RAW Images and Lightroom 4

I’ve been learning how to use Adobe Lightroom 4 to organize and edit my photos.  At the same time, I’m learning more about my Nikon D600 and digital photography in general.  It’s amazing how much I still don’t know about photography after having gone through 3 DSLRs already.  I kept upgrading my camera without knowing fully what I’m doing.  I just felt that if I can have the best camera that I could afford, then I would not be able to blame anyone else but myself for any bad photos I take.  Besides, this gives me the motivation to continue learning.  I feel stuck in the “beginner” mode, but I’m determined to get better. 🙂  I’m posting my progress and my photo experiments in my photo log.

I’ve been taking raw images for the last couple of days to test Lightroom’s capability to salvage bad photos, and let me tell you, my photos often need lots of help with exposure, white balance, etc.  Below is an example of an overexposed image edited in LR4.  I’m amazed at how much information can be retrieved from the RAW file.  The RAW files take up a huge amount of space on my memory card AND my hard-drive, but it may be worth it in the long run.  We’ll see…

RAW image unprocessed

RAW image developed and edited in LR4