Then, I noticed some slick JPG output on the MeetTheGIMP videocast when Rolf (the host) gave RAWstudio a test run. It looked so much better than mine. What was I doing wrong? So, I decided I would give it another try, and I am glad I did.

Turns out, I had not loaded my camera’s color profile. Why the default is so dull, I cannot tell you…probably some complicated programming reason. Anyway, once I had loaded my Nikon D100 color profile, all was beautiful. Well, at least, all was as expected.

That was the last step. From there on out, I have been in RAWstudio almost daily.

To add the profile, just go to the Edit menu and choose “Preferences”. Once there, choose the “Color” tab (pretty easy, huh) and open your camera’s color profile into the “input profile” selection. Actually, I had tried that much before, but it took me a while to realize that I need to check that “Enable color management (experimental)” box to make the color settings work. Experimental sounded dangerous, but it worked just fine.

And if you are wondering where to find your camera’s color profile so your RAW conversion program can accurately read your RAW photo files, I would just do a little searching online. I found mine through the aforementioned UFRaw Color Management page. That same page also has links to other pages but really, I would suggest just searching for your camera model and “color profile download”. That should do it.

The digital age has made workflow an even bigger problem than before. Now, even my mother comes home from a family reunion with a few hundred photos. What happens to so many photos then? For most of us, we put them on our computer, the hundreds become thousands, and by the time we actually want or need to use some of those photos, we cannot build up the motivation to dig through them. Workflow seeks to solve this problem.

Now, RAWstudio (as you can see by the name) is for folks who shoot in RAW format instead of JPG. It is also available for Linux or Mac OS X. So, if you use a PC, I guess you will have to dish out a chunk of cash to get a program that does the same thing. So, anyway, if all you shoot is JPG, you might just tune out now. No worries…catch you next time.

I am RAW only. No questions. Most of you with point and shoot camera will not even have an option to shoot in RAW, but for those of you who can shoot RAW and still do not, the basic question is probably, “Why should I shoot in raw?” RAW is wonderful because you have so much flexibility with the photo: white balance can be easily changed with a slider instead of complicated color editing, you are retaining the highest quality photo possible instead of allowing your camera to do the processing for you, and (probably most importantly of all) your exposure is incredibly flexible, especially important in saving blown out highlights or lost detail in the shadows.

So, basically, here is what RAWstudio does. I just worked through 133 RAW photos from a shoot for a friend. Some were junk or just test shots to get my flash lighting right and just need deleting. If I were using UFRaw, as I have mentioned before, I see thumbnails of my photos in my file browser (that is, external to UFRaw), but to see a bigger image, I have to go through those photos one by one UFRaw, then edit and save to JPG if I want to keep it, not knowing if the next photo is going to be better. So, after going through all those, I have to go back through the JPGs and delete unnecessary ones. The quality with UFRaw is great, but it just uses up too much time.

With RAWstudio, I see all the thumbnails inside of RAWstudio and can compare larger sizes of similar photos before choosing which one to invest in editing. And for help in choosing, it has a rating system too. I can quickly move through, marking photos either priority one, two, three, or delete. Honestly, I love the delete tag. It immediately takes the unwanted photo out of my view and keeps it for a mass deletion at the time of my choosing.

So, of my 133 photos for that shoot, I can just view the 65 priority one photos. Now, if I were choosing for myself, there would have been a much smaller percentage of priority one photos, but I am choosing for my friends, so I keep the selection much more broad. I then make quick changes to those, often copying the edits from one photo to another, and when I am done, I mark them all for one batch export. Done.

I am going to save so much time!