To date all the photos I have submitted to Birdlife Photography have been shot in JPEG format. Even though they are often of reasonable quality they are not in the same class as those submitted by experienced bird photographers who shoot in raw. I have decided I need to bite the bullet and am looking for some advice. My camera is a Canon 60D. My camera gives me 3 raw options resulting in 3 file sizes and they are raw (largest file), raw M (middle size) and raw S 9Smallest size). Which should I use?

Where can I find guidance in shooting in raw? Where can I find guidance on post-processing raw files (I have access to Photoshop Elements)?




Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Gary,
Glad to learn that you are biting the bullet on RAW processing. You should shoot large RAW with your 60D and do your RAW adjustment and conversion using the latest version of Canon DPP4 and finish off in PSE7-14. DPP4 will give you the cleanest and sharpest RAW conversions and it is a free download from the Canon Australia's website. Last year Glen Pure published a good article on post-processing in the BLP newsletter. If you need more, I have a set of notes on DPP4 and PSE processing.

The quick answer is: use the raw (largest file) option. It will give you all the information which your camera sensor has recorded. The other raw options will remove some of the information – in effect, having the same effect as using a camera with a lower resolution sensor. There are probably similar options for when you’re shooting in .jpg, which will have the same effect.

Our June 2012 Newsletter contains an article by Tom Oliver discussing the differences between raw and jpg. My “Introduction to Image Processing” article in the February 2014 Newsletter also briefly discusses this point, and the subsequent sections of the article mention why raw is so much better than jpg – and it’s essentially that it gives you, rather than the camera, control of what you get. That article was written based on using Photoshop Elements for your post-processing. Glenn Pure’s “Basic Image Processing: Mark 2” article in the December 2015 Newsletter is also useful; it discusses using a combination of Canon’s DPP software and Photoshop. You can get all these articles from our website, in the Resources – Libraries & Documents section; you’ll need to be logged in to see the last two, which are available as separate files – you don’t need to download the entire newsletter.