Pictures By Alan

I had started shooting in RAW format as well as jpeg not long before shooting this show. RAW images record the exact image on the camera sensor at the time of exposure -- jpeg images, which I had used for years on the Nikon, record most of the detail present in the RAW image. RAW images are much larger than jpeg, which is why jpeg exists: To get almost all the information in a much smaller file.

I've found that the jpegs are completely adequate about 95% of the time. For the remainder, I go RAW to 16-bit PSD to jpeg. Most of the time it doesn't make a lot of difference, but sometimes it does, and this image is an example. In the jpeg image, the dress was covered with "blown highlights", which is photo-speak for areas where the image goes completely white and includes no information. Blown highlights are unsalvageable: There is no way to recover any image at all. But I really liked this picture, so I checked the RAW, and sure enough the dress detail was almost complete in the RAW image. A bit of additional processing recovered the detail.