The first thing we learnt about in the morning was about digital negatives and the power of the raw file and the data that is contained within it. The digital negative is considered to cater to the attributes of the raw file because it holds visual data that can only be processed by digital editing softwares like Photoshop. Beytan suggested that if we could see a raw file it would look similar to a film negative and would show us every highlight and every detail in the shadows that the camera can physically capture. We also learnt about the different camera raw formats unique to different makes of camera.

Colour bit depth is the total number of tonal levels available for every colour captured, a tonal range being the distance between the darkest black to the brightest white. Note that a higher tonal range does not stretch the amount of colours that are available, but divides them into numerous smaller categories. For example, a typical .JPEG image is typically an 8-bit image because a .jpeg takes the whitest white and the darkest black and divides them into 256 levels, meaning that you can lose subtle details in the whites an blacks on subjects, particularly in a studio setting or photographing outside on a bright day. The best way to show why this is bad is to tell you that a 9-bit image is double the tonal range of an 8 bit on, have 512 tonal levels instead of 25. This carries on, since 10-bit images have 1024 tonal levels, 11-bit images have 2048 tonal levels and 12-bit images having 4096 tonal levels which is about what your typical raw image should contain.

The best way to edit with raw files is to embed ProPhoto RGB into your workflow since it represents almost 99% of the visual spectrum thus making it future proof for any changes in external displays and graphical processor developments. ProPhoto RGB also gives you a little bit more room on the histogram to utilise all the different colours and elements of the photograph.

I had great fun with this one. Over lunch we were told to take cameras out and take photos that would be a challenge to edit. For example shooting a subject in front of a bright background, or shooting a shot that in-camera was under exposed. Admittedly we had to do some of things deliberately, but we obliged and we returned after lunch with a series of photos to edit. The first thing we did was edit the raw file using the sliders. We learnt to take off the sharpening that Adobe automatically throws on, and also did the appropriate lens correction and appropriate camera profile. This bit was basically about stopping Adobe force themselves and their settings onto our photo.

Here is an example of what all these differences made:

After learning how powerful these sliders could be, we were taught even more wonderful things: to use the raw file without actually having it on the computer. SOUNDS CRAZY RIGHT? HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR? apparently not.  

All you need to do is tick this box

                                            Whilst in this window                                           

Until you get the smart object icon on your thumbnail

Double click this little devil and you will get all your raw data up and you will be able to access all of your raw data without having the original file on your computer. You can do this with any .psd that has been using a raw file. In fact, you can extract the raw image in whatever unique format it is from the photoshop document (SCIENCE HAS GONE TOO FAR).

Double click the smart object icon on your image layer (this will bring up your sliders n such),

and will give you the option to 'save image', which means you have a chance to extract a raw

digital negative file (.dng) from the photoshop document:

Then you must select your location for where you want to save it (I saved it to the desktop) and click Embed Original Raw File and hit Save, your raw file will pop up in your save destination.

LIKE THIS

Pretty nuts right? Yeah I know right. I had my mind blown about 3 times during the duration of this workshop

This bit was awesome and I'm still getting my head around it, but I will do my best to explain it. Basically we learnt how to easily mask out different elements of the raw file and adjust different elements such as the highlights or shadows without interfering with other incredibly important aspects of the raw data. We didn't even do any of these adjustments in Photoshop itself, instead we did it all in the Raw Photo editor that Photoshop supports. We used something called the Adjustment Brush Tool  that enabled one to highlight certain parts of the photo. You could adjust the weight, diameter and feather of the brush to select certain parts and make subtle adjustments to those certain parts. So for example, if one part of your photo is completely blown out and you don't want to modify the entire photo's highlights you can select one bit and adjust those levels using the sliders provided. You could also click auto mask and Photoshop would detect which bits you were trying to highlight and not overlap with any unwanted parts of the photo. This is extremely useful as it saves using the magic wand tool or the magic select tool to tediously sketch around the bit you want to mask out.

I can't wait to try this out and further my skills at this. I feel like we have just scratched the surface and I feel we definitely have plenty more to learn. I will be taking more photos.




Another useful technique is using the 'mexican hat