How we got that night shot – understanding RAW photos

If you caught Episode 391, you probably spotted the night shot taken on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal. If you look at the raw file, however, you might be wondering how we got the shot to look the way it does. This is how it comes before processing:

Raw, unprocessed image. This is essentially what I saw of the scene with my own eyes!

What is RAW?

Before we go any further, a quick recap on what RAW is. In simplest terms, it’s like the unprocessed negative of film days. In actual terms, it’s just a bunch of ones and zeros captured by the camera, each representing colour and tone. In fact, if you could see an unprocessed RAW file, you wouldn’t see an image at all because RAW is not an image format. The example above is taken from a file browser window, so the browser itself has had to do some processing in order to render it into a recognisable image.

What’s the advantage of shooting RAW?

A RAW file contains the maximum amount of data your camera is capable of capturing, offering the maximum dynamic range possible. Providing you don’t blow out your highlights (pure white) or crush your blacks (pure black), all detail is captured. This differs to a JPG, which is a compressed file format. In order to make a lower-res JPG image optimised for the internet or to share among friends, short-cuts have to be made. This includes reducing the dynamic range and baking-in the colours and tones, making them less flexible to edit and often introducing ‘artifacts’ (pixelated areas, for example).

What’s the disadvantage of shooting RAW?

There are two disadvantages to shooting raw: larger file size and a requirement to edit the image. If neither of these issues bother you, then you should always be shooting in RAW because it gives you complete control over the final look of the image.

Night Shot Considerations

This is especially important when shooting night shots. Because stars move and lights can blow out your whites, you don’t want to leave the shutter open too long, yet not opening it long enough means it is under-exposed. With RAW this isn’t a problem as you can lift the exposure of your shadows in an image editor like Lightroom or Photoshop.

RAW image opened in Adobe Camera Raw before making any changes

The same RAW file, this time with Exposure and Shadows lifted

Noise

This is all very well, but lifting the exposure and shadows introduces another problem: noise. Although the camera is able to save data in the dark areas, it still struggles to record all data. The missing bits of information manifest themselves as pixelated areas.

A ‘noisy’ section of the image after lifting the exposure. Most of the detail is there but it still needs some work

Denoising

Fortunately, we can use software to ‘denoise’ these areas. There are many options out there, including built-in denoise options in our image editors, but I employ a third-party desktop app called DxO PureRAW. This uses various algorithms to ‘guess’ the missing data by examining the surrounding pixels that did capture data. It’s not perfect, and it can make skin look ‘smooth’, but it is a massive improvement on a noisy image. It works well for landscapes.

Masking and other edits

After taking the denoised version of the image, I brought it back into my RAW editor and made further local changes. This including ‘masking’ areas of the image and applying exposure changes. For example, I roughly masked out the sky and brought the exposure back down and then increased the contrast to define the stars against the dark background.

Isn’t this cheating?

No. All we are doing is taking manual control of an edit that your camera would otherwise do automatically. Since different cameras apply these automatic changes differently, we’re just making a custom version of these changes. And many of the changes we can make in our image editors replicate what previous generations were doing in the dark-room; we’ve just made it a lot easier!

Bonus

In the episode we panned back from a tree to reveal the full image. Did you notice what was in the tree?

I had no idea there was an owl when I took the shot!

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