Editing RAWs, yay or nay?

Media Share Photography
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When reading guides or watching videos on taking photo’s it always comes up and is recommended; shoot RAW pictures and edit them yourself. Now I’ve been trying… but I’m very bad. I hate the colors I create and like the ones the camera makes much more. I also can’t seem to find the balance between sharpness and de noising, making me go with no de noising and no sharpening.

Here’s what I mean:

This is my edited RAW. I like the lens edges, although most people would probably edit them out. The colors however are very saturated. That’s because I try to recreate the colors from my camera but don’t seem to be able to.

P1140173
P11401732448×1836 2.65 MB

This is the JPEG my camera made. The borders are cropped to hide the lens edges(automatically). I especially like the grass colors more in this pic. When you zoom in there should be softer textures then in my edited picture, as the camera does pretty heavy de-noising.

So for you, editing yay or nay?

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cool

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The highlights are really blown out. What were your specs? (ISO, F Stop, Shutter speed)

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Yeah couldnt do much about it as the sun was peaking over the horizon on the right. The red dots in the picture means my sensor is catching a very bright light directly into it. 80, 5.6, no clue but probably fast.

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Beautiful… Your edit looks much better than the jpg to me. The shadows on the grass are quite dark, I would bring those up perhaps. Depends on the mood you want for the final result.

While shooting, if I’m worried I might lose details to high contrast, I take 2 photos: a darker one and a brighter one. Then, in the edit phase, I have a couple options to pick from.

I tweak sliders in FastStone viewer to make my photos look right, and I also consult paint dot NET’s “auto levels” feature sometimes. It algorithmically adjusts the light and colors, and it has better taste than I do sometimes!

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