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Friday, April 30, 2021

How to Compress RAW Photo Files and Save Space With Rawsie (Losslessly)

Rawsie is an application that allows you compress your RAW photo files without sacrificing image quality. This can save you time, as well as up to 80% of drive space. The app is very user friendly and can work in tandem with your favourite programs such as Lightroom and any others that support the .DNG file format.

It sounds like magic, and for those of us who aren’t software engineers, it kind of is. That being said Rawsie could really benefit photographers who find themselves constantly filling up external hard-drives. Rawsie calculates that if you are averaging 60,000 raw photos a year, those photos would take 15 drives at four terrabytes (4TB) each. With compression, Rawsie claims you could use just three.

Rawsie is currently available for macOS, though there’s good news for PC users: a waiting list is available on the site. The pricing model has a variety of packages to choose from; free, subscription, and a one-time fee. The no-cost option allows you to compress 30 photos a day, with no commitment or entering credit card information. The pay-to-play options offer the same perks: unlimited use, free updates and new cameras added regularly.

Not all cameras work with Rawsie. I've listed the current models at the bottom of the article, but check with Rawsie for up-to-date details about support for your camera.

How to Compress Raw Photos With Rawsie

One of the best things about this app is how it easily fits into your workflow, even allowing you to compress straight from camera. The software is very straightforward and offers a nice user experience that easily integrates with your existing tools, but with all the perks of dealing with a much smaller file size.

Let’s do a walk-through of the process, so head over to Rawsie and download the version you’d like to try. Note that Rawsie also works with the Lightroom catalogue system, but we're going to demonstrate using the stand-alone process in this tutorial.

Ingest

Open the app and you’ll be presented with two cards, as in the image below. Select Optimize Individual Raw Files. To locate your images you can hit Browse and navigate, or simply drop them from the finder onto the app.

Next, select your output options. Your output options allow you to choose where the compress filed end up on your computer.

Save Compressed Files

If you use culling software, like Photo Mechanic, check Full-size Previews, and Rawsie will build full-sized previews of your images. This significantly speeds up image loading for your review process.

Under Save compressed to, choose a folder for where you keep your pictures. If you want to save the compressed files back to the same folder your originals, choose Original Location Subfolders. Rawsie will create a subfolder for the compressed file in the same folder as the originals.

Move Originals

Move originals allows you to do something clever. If you put the settings at Original Subfolders Rawsie will, bear with me, create a subfolder in the same folder where your originals were kept, and move the original files there after processing them. The new, smaller, speedier files take the place of the originals, and the originals are nicely organized next to where they were from the start, if you need them.

Then hit start and you are good to go! Rawsie really is that easy to use!

Camera Compatibility

As mentioned above, Rawsie has a growing catalogue of compatible cameras. As of publication, here are the camera models that are currently available:

SONY

a9 II, a6100, a7R IV, a6400, a7 III, a7R III, a9, a6500, a99 II, a6300, a7R II, a7S II, RX1R II, a7 II

CANON

EOS R6, EOS R5, EOS RP, EOS R, 6D Mark II, 5D Mark IV, 1D X Mark II, 5DS R, 5DS, 7D Mark II, 1D X, 5D Mark III, 5D Mark II

NIKON

Z7 II, Z6, Z7, D850, D5, D4, D750, D810, D800, D800E, D700

FUJI

GFX 50S, GFX 50R

DJI

Mavic Pro 2

Thanks for following along! We hope you enjoy your experience with Rawsie.

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If you'd like to continue learning about workflow apps and other editing tutorials, follow along with then links below!

How to Merge and Edit High Dynamic Range Photos in Adobe Camera Raw

In our last tutorial, we looked at how to use exposure bracketing to make images for high dynamic range photography. In this tutorial we'll show you how to merge those images in Adobe Camera Raw and how to edit them to suit your style.

How to Merge and Edit High Dynamic Range Photos in Adobe Camera Raw

Merge Your Photographs

Let's pick up where we left off: you have a few images, made by bracketing exposures, to merge together.

Open your images in Adobe Camera Raw. Highlight all the images (shift-click or ctrl-click each image) and then right-click on one of them, choosing Merge to HDR.

You will get a popup box that tells you it’s creating a preview. This won’t take as long as the actual merge will.

When the preview has finished, you’ll see how your image will look—probably quite high contrast and heavily saturated—with some options:

Align images will need to be ticked in order to match up your photographs and remove any extra overlap that might show at the edges from movement.

This is also where ‘deghost’ comes in. This option will stop the glow that you sometimes see in HDR photographs, where it makes it look a bit soft and strange. You can choose off, low, medium or high deghosting options and as you can’t zoom in on your preview it’s hard to tell how much a particular image will need. There is a mask overlay which can help; it works by shading any areas of ghosting in red (or whichever colour you choose). You’ll find the higher options useful if you’ve shot a lot of images as you’re more likely to have ghosting then.

You can choose to Apply Auto Settings too, which will shift your sliders to the ‘best’ positions for your photograph. It’s fine to tick this as you can change them if they aren’t quite right.

When you’re ready to edit, hit Merge. You’ll be asked to save a new digital negative of the three merged images, which then becomes a file itself that you can edit without needing the original three images.

Edit the Merged Image

Profile Corrections

The first thing to do is to go into Optics and tick Use Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberration. Even though your photograph is technically three, all the data has been retained, so ACR will still be able to select your lens and make any corrections for barrelling or vignette etc.

Use the settings in Optics to make profile corrections

It’s worth ticking to remove chromatic aberration (the purple and green haze you can get around edges of your image) as it can be intensified by the HDR merge, particularly around things like trees that have lots of lines against a bright background.

What to Avoid

You should now have quite a bit of flexibility in your other editing options. Getting the most out of highlights/shadows, contrast and detail can seem really exciting, but we’ve all seen photos that look like this:

Too much colour and detail can look garish

Unless it’s an artistic statement then this is probably way too much. What you should aim for is a photograph that still looks natural, but without either extreme of a loss of detail, or so much detail that it’s a punch in the face.

Basic Edits

Start by making adjustments in Basic. Here we can see what’s in the shadows without losing the nice contrast, and the highlights are all within an acceptable range. I’ve slightly reduced the saturation which affects the overall colour, and increased the vibrance to compensate, which just targets midtones.

Colour Mixer

In Colour Mixer you can take the edge off some of the harsher colours and tone down ones that still might look a little HDR luminous. I’ve also slightly shifted the hues to warmer tones, greens towards yellow for example.

Local Adjustments

In the Adjustment Brush you can make targeted local adjustments to make the most of all that extra range you have.

LUTs and Actions

If you’ve got your basic edits sorted and you feel like stylising your image a little, you might want to try adding a LUT or action/preset. Here’s one I added from the Street Photography collection on Envato Elements and then tweaked a little to fit the image.

Finished

And you are done!

HDR is a great technique for giving yourself more flexibility in difficult situations. Try to use it in a targeted way—if you try to do every image as an HDR you'll soon run out of hard drive space and patience. In particular, HDR is great for bringing details out in architectural shots, and for making landscapes pop with dramatic areas of light and shadow. If you feel like something a little more arty and stylised, the technique is great for that too, so why not have a little fun with it and experiment.