RAW

[Sheepshooter]

When I bought my camera last month I got a video of photography tips with the camera. In that video they said to take pictures in the RAW format because you can do more editing and the quality is higher but now I can't figure out how to post the pix I took in the RAW format. Can anyone help me out?

[Tim Fishell]

You need to convert the photo to a .jpg file format.  RAW is great for editing because it allows you to do a little more manipulating but after the picture is set I always out put as a JPEG.

[Sheepshooter]

And how do I do that? I couldn't even open the pic before I downloaded the editing program. I thought that I should change it to JPEG but I couldn't figure out how to do that.

[Killdeer]

What camera did you get? I use Canons, and the software comes with an image browser. I have several photo editing programs on my Mac, but usually use Aperture or Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Aperture keeps the masters and versions, but to export them into a file that I can upload to Photobucket or my document files, I have to save it as    something  , so I pick Jpeg or TIFF or whatever.

So, it goes edit, save as a copy, and then you pick where you will stash it. That leaves the RAW file as you took it, so you can play with it again later.

Likely all you need to do is explore your photo application(s) and play until it does what you want.

Killdeer

[Sheepshooter]

Thanks Killdeeer. I got the Panasonic Lumix FZ35. I haven't had much time to play with it yet.  (Too much working on these damn renovations) I'll try to figure it out the way you told me!

[Tim Fishell]

Yup like Killie said.  I use Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  They are a little expensive but amazing tools if your going to get into taking a lot of pictures in RAW format and doing a lot of editing.  I use Lightroom a lot and it keeps the master file as you took it and allows you to save as a copy (as Killie mentioned) in any format you need.

[Chris Shelton]

there is a easier way to save photos as jpeg if you dont have any fancy photoshop.  Paint, just open the file in paint and it gives you the option for what format you want to save it in!

[luv2bowhunt]

Chris, I don't think you will be able to open a RAW file in Paint.

Sheepshooter, whatever program that you used to open and edit your RAW file with should give you an option to save the file as a JPEG. What program are you using?

[Sheepshooter]

I'm using SilkyPix that came with my camera. I think I figured it out last night. I was playing around with a pic I didn't really wanna keep and I hit develop. It saved it to a jpg file so I'm thinking that's it. Thanks for all the suggestions guys. What a great resource this Tradgang is!!