http://www.digitalcameraworld.com APRIL 2020 DIGITAL CAMERA^55
RAW EDITING
SOFTWARE
There are plenty of choices for
raw editing, from industry standards
like Camera Raw and Lightroom to
intriguing upstarts like Luminar.
Here are some of our favourites...Photoshop CC
£9.98/$9.99 per month
Photoshop processes
raws through its Camera Raw filter,
which is one of the best in the
business. After editing the raw,
you can open it into Photoshop
and make use of the separate
class-leading set of tools within.Lightroom Classic
£9.98/$9.99 per month
The desktop version
of Lightroom offers the Develop
Module for raw editing. With
intuitive tools and a wealth of
workflow options, it’s the most
popular choice among raw
photographers for a reason.Affinity Photo
£48.99/$49.99
This cut-price Photoshop
competitor has an impressive array
of tools. The raw features aren’t as
refined as Adobe’s offerings, but
there’s a wealth of image-editing
controls, including layers and
tone-mapping.Capture One
£20/$20 per month
This is a superb raw editor
for pros and enthusiasts, with
advanced workflow options and
a catalogue feature similar to
Lightroom, plus class-leading
raw processing and a Sessions
mode for commercial shooting.Luminar 4
£81/$89
This filter-heavy offering
from Skylum has a few mind-blowing
tools, like the AI Sky Replacement
feature. It’s an excellent editor with
a gentle learning curve, and works
as a Lightroom plugin or standalone.DxO PhotoLab
£112/$129
Renowned for its database
of lens corrections, this raw editor
will automatically correct your
photos and offers a great
selection of tonal tools.SHOOT IN RAW!3
Saved 50 times
After opening, saving and
closing the JPEG 50 times, the
image quality is irreparably
damaged. It’s rare that a JPEG would
be opened and closed this much, but it
shows how the loss in quality builds up.
4
Saved 100 times
At 100 saves, the sky is
ravaged by posterisation,
although fine details like
the writing and patterns on the boats
are less degraded, because of the
way JPEGs compress their data.Export your images
Once your raw is ready to show to the world,
you’ll need to select the right settings
n its original format, a
raw file is rarely any use to
anybody but yourself. So
after perfecting the look
of the image in your raw
processor, the next stage is to output the
file in another format. We’ve spent much
of this feature trashing JPEGs, but the
format is perfectly fine for outputted
photos, because you can go back to the
raw for further edits, then save as a JPEG
again. TIFF is a higher-quality option.I
OUTPUT AS A JPEG
8-bit JPEGs can hold 16.7 million colours, while the
eye can perceive around 7-10 million (and screens
are mostly 8-bit), S JPEG is a perfectly fine format
for outputting your images. Saving as a JPEG at
this point will give you a small file size, which
is perfect for posting online.
OUTPUT AS A TIFF
TIFF is a better choice for printing (as long as your
chosen printer allows for the format), because it’s
a 16-bit lossless format that won’t degrade through
repeated compression. TIFFs are larger in file size
than JPEGs, but they’re the better choice if you
need maximum quality.SET A RESOLUTION
You might also want to set a resolution for your
image while outputting, especially if you intend
to print the image. The standard resolution for
printing is 300 pixels per inch, so for a 10 x 8-inch
print, the image size should be 3,000 x 2,400px.
OUTPUT SHARPENING
After choosing a resolution, you can apply output
sharpening that is tailored to the size of the image
and the intended output. In Camera Raw, you’ll
find the option in the Save dialog, while in
Lightroom it’s in the Export dialog (File > Export).