Then And Now; Something About Your Old Image Files You Need To Know

White-Tailed Deer (cropped from 6000 pixels wide to 1536 square) (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T2, 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens + 1.4x tele-converter @ 207mm; 1/1000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 1000

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I listen to a lot of photography related podcasts, I watch a lot of photography related You Tube channels and I read a lot of websites/blogs about photography.  Why?  It is my passion for the craft and my desire to better understand all aspects of photography, eventually providing others with helpful information and answers to their questions.  I've been passionately photographing since 1970 and my passion has not waned one iota.

The other day I was watching "The Art of Photography" You Tube channel with its creator, Ted Forbes.  If you aren't watching Ted's videos I believe you are missing some valuable information about photographers, photography and the photographic culture.

This particular video is entitled, "What you DON'T know about RAW image files :: Lightroom versus Capture One."  You can find it here.  Mr. Forbes talks about why different RAW converters display your RAW image files differently and why.  If you have interest in understanding why Adobe Lightroom demosaics your RAW image files one way and Capture One (as well as Iridient X-Transformer, Alienskin Exposure X3, Luminar, etc.) shows them differently, this video will give you insight.  However, what I found most interesting is the topic Ted introduces at 10:17 into his video.  It is a topic of which I was aware and intended to write a blog post months ago, but slipped my mind.

The topic is about Process Versions in RAW converters.  Since most of us use Lightroom, I'll use Lightroom as an example.  If you open Lightroom and go to the Develop Module, look down at the bottom of the right hand panel.  There is a tab called "Camera Calibration."  If you open that tab and you have the current version of Lightroom Classic CC, you will see 4 different Process Versions listed.  Version 1 was created by Adobe in 2003, which is when Lightroom was introduced.  Version 2 in 2010, Version 3 in 2012 and Version 4 is listed as Current.  The Process Version contains the algorithms that Adobe creates to convert your RAW files into visible images on your screen.

Amtrak #67 at Williamsburg, VA station (click to enlarge)
Same as above; 235mm; 1/400th sec. @ f/5.0; ISO 200

As Adobe creates new process versions, they improve the conversions of RAW files.  Color, saturation, contrast, detail and highlight rendering, shadow detail, etc., are all determined by how Adobe writes these Process Versions.  In other words, what you see on your computer monitor depends upon how well Adobe writes the code to convert the ones and zeros of the digital file into an image you can edit.  What is remarkable and which many of you may have never tried is going back to your older RAW files and updating them to the newest Process Version then re-editing them.  By doing so, you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that you see more detail, more accurate color, subtleties in your file that you did not see when you originally edited the image and the ability to draw more out of a marginal file than you could in the past.

In the film days, we chose a film for its characteristics such as white balance (for color film ) and ISO speed in accordance to the situations we anticipated encountering.  I can remember heavily experimenting with developers, dilutions and developing times to coax the best out of my black and white film.  Often times, I wished I would have used a different developer as the final print may have the shadow detail I wanted but was so grainy that it ruined the overall photograph.  Well, we couldn't go back and develop the film again.  We had one chance at getting it right.  But with digital photography and updated and improved Process Versions, you actually have a second chance at "redeveloping" those old RAW files and getting much more out of them than you could using the same software but with updated algorithms, than when you first made the image.

I have done this very thing and some of my RAW conversions in the latest Process Version are remarkably better than 5 or 10 or even 15 years ago.  (This is one of the reasons I very seldom delete files) If you have some favorite images from years past, made with old cameras with many fewer as well as lesser quality pixels than are in your current camera, you may be able to improved dramatically upon how that old image potentially could look today.

Try it on a few choice files from your past and see if you can coax a bit better quality out of those old files.  You may just surprise yourself.  And....thank you Ted Forbes for reminding me of this!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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