAY up. I honestly cannot see the slightest difference! Bert
I suspect this is because the E-xx cameras don’t do a lot of sharpening or contrast adjustment. I find RAW helps me extend the tonal range a little bit. I can tweak the raw conversion in one direction or another for optimum results.
Another thing to realize is the OLY plugin is not a very good RAW converter. Don’t judge the benefits of shooting RAW from the output created by the Olympus plug in. There is a good one available for free which is called ORFSuite and is available at http://www.digitaldingus.com/e10club/e10downloads.html. I’ve used it and the Adobe Camera Raw tools, and to be honest I prefer ORFSuite. I’ve built some nice batch file based tools and a script for use in iMatch for using the ORFSuite tools and like them very much.
There are several commercial RAW ORF converters out there if you are interested in those.
Chris ============================================================ =============== Joe
Many many camera manufactures seem to over sharpen there cameras JPGs
Grant, You hit the nail on the head. I discovered a long time ago that I could turn off the sharpening and contrast processing in my Oly E-20, and have left it off ever since. I would rather do it in PSE. So, the JPEG images from the cam are soft and somewhat flat. When I did the RAW vs. JPEG comparison tests, I noticed that the RAW images were also soft and even flatter! So, to make the comparison reasonable, I did my usual adjustments in levels and applied identical USM treatment to both before comparing them. It was the only way I could see to have a fair comparison. BTW, the JPEG files are 3.5-4.0 megabytes, and the RAW files are 10. Bert
Bert, I still use RAW most of the time, mostly because I want to preserve the option to convert to 16-bit files and do other wonderful things when new and better RAW conversion software comes along! Truth be told….you’re right, can’t detect a scintilla of difference between the images. 🙂
Chuck, I understand your strategy, and it’s a good one. My Oly saves the RAW files with 10-bit depth, but in PSE, I have to truncate to 8 anyway. I dunno…your way leaves the most room for improvement in the future, I must admit. I just would hate to limit myself to 13 pix per 128MB card…especially when I’m traveling. One strange thing I noticed with my Oly…saving RAW images doesn’t take any longer than JPEGs, even though they are almost 3 times as big. I guess the larger RAW file size is offset by the JPEG processing time. Bert
James – both emails finally showed up together in my spam filter (who knows why) hte first had no file atached the second with the .zip ran in t some error in the unstuffing stage. Maybe – like you said above – send them seperately in individual emails.
Not even sure what I’ll do with ’em once I get ’em – like I said earlier – just ‘sumpin else to espeermint wid’
I don’t have a DigReb…wish I did. Nice camera. I have an Olympus E-20, which for those of you that don’t know that
camera, is a digital SLR…with some differences. No mirror, no interchangeable lenses. I’ve had it about a year-and-a-half and I love it. I’ve used TIFF and highest-quality JPEG image formats…mostly JPEGs, but I never tried RAW until recently. I finally got around to loading the Oly RAW plugin for PSE and then went out in my back yard and started taking identical pix in RAW and JPEG. Brought ’em in…opened ’em in PSE and blew ’em WAAAY up. I honestly cannot see the slightest difference!
Coming to you for the sixth time, please watch your mailbox as none have bounced back and I am sending them to the same addy where you received the zip files. If it doesn’t come through again you might try WinZip as it unzipped them here with no problems. Good luck.
