PSD files from corrupted RAW files

[cornbred]

The other day I was dealing with some corrupted CR2 files from a Canon 5dmk2. I was on deadline and it was a tense scene. Anyway, PhotoMechanic allowed me to save them as PSD files and they opened in Photoshop just fine. Later, I used Exiftools on the CR2 files and extracted the previews into JPG files. So which is higher quality? Is the PSD file from PM a higher quality version of the raw preview or just the same JPG saved in a PSD format?

Matt

I should also mention PM totally saved my butt and I continue to be amazed by this great product.

[Kirk Baker]

Matt,

The other day I was dealing with some corrupted CR2 files from a Canon 5dmk2. I was on deadline and it was a tense scene. Anyway, PhotoMechanic allowed me to save them as PSD files and they opened in Photoshop just fine. Later, I used Exiftools on the CR2 files and extracted the previews into JPG files. So which is higher quality? Is the PSD file from PM a higher quality version of the raw preview or just the same JPG saved in a PSD format?

The extracted embedded preview is pretty much the best source you can get at this point.  PM has the ability to extract the JPEG from a RAW file (Tools menu) directly.  The PSD will contain a very close approximation of the extracted embedded preview (it isn't compressed again in PM) and you can check for differences using Photoshop by loading the two source images as layers and performing a standard deviation on the two layers.  There shouldn't be much difference.

-Kirk