Camera Raw Workflows - Like Film, but Digital

If you liked working with film, then the techniques to control exposure will feel very familiar to you in camera raw formats. This paper presents how all camera raw formats work in common, and also the different approaches used by several vendors to preserve the highest fidelity image information, while managing the large amounts of data required to represent those images. Camera raw workflows provide a variety of techniques to convert from the sensor data into RGB and YCbCr image formats suitable for mastering, along with methods for generating a specific “look” to the images. Similar to film, the tremendous dynamic range afforded by a camera raw format permits a wide range of exposure during acquisition, which must be mapped into the limited dynamic range of the final output formats in the workflow. However, looks and camera specifications can be deceiving and one must know what is happening within the workflow to obtain the best image quality.

Published

2014-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Camera raw, workflow, demosaic, video compression, JPEG 2000, VC-5, CineForm

DOI

10.5594/M001559

ISBN

978-1-61482-954-6