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Photography vocabulary · Files & Image Quality

RAW

Meaning in photography, with examples

/rɔː/nounCore term

In photography, RAW means: An image file that keeps almost all the data recorded by the sensor, without the camera's processing. It must be edited and converted before sharing.

In Turkish: RAW dosyası, ham dosya, ham format

How it is used

Every brand has its own RAW format, such as CR3, NEF or ARW, and DNG is an open format. Photographers shoot in RAW or RAW+JPEG and process RAW files in software like Lightroom or Capture One. Clients often ask whether RAW files are included.

Example sentences

  1. Always shoot in RAW at weddings; you can't repeat the first kiss.

  2. Our price includes edited JPEGs only. RAW files are not delivered.

Common collocations

  • shoot in RAW
  • RAW file
  • RAW format
  • process RAW files
  • RAW+JPEG
  • JPEGA common image file format that compresses photos to make them small, losing some detail. Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
  • editTo improve photos after the shoot by adjusting things like exposure, color and cropping, and to choose which images to keep.
  • dynamic rangeThe range of brightness, from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, that a camera can record with detail, or that exists in a scene.
  • white balanceA setting that corrects for the color of the light so that white objects look white, not too orange under bulbs or too blue in the shade.
  • histogramA graph that shows how the tones in a photo are spread out, from pure black on the left to pure white on the right.

More terms: Files & Image Quality

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