RAW to .jpeg .tiff?

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I have a Canon DSLR Rebel T1i

I shoot RAW

What is the best way to transfer my pictures to my macbook pro?

RAW takes up too much space, what is the best format?
 
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chas_m

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"Best" is a subjective term here, so there's no simple answer.

RAW takes up a lot of space because it is, if you like, the original digital "negative," ie contains 100 percent of the information gathered for the picture. Myself and most photographers I know shoot in raw, import into Lightroom or Aperture, review the shots and pick the winners and discard the losers, edit those to perfection and save in both TIFF and JPG for varying purposes. The original RAW files and TIFF files are, in my case, stored elsewhere or burned to CD/DVD for archiving purposes, with high- (600dpi) and low-quality (72dpi) JPG files used for day-to-day web stuff, client stuff, that sort of thing.

This is my workflow. Others may work somewhat differently. Storage, by and large, is very cheap.
 
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What is the best way to transfer my pictures to my macbook pro?

RAW takes up too much space, what is the best format?

Like Chas says, it depends on what parameters you are using to measure "best".

If it's RAW vs JPEG vs TIFF then the "best" way, in my opinion, is to transfer and save the RAW files. If you think the RAW files take up too much space, wait until you convert and save them as TIFFS. They will be much bigger because-- and this is as simple as I can put it-- the color information has not been converted yet.

But there are a lot of considerations. If you reply with your priorities (file size? quality? future options? for web/e-mail only?) someone here will gladly make suggestions.
 
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Like Chas says, it depends on what parameters you are using to measure "best".

If it's RAW vs JPEG vs TIFF then the "best" way, in my opinion, is to transfer and save the RAW files. If you think the RAW files take up too much space, wait until you convert and save them as TIFFS. They will be much bigger because-- and this is as simple as I can put it-- the color information has not been converted yet.

But there are a lot of considerations. If you reply with your priorities (file size? quality? future options? for web/e-mail only?) someone here will gladly make suggestions.

Ok, thanks for the replies.


I want a small file size but I do not want the quality to drop too much.


I have used Automator to transfer, rename and change the extension but I find a lot of the quality has deteriorated.
 
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Okay, first of all, you have to "process" the RAW files. That means you have to open them in a program that handles RAW files and assign white balance, color profiles, contrast, saturation, sharpening and any other desired qualities. You have to do this because the camera is not doing any processing for you when you shoot RAW. The images will look like crap if you don't do this step. Some of the applications that you can use for this are Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom or Bridge ($$$) and Canon Digital Photo Professional (free).

THEN, when you save them, you can make your decisions about what compression to use (or none at all in the case of TIFFS). For what you seem to want, I would save anything that you might print someday as high quality JPEG and anything that is just for e-mail/web as medium quality JPEG. If you're really looking to save space, consider deleting anything that isn't amazing.

But you have to take the step of processing the RAW files before saving. If you don't want to do that (many don't) then you shouldn't be shooting RAW. Just set your camera to save as JPEG in whatever size you like.
 
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Okay, first of all, you have to "process" the RAW files. That means you have to open them in a program that handles RAW files and assign white balance, color profiles, contrast, saturation, sharpening and any other desired qualities. You have to do this because the camera is not doing any processing for you when you shoot RAW. The images will look like crap if you don't do this step. Some of the applications that you can use for this are Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom or Bridge ($$$) and Canon Digital Photo Professional (free).

THEN, when you save them, you can make your decisions about what compression to use (or none at all in the case of TIFFS). For what you seem to want, I would save anything that you might print someday as high quality JPEG and anything that is just for e-mail/web as medium quality JPEG. If you're really looking to save space, consider deleting anything that isn't amazing.

But you have to take the step of processing the RAW files before saving. If you don't want to do that (many don't) then you shouldn't be shooting RAW. Just set your camera to save as JPEG in whatever size you like.

Thank you, I was not aware the images had to be processed. Im fairly new to photography.

I have photoshop, I think the best bet for me is to save them a .jpg unless I get a fantastic shot then i can save as both formats.

Can Photoshop process in batches?

Will the pictures be processed automatically or do i have to manually adjust each one?
 
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Can Photoshop process in batches?



Will the pictures be processed automatically or do i have to manually adjust each one?


Yes you can batch process in PS. You don't have to process one by one. Just setup a batch process that converts your RAW directly to higher quality JPEG and you're done. That's it.

You'll have to read up about the batch processing in Adobe Camera Raw (that's the module that opens within PS when you open a RAW file), but it's a straight-forward process.

Adobe Lightroom offers the function too.
 

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