Digital photography can mean lots of data. We take photographers through the process of importing, keywording and categorisation and the complete workflow for managing projects that involve many shoots, with output in many formats (web, print, CD, iPhone…)

We also help you sort out backup and storage using Lightroom and backup software like Time Machine. Knowing that you can find your photos quickly and reliably gives you the peace of mind to let you get on with getting great shots and helps when a picture editor calls.

On the Shoot Raw blog, we offer this information in the form of short articles. As an example, look at this piece on backup for Lightroom users, telling you what you should do to make sure your images are safe.

You can get new articles e-mailed to you by Google’s Feedburner service or get the RSS or Atom feed.

We offer training for photographers on all technical aspects of raw workflow and post-processing for digital photographers. We offer Lightroom courses in London and the South East, and support for photographers’ technical issues. You can call us on 020 3092 2907 or e-mail us: develop@shootraw.co.uk.

There are so many reasons to get raw files from your camera instead of JPEGs that it’s difficult to know where to start to list them.

Shooting raw can provide much better colour, resolution and dynamic range. It also allows you to better balance sharpness with noise, to protect highlights and to scale your images. White balance when you shoot raw is suddenly much less of a problem. And as raw converters improve (which they’re doing constantly), images you shoot today will look even better in tomorrow’s software.

At Shoot Raw, we help photographers with every stage of a digital raw workflow, from getting optimal exposures right through to print and creating the best output for the web, for print bureaux and for your client CDs. We show you how to use Lightroom 2 as the management software for your work and as your go-to raw conversion application, integrating smoothly with Photoshop when you need it.

We provide examples in the blog; you can subscribe using RSS or you can get a daily e-mail message sent out to you each morning by Google’s Feedburner service if we’ve published a new article the previous day.

Both options are free.

High quality output demands a colour managed workflow: a carefully profiled computer display, the right settings in your applications for import, processing and export and an understanding of how things work online so that your web site and your clients’ sites look as good as they can. For your printed output, colour profiles will need to take into consideration your choice of printer, paper and ink . We’ll walk you through the entire process, which starts—as usual—with the right exposure.

Unexpected colour shifts when your work appears online? Disappointing prints? Put an end to them now and become confident in your colour workflow!

Our bespoke training can include the colour management information that a photographer needs. You will understand colour spaces, whether to set your camera to shoot in AdobeRGB or sRGB, the mystery of ProPhotoRGB, what effect your camera’s colour settings have on your raw files (hint: not much!) and on your camera’s histograms, what to use when exporting to the web, sending files to clients and sending work to labs for output.

Much of this information will slowly make its way to our blog, which we update regularly with hints and tips. For example, see this article on protecting fine colour detail in Lightroom 2 by moving just one slider from its default position. You can subscribe to the blog by e-mail and receive every new article in your inbox, in full, as soon as it’s published. That service is provided by Google’s Feedburner. Or grab an RSS or Atom feed.

Both options are free. If you have questions or comments, please drop us a line or give us a call. We’re always happy to help out. If we can answer your question in the form of a blog post that helps others, we will. Mail us on develop@shootraw.co.uk or call (020) 3092 2907.

Your camera’s matrix or evaluative meter is fine when time is tight and the light is soft but, however sophisticated that meter might be, to rely on it completely is to leave things to chance. When it really matters, you need to take complete control of exposure—the improvements can be dramatic. We’ll show you how, choosing where to place shadows and highlights in the image instead of having your camera take its best guess at what you’re photographing. Doing this for digital capture is not the same as it was for film—you need to be more protective of highlights and less worried about shadows.

Start well—optimise your exposures

Optimal exposures give you the most robust images—that means more room to manoeuvre in post-production if you intend to work heavily on the look of an photograph. Just as importantly, it means less time attempting to correct things if you’re looking for a straight interpretation of a scene.

End the guessing game

Overexposed skies, unexpectedly blown highlights when photographing white clothing, blocked-up shadows and under-exposed faces that become noisy when corrected… do these things sound familiar? The answer isn’t as simple as “expose to the right”, and the camera’s three-colour histograms are less useful than they might initially seem!

Once you have your camera set up to display genuinely useful histogram information and you take complete control of your metering, you’ll have a new command over your photographing process and it’s very liberating—no more nasty surprises after you transfer your photographs to your profiled computer display.

The Shoot Raw blog

For a steady stream of tips on all these topics and more, take a look at the blog. You can subscribe to it by e-mail (Google’s Feedburner service) or by RSS. Both options are free and allow you receive all the new content as soon as it’s published.

Lightroom courses in London

We provide patient, expert tuition and training on all these subjects—see our training page for Lightroom courses in London and the South East.