Question A Day | Actions? Photoshop? How I do.

Q: Anonymous asked:

Do you have a preference of shooting in RAW or JPEG? Also, Photoshop vs Lightroom? Or do you think one needs both? Do you use pre-made actions on photoshop, or make your own?

A: Hi! Let’s start at the top: RAW vs. JPEG.

What’s the difference, for those who might be head-scratching? RAW is what it sounds like, raw data straight up in its full glory. It amounts to a huge file, but a file that can be altered in terms of white balance and exposure in post-production nonetheless. And RAW files must be converted into a JPEG or other file format (ie. TIFF) before ‘normal’ viewing outside of a program such as Lightroom, which I’ll get to in a moment.

JPEG files are a type of compression where the camera captures the raw data and squishes it, for a lack of a better term, into a smaller file, usually about 10% of the size. This means much of the data is lost in the process, but the image itself is preserved at face value.

I shoot RAW for clients, and therefore it ends up being my default for mostly everything. For recreational photography, I recommend and do use JPEG just because it costs less time/money in the long run. Here’s my personal take on why:

• Storage. On my hard drive, RAW files are taking up approx. 27 MB vs. the 2.5 MB for a JPEG image. When shooting, my 8GB memory card can handle about 275 RAW files vs. about 1,200 JPEGs. It’s the difference between buying and carting around multiple memory cards, and having towers and stacks of external hard drives. 
• Quality. If you shoot the largest possible JPEG file, you can still expect to blow those images up to a reasonable size beyond an 11x14 without any problem. 
• Time. Files are served fresh and ready to go in JPEG form and don’t require additional steps in formatting before you can email them to the fam or upload them on Facebook. And time is everything, really. 

Lightroom vs. Photoshop?

Personal workflow, really. Professionally, I’m importing into Lightroom for databasing and conversion reasons, and then exporting to Photoshop once the images are finished their transformation into full-fledged JPEG files. I also use Picassa, Picnik, iPhoto… It depends what I want to accomplish with the photo, and how quickly. 

Photos on Isla’s baby blog and for Eh! Good Looking are all hand-finished by me with only a few actions I sometimes implement. I’ve been lucky to be using Photoshop for 10 years now in my role as a magazine editor, so my techniques are both old and new. Actions (pre-set editing techniques for Photoshop and Lightroom) are cool and quick but as photographers, we need to make them our own to suit our style; ultimately, I have to keep my techniques for work-related projects to myself as it is my livelihood. Got’s to keep those baby legs chunky, right?

All photos here on Mamarazzi & Co. are SOOC and, if edited, are done by hand in a user-friendly fashion we all can do which I make note of. I’ve done this consciously; it’s not fair of me to say “Hey! Come learn to take great pictures with me 364 days of the year!” and post the type of pictures I’d normally provide for that one day a year when I hope to be hired as your family’s photographer.