Section 8.20. Editing RAW Files

8.20. Editing RAW Files

As noted in Chapter 7, iPhoto can now handle the advanced photographic file format called RAWa special, unprocessed file format that takes up a lot of space on your memory card but offers astonishing amounts of control when editing later on the Mac. (Also as noted in Chapter 7, the RAW format is available only on certain high-end cameras .)

Actually, iPhoto can do more than handle RAW files. It can even edit them sort of.

iPhoto is, at its heart, a program designed to work with JPEG files. Therefore, when it grabs a RAW file from your camera, it instantly creates a JPEG version of it, which is what you actually see onscreen. The RAW file is there on your hard drive (deep within the labyrinth known as the iPhoto Library folder). But what you see onscreen is a JPEG interpretation of that RAW file. (This conversion to JPEG is one reason iPhoto takes longer to import RAW files from a camera than other kinds of files.)

This trick of using JPEG lookalikes as stand-ins for your actual RAW files has two important benefits. First, it lets you work with your photos at normal iPhoto speed, without the lumbering minutes of calculations you'd endure if you were working with the original RAW files. Second, remember that your iPhoto photos are also accessible from within iDVD, iMovie, Pages, and so onand these programs don't recognize RAW files.

So the question naturally comes up: What happens if you try to edit one of these RAW-file stunt doubles?

No problem. iPhoto accepts any changes you make to the JPEG version of the photo, applies them behind the scenes to the original RAW file, and then generates a new JPEG for you to view.

UP TO SPEED
Not Just RAWRAW and Big

Granted, RAW files provide the ultimate in editing control, but as you know, they're a lot bulkier, disk-space-wise, than JPEG files. In fact, once they arrive in iPhoto, they eat up even more space than they did on the camera!

Consider the example of a six-megapixel photo that you really love. Step 1: iPhoto uploads the RAW data and stores it in your iPhoto Library folder: eight megabytes. It then generates a JPEG version of the photo so you can use it for all of the fun stuff you like to do in iPhoto: two more megabytes.

And if you, like many photographers, have set your camera to create both a JPEG and a RAW file when you press the shutter, you'll get that JPEG file in your iPhoto Library too: boom, another two megs. So for just one picture from a six-megapixel camera, you could be adding 12 MB or more to your iPhoto Library!

This disk-space issue is definitely worth remembering when your know-it-all photo friend says that RAW capture is the only way to go.