Many of us on Friends In Tech are keen photographers and therefore have decent cameras that are capable of shooting in Raw and JPEG mode and a lot of the cameras are capable of shooting both at the same time.  This has an advantage in that you don’t really need specialized software to edit the JPEG files and the Raw photos are still available for the heavy duty editing that may be required.

However shooting both Raw and JPEG files in the camera slows the writing of files to the media card and also takes up extra space. In my Canon XT camera the jpg files take up an extra 25% of the media space.

By switching to Raw only, you will always have the benefits of the full original file and detail to work from but it makes it harder for quick edits if you need the JPEG formats.

From a hint on Photoshop Insider by Scott Kelby comes a link to the free (registration and email address required) RawWorkFlow.com’s Instant JPEG From Raw utility. The Photoshop Insider link also has some interesting history on the Raw format and a video on how to use Instant Jpeg from Raw too.

Note that the application does not register itself in the start menu or on the desktop – you just select your Raw files, right click and choose the Instant JPEG from Raw menu option.

Try it and let us know what you think.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.