Working with RAW in iPhoto 05'

In my previous entry Photography: RAW versus JPEG formats I discussed the differences between the RAW and JPEG formats for digital photography. In this entry I will discuss Apple's new iPhoto 5 which now handles the RAW format from many of today's popular digital cameras...

The Good News

The good news is obvious - iPhoto can now import your RAW photos from your digital camera without any other software: it is now a 'turn-key' solution for RAW photographers. Also the new iPhoto adds a host of new features for dealing with RAW or JPEG photos. For one, it allows you to perform many more adjustments on your photos. It gives even new photographers who are not familiar with Photoshop the power of adjusting white balance, exposure, levels, sharpness and more. The new iPhoto also allows you to create multiple albums in folders - this gives you much better flexibility in organizing your photos.

Apple has a real talent for making the complex and mind boggling tasks of computing simple. iPhoto is no exception - the new translucent adjust pallet in iPhoto (pictured at right) gives you easy access to the adjustments you want to make to your photos, and does a really good job. My only qualm with the temperature and tint controls is that they do not offer a white point eye dropper (like Photoshop does - I will show some examples in a later entry) All in all however this tool is very practical, simple to use and powerful. Good job Apple.

The Bad News

The really unfortunate news with iPhoto 05 is that the program actually doesn't work with RAW files at all, it actually 'imports' RAW files. How can this be.. when working in iPhoto it says I am working with a RAW photo? Well, after experimenting extensively it appears iPhoto actually converts your RAW images into the JPEG format when importing into iPhoto. I noticed that iPhoto creates a JPEG and saves your RAW photo in the "Originals" folder. No problem I thought - iPhoto is just making a thumbnail to view quickly...right? Wrong. When working with iPhoto's adjustment tools, or when opening in an external application like Photoshop, you are actually working with the 8 bit lossy JPEG data, not the 16 bit lossless RAW data.

This is unfortunate as it really undermines the reason why many professionals and consumers are using the RAW format. Sure, for most of the pictures you take, you wont need to adjust the white balance or exposure, but I dont know anyone who would like to have their pictures degraded in quality without their knowledge. It appears Apple wasn't concerned as much with the reasons why customers want to shoot raw as they were in making sure iPhoto could import the format. So if you are interested in getting the most out of your RAW images you will first need to open them up in a professional application like Photoshop and then saving them into a lossless format like TIFF or PSD.

Conclusions

In the end, iPhoto's support of the RAW format is a healthy step in the right direction, and is a great starting point for the application. Though not implemented perfectly, it will encourage photographers to start shooting in RAW and hopefully start an industry trend to support the superior RAW formats in non-professional applications. iPhoto allows for a VERY nice and straight forward workflow, and in the end that will allow even more people to get on the RAW bandwagon. I for one will continue processing all my RAW images in Photoshop and then adding them to iPhoto for cataloging, and I would recommend it to anyone concerned about getting the very best quality out of their pictures.

Even if you have no interest in the RAW format, the new features in iPhoto 05' make it a worthwhile upgrade- I would highly recommend it.

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