I found RAW

When I first took interest in astrophotography, many folks on forums suggested shooting in RAW. I did for one outing, and never used it for post-processing (which is the whole point), then abandoned it to continue shooting jpeg.

Well, to improve my game, I decided to try and learn about post-processing again. I always viewed it as cheating (for no good reason, just because I didn't understand it), but I know most people who are serious about their photography do it, so it can't be that bad, right?

My friend Lindsay is an amazing wedding photographer (shout out if you're reading this!), and I know she spends a lot of time editing her work, so that inspired me to look into it--maybe I could give my Milky Way photos some pop.

Not every program can handle RAW images, or the Nikon specific NEF format. With that in mind, I started using ViewNX2 from Nikon--free software that came with my D7000. It's not meant for heavy editing, but you have some reasonable capabilities with it. I also followed a couple tutorials that used Lightroom to get started for ideas.

Since most of the images that I'm proud of are in jpeg format, I didn't have much to work with as far as testing goes. I did have one image though. It's one that I'm actually really happy with, that I took on Mackinac Island just after grad school. I've already written about it on the blog here--I love the blue hues and the location even more. I didn't think I'd be able to improve upon it much, but I gave it a try anyway.

Here is the original unedited image:

And after taking some time to edit:

I think the greatest change was in the white balance. I'm not altogether sure if I got it right though. The second image seems truer to life, and the colors pop more (particularly the lichen covered harbor wall). I'll play more, and maybe change my mind...

As happy as I was with the first image, taking a few minutes to tweak the image in ViewNX2 made a huge difference, and I love it.

Even though VNX2 is limited in its capabilities, for my purposes it is great for editing. My "workflow," if you can call it that, is simple and I don't do any batch processing. There may be a time when I'm ready to jump to Lightroom and use Adobe's $9.99/month 'Photography' package, but not yet--not until I learn enough to actually need (want) it.

One concrete result of this experiment is that I'm shooting in both RAW and jpeg from now on--my D7000 has dual slots, so I can have the convenience & compatibility of jpeg and the flexibility & endless possibilities of RAW--I shall have and eat this cake.