site for online sharing of .raw photos

sashmo · Nov 23rd, 2011, 11:38 AM

Hi,
My photos are all raw format and I don't want to change the format to jpegs. I tried to upload them into flickr and they weren't accepted. Do you know of any sites that accept raw photos? The OS on my computer is Snow Leopard. Thanks for your help.

Joker Eh · Nov 23rd, 2011, 12:02 PM

None that I know of as a amateur myself. The file size is just too big to upload and then it would require the server to convert to a format to display on a web page.

You should backup your raw images and then depending on the software package you are using there should be a function to batch convert all selected images to another format ie. jpg., then upload those. I have all my images in raw and jpg so that I can send pictures to someone and/or post them.

When I go on a trip with my girlfriend she doesn't want raw files, she has no idea what to do with them. So I convert all images I want to jpg and then give them to her so she can go print whichever ones she wants.

eMacMan · Nov 23rd, 2011, 12:39 PM

A far better idea is to reduce size to about 1200x900 pixels and convert to jpeg. Graphic Converter can do this in batches and will not alter the original RAW images. As the smaller jpegs will probably be less than 1% the size of the RAW originals and you probably will not convert everything, this should not have any real impact on storage requirements.

Otherwise convert to TIF format and expect long upload times and frustrated viewers.

hayesk · Nov 23rd, 2011, 07:30 PM

RAW is not really a format suitable for online viewing. For one thing, they're huge. Why do you want to upload RAW? PNG or JPG are much more suitable.

sashmo · Nov 24th, 2011, 07:25 AM

Thank you for those replies. They all makes sense. It's just that there are a lot of pics and I was feeling lazy. But I'll do a batch convert.

kps · Nov 24th, 2011, 09:33 AM

Keep in mind that "raw" formats" vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. In other words, Canon's 'raw' is not the same as Nikon's 'raw', or Olympus 'raw' or Fuji 'raw" , etc. You need conversion software to use the raw data which is usually provided by the camera manufacturer or a third party if the algorithm was publicly released.

Just make sure you either backup all your raw images or save them in a non-lossy universal format (such as TIFF) at full resolution. Storage is cheap, irreplaceable memories are not.

Web display or making small(ish) prints, you could convert and resize to a lossy format such as JPG, but only to save on disk space. This would not be a good idea for saving images for archival purposes. So having images in more than one format to suit a purpose is something that is not unusual in digital photography.

sashmo · Nov 24th, 2011, 01:35 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by eMacMan
	A far better idea is to reduce size to about 1200x900 pixels and convert to jpeg.

Can I do that with the Batch Command in Adobe Photoshop? I checked it out and it didn't look like I could.

kps · Nov 24th, 2011, 02:03 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by sashmo
	Can I do that with the Batch Command in Adobe Photoshop? I checked it out and it didn't look like I could.

Photoshop-->File-->Automate-->Batch

You'll need to create a Photoshop Action first, tho.

For better control you can also do this from Bridge. Same PS Action will apply.

sashmo · Nov 24th, 2011, 02:27 PM

Are you referring to this route: Bridge, Tools, Photoshop, Batch?
The Batch window then shows: Play and Set with choices that I don't want but "none" isn't a choice.

eMacMan · Nov 24th, 2011, 03:56 PM

For batch conversions I have always preferred Graphic Converter. More control and often a good deal faster than PhotoShop.