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CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / Digital Postproduction

Picking the right format at the start

It is important to pick the right file format before

taking any actual photos because, while you can

turn a RAW file into a JPEG, you cannot take a

JPEG file and add the data back in to make it a

RAW file. As I mentioned earlier, many cameras

actually allow you to save each image as both a

RAW and JPEG at the same, giving you two

image files for each photo. This is a great idea for

people who are nervous using RAW files and

don’t want to have to process each photo in the

computer before being able to use it. The down-

side is that this method takes up more space and

takes longer to save, so it isn’t very good when

One complaint from photographers when they
start to use the RAW file type is that the image
doesn’t look the way it did on their camera’s
LCD. That is because the image preview on the
back of the camera is actually showing an embed-
ded version of the file with the in-camera adjust-
ments applied. When you view the RAW file on
your computer, those adjustments are not there
and so the file can look muddy and not very
appealing. To match the look of the JPEG file,
Adobe has created a Camera Calibration setting
that is used when converting the RAW file in
Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. This allows
you to choose from a variety of different settings
and will get the camera’s LCD image much closer
to what the JPEG file will look like.

THE ADOBE DNG FORMAT Back in 2004, Adobe Systems came out with a Digital

Negative, or DNG, format that they hoped would be the answer to the multiple RAW formats

created by the different camera manufacturers. A real concern for photographers is that as

camera manufacturers keep improving their cameras and the RAW file format, support for

the older file types will disappear, meaning that the RAW files will be useless. It would be like

waking up one day and finding all your older images gone. Some camera manufacturers

have taken Adobe up on its offer to build support for the DNG file type right into the camera;

for example, the Pentax K20D camera offers the choice of PEF or DNG when saving the image

files and Leica cameras shoot directly in DNG.

Sadly, there are not more camera manufacturers doing the same thing, but that doesn’t mean

you can’t use the DNG format. Adobe has released a DNG converter that will convert your

RAW file to a DNG, and this utility is updated as Adobe updates the Adobe Camera Raw util-

ity. You can get the Adobe DNG Converter at http://www.adobe.com; search for DNG to get the lat-

est information and download sites. The DNG Converter can take your RAW files and turn

them into DNG files, and, if needed, you can turn them back into the original RAW files. You

do this by clicking the Convert button to create the DNG and the Extract button to get the

original back.

To convert your images and keep the original RAW file available, open the Adobe DNG

Converter and, before converting the images, click the Change Preferences button and make

sure the Embed Original Raw File option is checked.