Photography in RAW

One of my readers asked for a blog post about editing photos in RAW, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents worth. I really don't know much about this whole RAW thing, since I don't shoot in RAW, but I thought I'd try to explain the little I've gathered from books and websites.

But in a nutshell, as I understand it, RAW is a mode you can shoot pictures in, usually in SLR cameras. Basically, the advantage of RAW is that you can open up your RAW file in a photo editing software that supports RAW files (like Adobe Camera RAW), and tweak settings that usually you can only change before taking the picture, such as white balance and exposure.

The downside to RAW: the files are huge. Unless you have one monga hard drive, RAW files seem helpful from an editing standpoint, but a little unwieldy from a storage standpoint. That's the main reason I don't shoot in RAW. And also because I'm used to editing normal JPG files.

Also, I want to point out that shooting in RAW or not seems to have a lot to do with personal preference. Some photographers seem to love RAW and use it all the time, and others find JPG to be better. I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" answer here - you should use whichever mode you're most comfortable with.

Wanting more information? You can check out two helpful things I've found (and from where I got most of the information above!):

• "Shooting in RAW" on I Heart Faces
• Pioneer Woman's posts on RAW. I'd recommend these because they chronicle her decision to shoot in RAW, and then to switch back to JPG. The first few posts on the search page seem the most relevant.

I hope this was mildly helpful - and anyone who has experience/knowledge about RAW, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.