Raw to Jpeg

[Lionel]

Hi there
New to PM.I shot a bunch of Products shots for a catologue client who wanted raw files??.So I only shot in Raw.Now he wants jpegs too and I was wondering if PM has a easy way of converting the Raw images to jpegs.(A fast way)
I tried and had a look but could not find anything.Must be my age.Thank you for a wonderful piece of software.Kind regards
Lionel

[Kirk Baker]

Lionel,

New to PM.I shot a bunch of Products shots for a catologue client who wanted raw files??.So I only shot in Raw.Now he wants jpegs too and I was wondering if PM has a easy way of converting the Raw images to jpegs.(A fast way)
I tried and had a look but could not find anything.Must be my age.Thank you for a wonderful piece of software.

You didn't state which operating system you run.  The Windows version has no facility for rendering RAW files.  The Mac one does, but it only renders the 'as shot' settings (no adjustments.)  That said, your RAW files have JPEGs built into them (well almost all modern RAW formats do) and we have a command on the Tools menu titled "Extract JPEG Previews from RAW photos..." which will quite rapidly provide you with a set of JPEGs of pretty good quality.

Just select your files with the mouse and then run the tool.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Lionel]

Hi Kirk
Thank you for your prompt reply.I just found it and krikey was blown away by the speed of it.
One more question,how can I save all the raw files to tiff's in one go.(Same client again).
I use XP professional on both my laptop and desktop.
Kind regards
Lionel
Ps I love your software.

[Kirk Baker]

Lionel,

One more question,how can I save all the raw files to tiff's in one go.(Same client again).
I use XP professional on both my laptop and desktop.

You would have to open the folder containing the extracted JPGs and then use Save As..., choosing TIFF as the output format.

But the best thing (for highest quality) would be to use a separate RAW converter to generate the TIFFs.  The reason being that many RAW files don't include a full resolution embedded JPEG so you're not getting as high quality image as you could.  If this process is just for proofing then that's fine.  But if this is for final delivery, then I would use PM in conjunction with another application to convert the RAW files.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Lionel]

Hi Kirk
Thank you,Solved..I figured that and use some other software.Thank you for taking the time to respond.
Any hope that PM will have that facilty in the near future.
Kind regards
Lionel

[Kirk Baker]

Lionel,

Thank you,Solved..I figured that and use some other software.Thank you for taking the time to respond.
Any hope that PM will have that facilty in the near future.

It depends on what you mean by 'near future'.  In the next few weeks?  No.  It will be longer than that.

-Kirk

[wkates]

I too love your program, however the only thing it's missing in my view, is the capability to batch save RAW photos as tiffs and jpegs. My computer is running Windows XP and I'm shooting NEF. Opening them in Nikon Capture or MS Digital Image just to save them as jpeg or tiff (even with no editing) is hugely time consuming and impractical. If there's an easier way out there to do this now, I'd appreciate the advice. Otherwise, I hope you add this capability to Photo Mechanic soon. Thanks again for a great tool. - William Kates

[jonbarber]

I too love your program, however the only thing it's missing in my view, is the capability to batch save RAW photos as tiffs and jpegs. My computer is running Windows XP and I'm shooting NEF. Opening them in Nikon Capture or MS Digital Image just to save them as jpeg or tiff (even with no editing) is hugely time consuming and impractical. If there's an easier way out there to do this now, I'd appreciate the advice. Otherwise, I hope you add this capability to Photo Mechanic soon. Thanks again for a great tool. - William Kates

I'm facing this issue more often now, too.  To date, I've done all RAW to jpeg conversions in photoshop CS if I needed best quality/full size, or in an old edition of iView Media Pro if I could get by with small jpegs. Even my edition of iView will allow batch sharpening, which my Canon files really need to look good. I'm a Mac user, and have no other programs that could batch-convert RAWS to jpegs. CS is just a bottleneck---too slow and laborious for me, and Bridge....well, anyone who has learned PhotoMechanic knows how lame Bridge really is.

I believe Lightroom could make jpegs in batches at full size and quality, but I'm not sure. And are there other Mac programs that do this well?

[wkates]

I forgot to point out in my post above that Photo Mechanic will quickly and easily convert groups of RAW photos to jpegs for emailing but it is still impractical for efficient workflow to use this method for large quantities of photos. But this would suggest that Photo Mechanic posesses the capability, it just needs to be implemented as a save function that is independent of the email processor. Plus a save as tiff option would be useful too.

[Kirk Baker]

I forgot to point out in my post above that Photo Mechanic will quickly and easily convert groups of RAW photos to jpegs for emailing but it is still impractical for efficient workflow to use this method for large quantities of photos. But this would suggest that Photo Mechanic posesses the capability, it just needs to be implemented as a save function that is independent of the email processor. Plus a save as tiff option would be useful too.

The Extract JPEG Previews from RAW photos Tool (on the Tools) menu will do basically the same thing but you can do it in a batch and it is really fast.

HTH,

-Kirk

[wkates]

Thanks for that suggestion, I will give it a try. Is there a difference between an extracted jpeg preview and a highest quality jpeg save from another program?

[Kirk Baker]

Thanks for that suggestion, I will give it a try. Is there a difference between an extracted jpeg preview and a highest quality jpeg save from another program?

It depends on whether or not the other program is a RAW converter.  RAW converters can save full resolution images as large as the RAW image itself (usually).  Extracting the JPEG from the RAW file will only be at the resolution of the embedded JPEG.  On some RAW files the embedded JPEG is full resolution.  On some, the embedded preview is very small.

HTH,

-Kirk

[theim]

I too love your program, however the only thing it's missing in my view, is the capability to batch save RAW photos as tiffs and jpegs. My computer is running Windows XP and I'm shooting NEF. Opening them in Nikon Capture or MS Digital Image just to save them as jpeg or tiff (even with no editing) is hugely time consuming and impractical. If there's an easier way out there to do this now, I'd appreciate the advice. Otherwise, I hope you add this capability to Photo Mechanic soon. Thanks again for a great tool. - William Kates

I may have misunderstood, but I have the impression you are converting NEF to JPG in Nikon Capture by opening each image one at a time, then saving as JPG?  If so, you should be converting your NEF files to JPG as a batch operation in Nikon Capture.  Just put all the NEFs you want to convert in a folder, then create an output folder to send the JPG conversions to (or use the same folder, although I wouldn't recommend it).  One click, and the whole process is done automatically.

Using Nikon Capture to batch convert, you'll have control over such things as white balance, exposure compensation, sharpening, etc.  You'll also be able to choose various qualities of the JPG output, or you could choose to convert to TIF.  As Kirk has stated, PM does a great job of quickly extracting the embedded JPG from the NEF, but PM is not a RAW converter (not yet, anyway), so you won't have as much control over the output as you would with Nikon Capture (or other brands of RAW converters).

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Tom Heim