How should a professional shoot in RAW?

Professional photographers might have heard this over and over again that they should be shooting in RAW. First off, what is RAW and why is it so important? Let us put some light on this topic. RAW is not exactly an image file. It is an uncompressed loss-less file captured by the camera’s sensor without any editing or processing. They are generally quite large in size and need a special software for viewing and further processing. Typically, the RAW file format gives more control to the photographer in terms of editing and final image creation. Since no information is compressed, a professional photographer can produce higher quality of images than the traditionally used JPEG format.

Following are the easy steps through which a professional can easily make the switch from JPEG to RAW:

• Set your camera’s quality settings to RAW. If you can’t find it in your settings menu, refer your camera manual.
• Start clicking a few pictures with the RAW format.
• Plug in your camera to the computer and upload all your RAW photos.
• Select one of these photos and open it on Photoshop. The RAW convertor which is a free program that comes with Photoshop will open up. In case you don’t have Photoshop, use Lightroom.
• Once inside the RAW convertor, start playing with the different sliders on the right side. Each of these sliders control a specific aspect of the picture like exposure, brightness, contrast, colour, shadows, tones, saturation, white balance, etc.
• Adjust every setting according to your preference and finish the RAW file. For more intricate results, you can play around with the more complex settings once you get comfortable and get the hang of it.
• Now open the image in Photoshop to make final adjustments by clicking ‘Open Image’. Here, you can play with even more adjustments and settings to get the best possible result.
• Save the final result as a JPEG file.