Imac questions

[WillieHall]

I am new to RAW and recently purchased the guide to DPP to use for my 7D. With my iMac, do I need to download RAW photos to something other than iPhoto. Up till now I have stored and filed all my jpegs very conveniently there. I need RAW for dummies from an iMac person! So many questions, so little time....

[dankearl]

Willie,
No, you cannot load RAW files into iphoto.
You need another software program such as photoshop Lightroom, etc.
I am a Mac user and store jpegs in iphoto after processing the Raw files.
Iphoto is a convenient place to keep jpegs.
If you are an apple user, you might look into Aperture which is not that expensive.
You should be shooting RAW.......
Canon must have some sort of free software that loads RAW files.
I am a Nikon user and they have VIEWNX which comes with their cameras for simple Raw loading, edting and conversion to jpeg if one does
not want to buy photo editing software, but you really should get something.

[WillieHall]

thanks Dan, yes I want to start shooting all RAW. So, can I download to Aperture and then send to DPP for post processing, then send jpegs or tiffs to iPhoto. I have read poor reviews of aperture for processing, but many good ones for DPP since I have a Canon.

[Diane Miller]

Some others here are bullish on DPP for processing. But I assume you need to use the Mac Finder or some other utility to download from the card into the computer. (I understand BreeseBrowser, that Artie likes, is PC only.) If you have Photoshop, Bridge can do the downloading, and with Elements there is some sort of downloader.

I love Lightroom (works on Mac and PC) for downloading, organizing, keywording, developing and exporting RAW files. It's the whole package, designed for photography. I have read everything that has ever been written or cited here on using DPP, and tried it repeatedly over several years, and I get far better results with Lightroom. And at something like $120 it's a bargain. Many images never need to be processed in Photoshop.

You'll find several tutorials on my web site that are still relevant with the newest version.

[Don Lacy]

U can use canons software that came with the camera to download your raw files and store them in a folder on your iMac if u do not have PS or Lightroom u can also purchase photomechanic as your stand alone downloading and organization software

[WillieHall]

thanks Don, I will begin by using the Canon software and see what I can learn

[Diane Miller]

Beware of a couple of pitfalls. Among the limited number of people I know face to face, one converted all his raw files to JPEG and deleted the raws. One deleted them for all the images he had worked on in PS. And one deleted ALL image files "because they were in Lightroom." Sigh... And these were all decent to good photographers who were seriously interested in photography. It pays to understand the basis of this stuff. It isn't rocket science.

[WillieHall]

So true, Diane. My first time I had to dig out a few images from the trash! Hopefully that lessson was learned for good!