Ain't you just an artist?

"Get any good photos?" he asked.

"Dunno," I replied. "I think I have a couple keepers. We'll see after I process them."

"But that's a DSLR."

"Yeah, but I gotta run 'em through Photoshop* to see what I've got."

"Hmm." (Here there was an audible sniff of disdain.) "I don't use Photoshop. I prefer straight-out-of-camera**."

"You don't shoot RAW?"

"Huh?"

"So you just let the camera photoshop them for you."

See, the camera sensor records incoming light. In order to view the image, it needs to be processed into an easily viewable format, usually JPEG.

By the time you pop it onto your computer screen, the camera's corrected the lens distortions, tweaked the color profile, contrast, saturation, the works...

Even inexpensive consumer cameras will offer you a minimal level of control over this, usually giving you a choice of color profiles, like "Natural" or "Standard", "Vivid", and maybe a few artsy options, such as the "Black & White", "Sepia", and "Cyanotype" offered by this little Coolpix S6500 on my desk.

Use any of those color profiles, including the completely arbitrary "Standard" and, congratulations, you "photoshopped" there, Ansel Adams.

Higher-end pocket cameras, and pretty much any DSLR or Mirrorless, will give you the option of saving the "RAW" file. This is called by a bunch of different names, depending on the manufacturer...they're NEF in Nikon-speak, CR2 in Canon-ese, ARW in Sony cant, et cetera...but they're essentially the captured image data sans any processing. (Some people call them a "digital negative", but a negative is still processed film, so there's a bit of ACKSHYUALLY here.)

Thing is, you can't just view the RAW file without some sort of image converter software...like the Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop. There are various cheaper or freeware ones, but I have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for work purposes, so I use the Photoshop one. I like the way it gives me access to Photoshop and Lightroom on my phone, laptop, tablet, desktop, et cetera. Being able to process photos in a hotel room on the road is often important for me. Anyway...

Going to shooting in RAW format, something I had to do back in 2017 so I could do photography for RECOIL Magazine at SHOT Show was a huge bump in getting better photographic results for me. It was for my picture shooting basically the equivalent of what buying a shot timer and ordering targets and ammo by the case was for my pistol shooting.

*The Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop, ackshyually.

**Often referred to by the acronym SOOC.

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