Since I’ve been missing in action for the last month here are two tips for the price of one. At the end of the post there’ll be a few recent images. This, after all, is a photo blog 
Tip #5 – RAW vs. JPEG
I thought this was very basic but after meeting several photographers in the field, the questions comes up time after time. The short answer is RAW. About the only reason I can think of to shoot in JPEG is to have smaller files and therefore be able to fit more photos on your digital card. The reasons to shoot in RAW are numerous.
i’m going to try and keep this short. You can always send a comment and I’ll answer your question in more depth. JPEG is a highly compressed file and raw isn’t compressed at all. This gives you all the pixels your camera captured. Your aim is to get the best exposure possible when you capture the image but RAW gives you much more latitude to make corrections. RAW files will always be available for future RAW converter improvements. I’ll guarantee there will be better converters down the pike even though the ones available today are excellent.
These are just a few advantages of RAW. There are several more. Don’t be intimidated. RAW only requires one additional step to process your photos and that’s putting it through a RAW converter.
Tip# 6 – Keyboard Shortcuts
This tip is intended to speed up your work flow a bit. Rather than always using your mouse to pick tools, try learning some keyboard shortcuts. Here are some of the ones I use constantly.
B to bring up the brush
Brackets [ ] to increase and decrease the size of the brush
Q for Quickmask mode (learn how to use quickmasks and you’ll be able to dramatically improve your images)
Shift Control I (Shift command I on Mac) to inverse your photo
Control J (Command J on Mac) to duplicate layers
V is the move tool
Control/Command D to deselect
Control/Command E to merge layers
D to change foreground and background colors to default
X to reverse foreground an background colors
F to toggle between screen modes
There are so many more but these will get you started. If you’d like to learn more about how to use these shortcuts, I’m available for private lessons.
