Get started with RAW

If you’re not sure how to process a RAW file, our simple, intuitive workflow will help get you started

Shooting in RAW is something you’re often advised to do (see page 16 for all the current arguments for and against it). All the information about the colours and tones in a scene are contained in a RAW file, but you’ll need to do some work to display tones that appear to be missing in darker or brighter areas. You may also find that colours occasionally suffer from a warm or cool tint due to incorrect white balance settings used by the camera at the time of capture.

In this tutorial we’ll show you a typical photo-fixing workflow that will demonstrate the ways you can analyse a RAW file for typical exposure and colour problems, and then correct them using the sliders in the so-called Basic panel. Once your processed photo looks more like the scene did on location, you can build on this basic workflow by applying more complex tools and effects to the image.