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Photography Question 

Ellen Powell
 

Lost RAW option in Rebel XTi menu!


I am trying to move to shooting RAW now. I went into the menu of my Canon Rebel XTi Dig. SLR camera, chose "quality", and selected RAW. I took a picture and uploaded it (into iPhoto, which might not work for RAW) to find out that it went in to iPhoto as a jpeg.

So, I looked at the LCD readout and it told me I was using RAW + jpeg. So I went back into the menu and put it on RAW and took and uploaded (into iPhoto) another image. Again it loaeded only as a jpeg file.

I went back to "quality" and saw that now both RAW and RAW + jpeg aren't showing up in the menu! How do I get them both back??

(I do understand that iPhoto doesn't appear to accept RAW images but would it make those 2 options disappear in my camera??)

Heeeeelllllpppp!

Thanks ahead of time, good person who will take the time to help me!


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October 27, 2007

 

Jon Close
  Have you downloaded the latest OS X and iphoto updates that adds support for the XTi RAW file? (LINK).
I don't think the computer photo software has any effect on the camera function. Check to make sure that the camera is in one of the Creative exposure modes (P, Av, Tv, M, A-DEP). There are separate Image Quality settings for Creative and Basic (green box and icons) exposure modes. RAW and RAW+JPEG can only be selected in the Creative modes. Basic modes save only a JPEG file.


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October 27, 2007

 

Ellen Powell
  Jon! Thank you!!!! Duh- I didn't have it in one of the Creative exposure modes. Whew- I thought I'd messed up the camera I had to mortgage my house for!!!!!

As far as iPhoto goes, the new Mac OS is available now and I'm thinking of getting it sooner rather than later because I think it has the upgraded iPhoto on there. Would you happen to know? It must.........

Thanks so much!


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October 27, 2007

 
- Carlton Ward

BetterPhoto Member
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  Hello Ellen, I dont even use iPhoto. I use adobe photo downloader to download & rename my images and adobe bridge to view & select them and Photoshop to edit. I lost some photos in iPhoto and I dont like that I cannot batch rename the photos as I want with that program. I should receive OS X Leopard in a couple of days but will most likely disable iphoto again after installation. I have always shot Raw+Jpeg as well but with CS3, the ACR is so much better that I dont see a need for shooting jpg anymore. Jon teaches a very useful "Raw Processing" 4 week class that I took last year and it made a world of difference in how I process my images. CS3 is expensive but for processing raw images, it is so much better than CS2. CS3 Bridge also has some nice changes.


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October 28, 2007

 

Ellen Powell
  Hi Carlton,

I understand some of what you're talking about here... I m very new at this and basically doing it intuitively with help here and there, and with Photo Elements, a lot of practice to get to know layering and filtering so far, with tips here and there from friends who know more than I do. My problem is time and money, both of which I don't have much of, especially since dropping the big bucks for my camera! ;)

Having said that, can you tell me what CS3 and ACR are?

Also, I take a lot of pictures. How much memory do I need in my computer to be comfortable? I've been sliding along, putting images I want to save onto CDs, backing up onto Lacie, but I eventually want to get images onto stock photography websites and storing RAW photos is going to eat up space fast.

Also, stupid question, I know: I have a Power Mac G5 that I bought a few years ago. I think I remember that I couldn't afford the whole gig of memory so got half of it. Can you tell me where I can look on my computer to find out how much memory the computer came with and how much I've used up?

Thanks so much.


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October 28, 2007

 
- Carlton Ward

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  Hello Ellen,
CS3 is Photoshop Creative Suite 3 (their newest version) and ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) is the raw processing program that is part of CS3. CS3 isn't cheap either (starting at about $600) but for photo processing, it is the best. Yoy may be able to find CS2 (previous version) for about $200 which has ACR and bridge as well. Bridge is a photo manager that allows you to view thumbnails (jpg, tif, cr2, and other formats)with adjoining space to create a larger viewing area to view the thumbnail you have selected and also includes your camera (exif) info - ISO setting, shutter speed, f-stop & focal length used for that image. When you double click the thumbnail, it will launch in Photoshop.
As far as memory, I have 2gig SDRAM but 1 gig would be sufficient on a Mac. I dont know the layout of the Power Mac but I would suspect there is an empty slot that you could plug in another 1Gig of SDRAM for under $100 to give you 1.5Gig SDRAM and this would make your system run a lot faster. I added 1gig to my IMac last week and it was easy once I know where the slot was and which SDRAM card it required.
There may be some Power Mac users here that can answer this question.
Photoshop is a big program and it has quite the learning curve to learn all the tools it contains, but it is also very simple to make just a couple of adjustments that will really make your photos shine. By simply adjusting levels, curves, saturation & contrast, you can really transform a plain flat looking image into a beautiful photo. If you have dust particles on your sensor that will show up as spots in your photo (especially sky shots) you can easily clone or use the healing brush to remove them.
I dont use Elements but would not be surprised if you dont have some of these capabilities in Elements.
Film has to be processed to transform the images and Photoshop (especially Camera Raw Processing) is the Digital equivilent of film processing. Jpegs are processed in the camera and will come out looking OK but RAW images require processing to formulate all the available information that exists in the raw file to bring them to life. If you are serious about shooting raw images, I would either use the Canon Raw software that came with your camera or Photoshop. Now that CS3 is out, I would think the prices for CS2 will drop. You may look on ebay and see if you can find a Photoshop CS2 Mac version for $200. It will open up a whole new world with your photography.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Adobe-Photoshop-CS2-for-MAC-Full-Version_W0QQitemZ140171985489QQihZ004QQcategoryZ41877QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

As far as external drives - I have just added an Iomega 500Gig Hard drive that is stackable. I have 3 other hard drives as well (going back a few years) and I keep all my images on 2 different hard drives and I still burn my images to disk. This is a little overkill for some, but Hard drives do occaisionally fail (no matter which brand) and the disks are the backups to the hard drives. Also consider that Raw and Tiffs are very large files. I used to take all my raw files and convert them to tifs, but now I only convert them when I work on them and for printing.


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October 28, 2007

 
- Carlton Ward

BetterPhoto Member
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Carlton Ward's Gallery
  Another ebay link -
http://cgi.ebay.com/Adobe-Photoshop-CS2-Full-Version-software-for-MAC-NR_W0QQitemZ230185431720QQihZ013QQcategoryZ3796QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


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October 28, 2007

 
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