John Roshka Photography

Very soon a new version of PerfectRAW will be available with a more easy to use interface. But, until then I’m about to show you my workflow with PefectRAW 0.65.

I chose an image with contrast problems and a lot of branches. In the field I chose a high aperture number (small aperture ring) to eliminate chromatic aberrations.

This is the original RAW file.

Feel free to download it and try it yourself with your RAW converter and compare the results. I tried it with RawTherapee and ACR and it didn’t work for me. I’m not going to post the examples because I’m not a professional at these softwares, but if someone gets a better results using ACR or other software please feel free to send me some links with your comparison.

-The Workflow->

I always try to get the most from my photos which means as much info as I can. This would consider shooting RAW and using it’s features. For this, one needs a very good RAW Converter – the software that reads the real, true and full image information from the RAW file.

During my attempts of using different commercial software and reading tons of tutorials, I realised that actually it is not me who deals with those genuine pixels from my RAW file but the software I was using.

One day (can’t remember how, honestly ) I came across DCRAW, a small open source .exe file that can be used with the command line for decoding RAW files.

This is what Guillermo Luijk has to say about DCRAW: “My personal opinion is that I love DCRAW as a RAW development tool not only for experimenting but in a regular workflow. The key is to do in Photoshop all those extra features that other RAW developers can do apart from pure development, and consider DCRAW as a tool that provides a rough image without any kind of processing applied on it, just a high quality development under absolute control. “

-Getting it to work->