Taking photos 'Raw'

[Shirley Roulston]

Can anyone tell me why when I take a photo 'Raw'. When the photos are transfered onto the computor there is the photo and there is also a sort of icon that's only opened with photoshop but when I opened it it was just a square of grey, what is that about? Thanks Shirley

[eccles]

What camera are you using to shoot raw with, Shirley? Is it possible that Photoshop doesn't support it? If it doesn't, try doing a google search for your camera model with 'raw converter' in the search string.

[Shirley Roulston]

Hi Eccles,

The camera I use is Panasonic DMC-FZ18 and the photoshop is Adobe. Shirley

[Tom Wade]

Shirley,

This happend to me when I first started using RAW images. I managed to download a plug in for my version of Photoshop elements 5 (see topic Camera RAW), until I did this I could see the files in XP 'my pictures' but could not open them. Once I downloaded the plug in it worked fine.

I am now using Canon Digital Photo Professional which came with my camera and works very well. I don't know anything about your camera but it may be some RAW conversion software came with it. If not you will have to get the right plug in for your version of photoshop. Converting RAW files is very camera specific so you might be better doing a bit or reasearch on the net to see what software is best for your camera.

Good luck

Tom

[Shirley Roulston]

Thanks Tom, I'll have a look in the box it came with. Good bit of advice, thanks.

Shirley

[Shirley Roulston]

I have found what I think I need for the development of Raw photos, under my nose all the time. An icon called Silverpix developer, having opened it, looks very complicated so I'll have a go at it one evening. That icon has been on my monitor for months a bit like an ornament.
Shirley

[eccles]

The chances are that if this developer software came with your Panasonic camera it will contain a means to convert to DNG format, which is an intermediate, supposedly lossless, raw format created by Adobe. Once converted, Adobe will be able to treat it like any other raw file that it has plug ins for, and you will be able to adjust things like chromatic aberration, noise reduction, white balance, sharpening and exposure correction before conversion to jpeg or tiff. The software CD may even have a Photoshop plug in to enable it to work directly with your camera's native raw files.

[eccles]

I've found that Photoshop's raw converter, ACR, supports the Panazonic FZ18, but you may need to download updates for your particular version of Photoshop. Open Photoshop and click on 'Help' then select 'updates'

[Shirley Roulston]

I've done the updates but it looks a bit complicated, nothing is easy I suppose. Thanks for the advice Eccles. At least now I know what the silkypix developer is.
Shirley